Before we moved, we used to let our cats take a spin in our fenced-in backyard. The fresh air and diversion seemed to do them good. We put an end to that a couple years ago, however, after one of our cats, Savannah, hopped over the fence and stayed away for two weeks before we were able to trap her. Since then, our cats have been strictly indoors.

When we moved into our new house last fall, one of the things we wanted to do was to build a catio — an enclosed outdoor space where the cats can frolic in the sun and birdwatch without the humans having to worry about them running away. Conveniently, we have one window that opens  onto the deck, making it a relatively easy matter to build an enclosure that fed right to the window.

We finally got around to that project this weekend. The materials were few (a few pieces of lumber and a big roll of gardening mesh) and the construction relatively crude, but the end result was effective:

Savannah took to the new addition right away as she stayed out for quite a while enjoying the sights and sounds. Bingley, our other cat, needed a little more time to realize that this was a good thing as he initially meowed and tried to find a way to escape from the catio. Eventually, he seemed to figure out that this was better than not being able to go outside at all and settled down.

Now, let’s just hope our cats don’t see these catios, or they’ll be demanding that we make a few more trips to Lowe’s to keep up with the Joneses.

With classes done for the semester, I’ve been enjoying a restful respite from school, which will last a couple more weeks. I’ve taken advantage of the down time to catch up on a lot of neglected items on my to-do list. Two of those things were going to the North Carolina Zoo again and rekindling my photography hobby. We accomplished both this past Sunday and added one more thing — showing my dad how to use his shiny new DSLR camera.

The weather looked a bit iffy on the way to the zoo as we drove through a few scattered showers. However, as we approached Asheboro, the sky lightened up and it stayed dry the whole time we were there. It was a mostly cloudy day, which was good for photographing the animals, and the cool weather meant more of the critters were out and about. The animals were more than obliging. The herd of giraffes struck some neat poses for us. At the lemurs exhibit, we saw a red-ruffed lemur and a ringtailed lemur groom each other, something I had never seen before. In the chimpanzees exhibit, we caught a glimpse of the new baby chimp Ebi as she slept in her mother’s arms. Later in the day, as we approached the grizzly bear exhibit, we saw no animals. Disappointed, we were just turning away when the giant grizzly appeared from behind the rocks as if on cue and strutted onto the top of a large rock near the front of its exhibit, offering us an obstructed photo op as it stood there for a  minute or so before cozying up next to the waterfall for a nap.

Here are my photos from the trip:

James Fallows (left) and Orville Schell getting ready for Monday night’s talk at UNC.

I attended a talk last night at the FedEx Global Education Center at UNC where China experts James Fallows and Orville Schell discussed the rise of the Middle Kingdom and what it means for America. I’ve always enjoyed Fallows’ reasoned, knowledgeable writings about China, so the opportunity to hear him talk was a treat, and I found Schell to be very insightful as well.

Some of the main points from the talk:

China’s challenges

Fallows opened with the point that China, despite its image of being an unstoppable juggernaut the past decade, has many more major problems than the United States. “It’s harder to be president of China than to be president of the United States,” he said. However, he added, China might be in a better position to fix its problems than the U.S. is. For instance, on the environmental issue, Schell said that even though China is facing a more dire problem, it may be closer to finding a solution because “it’s run by technocrats and engineers” whereas one of the ruling parties in the U.S. basically refuses to acknowledge climate change.

Elaborating on China’s problems, Schell said that China needs to think about sustainability in all aspects, including not just its environment, but also its government and economy. He also compared China’s uneven development to plate tectonics, which he said is creating discontinuities across Chinese society.

Fallows added that one of the biggest questions facing China moving forward is whether its current system can continue to move ahead and keep its people feeling that their lives are improving without loosening up the government’s social and political control. As an example, he mentioned that when he was on a university campus in China during the Arab Spring, the country’s Internet was “unusable” because of the government clampdown. Such instances, he said, point to a serious problem: It may be easy for China to build a dam under its current system, but would it be able to foster a truly innovative environment? Fallows summed it up nicely by saying, “You can’t have a rich country with an Internet that doesn’t work.”

Democracy or liberties?

Both Fallows and Schell said it was unlikely for China to have a U.S.-like democratic system anytime soon (though as Fallows quipped, “Nobody has adopted the American model in the last 150 years, so maybe that should be a clue to us.”). In fact, both agreed that efforts by the outside world to push democracy on China often results in the opposite of the intended effect and makes it harder for democracy to spring up from within. Fallows also made an interesting point that many Chinese probably care more about having more liberties than whether their government becomes a democracy in the Western sense of the word.

One thing that Schell said caught my attention: That Chinese leaders over the past 150 years — whether it be Mao Zedong, Sun Yatsen, or Chiang Kaishek — all believed that democracy should be in the picture at some point … but not at their particular moment. Over the past 150 years, Schell said, China’s focus has been mainly on restoring the country to health. He also made the case that the government’s pattern of clamping down and snuffing out nascent social movements for change before they can really take hold actually makes it harder for China to incrementally evolve because every change that is allowed to happen would appear to dissidents as a signal that the floodgates are open.

China and America

Both Fallows and Schell made the point that Americans need a better understanding of China beyond seeing it as a threat. Schell said there is a heightened importance for Americans to understand what’s going on outside their own country because “the river used to always flow to America; now, the river is reversing course.”

Michael Tsin, the moderator of the discussion, pointed out that Americans are often getting two conflicting images of China, that of a prospering nation vs. that of a country filled with unrest and inequality. Fallows answered that “there are a million pictures of China and they are all simultaneously true.” He also pointed out that the world has a diverse image of the United States because the U.S. has been in the world spotlight for longer, whereas it has been harder to get that diverse image of China.

As for relations between the two countries, both Schell and Fallows agreed that it’s been mostly complementary and that overall there have been few areas of collision, perhaps surprisingly so given the rapid pace of change. U.S. policy toward China, they noted, has remained pretty much the same throughout the past 20 years despite changes in the American administration.

Both experts downplayed the idea that U.S. relations with China is a zero-sum game and that China is a threat to the U.S. from a strategic and economic standpoint. China’s military, Fallows said, is ridiculously weak compared to America’s. As for China’s manipulation of its currency exchange rate, Schell made the point that even if China lets its currency flow at market rate, it’s not going to send any jobs back to the U.S.

A Few Other Take-home Points

• Fallows: Nobody really knows what’s going to happen in China.
• Schell: The Chinese consider themselves to be on the right side of their history even if we think they are on the wrong side of ours.
• Fallows: China’s problems are exacerbated by the American model much more than America’s problems are exacerbated by the Chinese model.
• Schell: Despite their mostly complementary relationship, the big differences in the Chinese and American systems of government make it difficult for the two countries to collaborate as much as global issues now require.

Daily Tar Heel story on the talk

I was part of a panel discussion with a couple of my classmates from the UNC MA in Technology and Communication program Saturday at the Society of Professional Journalists Region 2 Conference at Elon University. The discussion was about journalists (or in my case, former journalists) going back to school. I was expecting the attendees to be professional journalists contemplating going back to school, but it turned out that they seemed to be mostly current journalism students trying to decide whether to go on to graduate school and when to do it. In any case, here’s what I said and didn’t have time to say during the hour-long discussion.

Why

For me, I went back to school to make myself more competitive the next time I hit the job market. The economic funk has made a lot of people stay in school longer to postpone having to find a job, which means when there are jobs available again, there are going to be a lot of people with advanced degrees who are younger and cheaper than me. I need something in addition to experience to stay competitive. As one panelist said, the master’s degree is probably going to be the new bachelor’s.

When

A couple of the current students in attendance asked whether they should go straight on to grad school or work for a while first after graduation. My feeling on this is pretty clear-cut: You’ll benefit a lot from working in the field for a few years first. The other panelists expressed similar sentiments. A few reasons:

• You’ll appreciate the school experience more: As several of the panelists noted, by the time you finish your bachelor’s degree, you’ve pretty much spent the previous 16 years going to school, so at this point, grad school is just another item on your checklist. Spending a few years in the real world will help you gain a better appreciation for the opportunity to spend the bulk of your time learning from smart people.
• You’ll have a better idea of what you want to do: At 21, I was eager to launch into what I expected to be a long career in sports journalism. At 23 I felt the urge to climb the ladder and maybe end up at one of those really well-designed large newspapers one day. At 25 I realized I didn’t care about circulation size as much as I cared about being in an environment that spurred creativity, and that I would probably get out of newspapers around the time I’m 30. At 26 I wanted to get out of the journalism business right then because I could see that jobs, particularly design jobs, would become a scarce commodity in the industry. At 27 I thought about design school. At 28 I realized working in design agencies wasn’t for me. At 29 I discovered that you didn’t have to sell your soul to work in public relations. Now, imagine if I had gone to grad school at any of those points in time and how differently my path would have been, including what kind of program I would’ve chosen and what field I would’ve expected to go into after getting my advanced degree. It takes a while to figure out what really matters to you and how grad school fits into that picture.
• Money: Journalism isn’t a high-paying field, so don’t take on extra student-loan debt unless you’re sure this is the career you want. You might feel strongly that it is at the time of graduation, but as my own experience has showed me, that can change in the span of a few years. Also, the work experience could give you a better chance of landing some sort of fellowship or at least find an employer who might provide financial assistance.

Where

I’ll refrain from shilling for my own program here (well, maybe just a little bit). For me, I knew I couldn’t afford to (and really didn’t want to) take two years off from my career to go back to school. I also didn’t want to have to pack up and move since I loved where I’m living. There was also the financial-cost issue. Like one of my fellow classmates who was also on the panel, I looked at a number of online options before settling on one that suited me. I think the key really is to figure out what you want out of a degree program and what you plan to do afterward, and do a cost-benefit analysis. I’m not expecting this degree program to be a life-changer. If I wanted to switch careers, this would not be the best program for that. What I’m expecting out of this program is to learn things to advance my current career and to stay competitive. One big reason I chose my current program is that as a UNC employee, I get a significant tuition discount, which definitely tilted the cost-benefit analysis in the program’s favor.

And finally …

We ran out of time at the panel discussion before I could work this in: Just because you’re not in school, it doesn’t mean you stop learning. For me, the masters program I’m doing now is part of my continuing lifelong learning. I was picking up new skills and knowledge on my own before I enrolled, and I’ll continue to do so after I get my MA. One of the good things about the changes that are turning the communication fields upside down is that it has made it imperative for the practitioners to learn continuously. Programmers have to do this to stay relevant in their field. Health-care professionals have to do this to keep their licenses. Journalists and other communication professionals should embrace this, too.

“Honey, I went to Target for paper towels and came home with a tablet.”

Well, that wasn’t exactly how it happened, but it was close enough. After mulling for a few months over whether to get a tablet, I finally broke down and picked up a Kindle Fire last Monday after my errand to Target was sidetracked for 20 minutes by the display unit in the electronics section. The fact that I had just received a gift card for my birthday helped expedite the decision as well, so I ran home, got the gift card, and ran back to the store.

After spending a week with the Fire, I feel pretty confident I had made the right decision.

Identifying My Specific Needs

Before I delve deeper, I should lay out my computing needs, since that, as much as any other factor, determines whether something like a tablet works for someone.

• Because I do graphic design, I need a little more oomph out of my primary computer, so I’ve always gone with a desktop instead of a laptop as my main machine because it’s more bang for the buck.
• I don’t have business trips, so I have no real need for a powerful laptop. I do have a refurbished laptop that was already a few years old when I bought it back in 2008. It still runs, and I’ve managed to blog my way around China and England with it. However, it has not aged very gracefully and takes a long time to get going upon booting up.
• I have a smartphone that serves as my primary music player when I’m on the go, and by “music” I mean mostly podcasts and Bob Dylan songs. I don’t listen to the radio or stream Pandora much.

This arrangement worked fine until last fall, when I started an online masters program. The curriculum involves a lot of reading, a good chunk of which is in electronic form, either as e-books or PDFs. I managed fine on the e-books with a combination of the Kindle screen reader on my desktop and the Kindle app on my phone for when I’m on the go or lounging on the couch. The PDFs, however, were a bigger pain. Unlike with e-books, my phone can’t reflow the pagination of the PDFs to make them easily readable on a small screen. That means a lot of zooming around the page, which doesn’t make for a good reading experience. So that meant either spending hours in front of my desktop in my study, cloistered from my wife and cats, or having to put up with the herky jerky performance of my laptop.

That’s why I thought a tablet would be a good addition. However, I didn’t feel particularly inclined to plop down $500 for an iPad or one of the other high-end tablets. For that amount of money, I could probably get a solid laptop, but I didn’t want a $500 laptop — I didn’t need a $500 laptop and my readings were not a need warranting a $500 solution. I thought about a netbook, but again, the cost seemed to outweigh the utility. I also looked at the low-end tablets, but they were a rather disappointing lot, what with their unimpressive screens and hacked versions of Android that supposedly supported the Android Market but not really.

When Amazon released the Kindle Fire, it offered a new option — a solid performing tablet with a nice screen, a relatively small price tag ($200), and the backing of a big, reputable company. I read the same reviews everyone else did and knew all about the pros and cons, but getting some extended hands-on time with the Fire sold me on it.

Striking the Right Balance

The good so far:

• The size: After I got my wife one of the original Kindles a couple years ago, I thought, “This would be a nice size for a touchscreen tablet,” and I kept thinking that even after the iPad came out and Steve Jobs declared its 10-inch screen to be “the minimum size required to create great tablet apps.” The Fire, which is even smaller than the original Kindle, has proven me right on that point. I can comfortably hold it one-handed, two-handed, or even back-handed, and more so than with a larger tablet. Oh, and the apps work and look just fine. I will say that whereas two people might use an iPad or a Xoom at the same time (for two-player games, for instance), the smaller Fire is definitely a personal device.
• Reading PDFs: This has been the biggest part of my Fire usage the past week as I sloughed through class readings. I strongly recommend getting the $2.99 ezPDF Reader app, because the Fire’s native PDF reader doesn’t between PDF pages smoothly. ezPDF Reader not only provides smooth scrolling, it also allows you to annotate and highlight. In portrait mode, PDFs of letter-size documents zoomed all the way out are still a bit too small to be read comfortably on the Fire. ezPDF Reader solves this by doing a good job of reflowing and zooming the text. In landscape mode, the document becomes just a little narrower than an 8.5×11 sheet of paper, which means you can read it comfortably.
• Video: Aside from readings, one of my classes also requires watching a lot of online videos. The Fire handles video fairly well. The picture is not amazing, but good. I wish the Kindle App Store had a YouTube app, but until that happens, you can just access the YouTube site via the browser.

What could be better:

• Google apps: The absence of the standard suite of Google apps (Gmail, Calendar, etc.) from the Fire and the Kindle App Store has already been widely publicized, and after using the Fire for a couple days, I do miss them. Not having the Gmail app isn’t as big a deal because there are many other apps that can handle Gmail. Here’s hoping a solution will be worked out eventually, but until then, at least I can still access the Google apps via the web browser (good mobile websites FTW).
• Other apps: Since you are downloading apps from the Kindle App Store instead of the Android Market, your options are more limited. It’s not so much the sheer number of apps but rather the selection. I’m not a heavy gamer, and there seems to be more than enough games to keep me entertained. However, I do wish the Dropbox and Flickr apps were in the Kindle App Store.
• Exchange e-mail: My work e-mail is on an Exchange server, and the Fire’s native e-mail app doesn’t support Exchange, nor do most of the e-mail apps I’ve come across in the Kindle App Store. The one that does, Touchdown, costs $20 (!?!), which might as well be $100 in app-conomics. I don’t need to check work e-mail from my tablet that badly.
• Bookmark icons: When you bookmark a page in Silk, the Fire’s built-in web browser, it receives a generic, rather uninspiring icon — a blank page with the name of the page written on it. The bigger problem is that every bookmark gets the same icon, except with a different name on it, so you can’t distinguish between them at a quick glance.

The jury is still out on:

• The lack of a physical home button: I’ve experienced good and bad on this point. One one hand, it definitely takes some getting used to, and I’ve reached for the nonexistent physical home button several times. On the other hand, it also saves you from accidentally hitting the home button and exiting the app you’re in. This is especially helpful since I don’t have to worry about keeping my hand away from a physical spot on the bezel when holding the Fire. Also, I don’t understand the complaints about the placement of the on/off button at the bottom of the device. I haven’t even come close to accidentally hitting that button, and besides, you can easily remedy the placement issue by (gasp!) flipping the Fire so that the button is on top instead of on the bottom.
• The 8GB storage limit: You can’t expand the internal memory of the Fire, and the idea is that you would stream most of your media from Amazon. For normal, everyday use in my home or office (both of which have wifi), I don’t foresee any problems. However, that storage limit, combined with the lack of 3G, might cause some problems when I’m traveling. If I can’t be sure that I’ll be somewhere that has wifi, I would want to load up the Fire, and that’s when 8 GBs (which translates to about 5 GBs of usable space) might be an issue.
• Buying stuff from Amazon: I can definitely understand the complaints about how it’s perhaps too easy to accidentally buy stuff from Amazon on the Fire. The newsstand, books, music, apps, and videos sections of the OS are all seamlessly integrated into Amazon. Personally, I like that integration, but I do see how, if you have kids using the Fire, they could unknowingly make a bunch of purchases. It would be nice to have an option to turn on a verification check when buying stuff from Amazon in the Fire.

So far, for what I need from a tablet, the Fire has hit a sweet spot on the cost-vs.-utility scale. I’m not looking for it to be a laptop or an iPad. I didn’t write this post on it (I probably could have, but it’s much easier on a regular keyboard than a virtual one, on any tablet). I don’t plan to take pictures or have video chats with it. It’s excellent for the things I do want to use it for: A lot of reading, occasional video watching, some web surfing, a little e-mailing, and unchaining me from my desk. I’ve already spent more time reading on the couch in the last past week than I did in the entire previous semester.

As we’ve done the past several years, we attended the Chinese New Year Festival at the State Fairgrounds in Raleigh today. I must admit that the event has gotten a bit dull for me, mainly because the program has remained pretty much the same over the years and also because the food served at the event has been less than stellar. Nonetheless, the festival is still a good opportunity to satisfy the shutterbug in me. We got there today in time to see the dragon dance, followed by a kung fu performance by a local club. Aww, it’s so cute to see little munchkins demonstrating their ability to bludgeon you and slash you with knives, swords, lances, and spades.

Courtney and I had so much fun renovating the dining room in our new house back in August that we decided to spend part of our Christmas break doing more renovation. This time, we set our sights on the half bath downstairs. Here’s what that bathroom looked like when we moved in:

Certainly it didn’t look bad, but it just wasn’t our style. For one thing, the wallpaper had to go. That, as it turned out, was much more difficult than either of us had expected.

When we renovated the dining room, we actually had a relatively easy time taking down the layer of wallpaper that was glued to the wall as it came down in giant sheets with just a tug. The half bath, however, made us earn every single square inch. On the first night, it took me two hours to pry off a few square feet of wallpaper with a scraper and a spray bottle of vinegar and water. Courtney joined the struggle the next night, but it was still slow going. We turned to Google for help, but it wasn’t exactly comforting when the title of one of the first articles in our search results read “Patience is a virtue.”

It was then that we decided to get a wallpaper steamer. After just a minute with the steamer, we were both ready to profess our undying love for Peter Ravenscroft Wilkins, the inventor of the device. We were also kicking ourselves for not getting the steamer the second we realized that the wallpaper in this particular room wasn’t going to come down quietly. We could’ve saved ourselves a lot of time and effort. With the steamer, we peeled the walls in the entire bathroom in about the same amount of time as it took for us to chip away a few patches the previous two nights.

Even after the wallpaper came down, it wasn’t done tormenting us. Because we had to use a lot of moisture in removing the wallpaper, it had caused wrinkles in patches of the drywall — patches that couldn’t be just puttied up and sanded down. So we had to cut away the wrinkles, prime, prime again, putty, sand, and prime again (and sometimes repeat the whole process) to fix the troublesome spots.

After about four days’ labor, the wall was finally done. The rest of the bathroom renovation came together pretty quickly in comparison, as it only took a couple hours to put the vessel sink, vanity, and faucet together.

The fruits of all that hard work: A light blue bathroom with a touch of Asian sensibilities:

By the way, we now have a spare white porcelain pedestal sink and an ornate wooden-frame mirror, both in good condition, if anyone is interested :-)

While we were up North visiting family for Thanksgiving, we took time out to visit La Salette in Attleboro, MA, one night. This was a monastery that, as I was told, gets decked out in Christmas lights every year. It turned out to be a pretty impressive sight. The myriad lights were set up around a small pond and made for some neat photos.

The lights weren’t the only eye-popping thing about La Salette. It also had a huge gift shop, which struck me as kind of strange, especially for a place of worship.

When I heard that Telltale Games was going to develop a video game based on the movie Jurassic Park, I was excited, intrigued, and a bit ambivalent. Excited because Telltale Games is by far my favorite video game company for the excellent work it has produced the last few years in reviving the adventure-game genre that LucasArts turned into an art form back in the 1990s. Intrigued because Jurassic Park seemed to be such a departure from the company’s other titles, which mostly involved sitting back, clicking on stuff, solving puzzles, and having a good laugh at witty dialogues. Ambivalent because I was worried the company might be stepping too far out of its comfort zone with a game based on a movie packed with fast-paced action and which had already spawned no shortage of action games, and frankly, I didn’t want another shooter game.

The ambivalence grew back in the spring when Telltale announced it was pushing back the release of the game until the fall while it improved the mechanics of the game. The game finally came out a few days ago, and since I’ve been sick and stuck at home with a fried brain and clogged sinuses the past couple days, I spent some of that time trying out Jurassic Park.

The game, like other Telltale products, comes in an episodic format, though unlike others, all the episodes were released in one package this time. I’m about one-and-a-half episodes in, and I can already say with confidence that this was well worth the wait and that Telltale has really outdone itself.

The game picks up where Dennis Nedry met his doom in a stranded jeep back in the original movie. In the movie, Nedry, the not-so-fleet-of-foot programmer who squabbled with the park’s creator over money, was on his way to deliver smuggled dinosaur embryos to his contacts from a rival corporation when he ran afoul of one of the parks’ carnivorous inhabitants. The game spins off of that loose thread and looks at what happened to his contacts. The other main characters in the game so far are Dr. Gerry Harding — who got about two lines in the original movie as the guy who tranquilized a triceratop for the visiting scientists — and his teenage daughter, who were also left stranded on the island before they could get to the evacuation boat. As our characters traipse through the jungle, we get hints that there are even more menacing creatures lurking than the T-rex and the velociraptors.

Telltale did a terrific job revamping its traditional interface to replicate the action-packed, edge-of-your-seat feel of the movie. There is still a version of the familiar point-and-click interface you find in many adventure games where you click on a hotspot to examine or use an object and solve a puzzle to advance the plot. However, the game also makes frequent use of the direction keys on the keyboard for action sequences. For instance, if you’re hacking your way through the jungle, you see directional arrows on screen at certain times, and you have to press the corresponding direction key at the right moment to cut your way through. There are also times when you need to keep tapping a key to complete a strenuous action, such as pushing a crate over a ledge.

At times, this new interface might seem unnecessarily complicated (“Why must I press three different arrow keys to load a tranquilizer gun?” I thought at one point). However, it really shines when you’re in a fast-paced sequence, which happens A LOT. Frantically tapping the up and down arrow keys to crawl out from under a pile of debris while a T-rex is about to stomp on you really makes you feel like you are in one of the scenes from the movie where the humans are pumping their arms and legs as hard as they can to try to outrun giant predators. Upping the stakes is the fact that, unlike other Telltale games, you can actually die in this one (and there are many painful and humorous ways to go, as one can imagine). Thankfully, if you do end up as T-rex bait, you are automatically transported back to the start of the action sequence to try again rather than losing all your progress up to that point.

I do have a couple minor complaints about the new interface. The picture-in-picture scene navigation — where you switch between different parts of the scene to control different characters (cutting as a director would, as the developers put it) — feels a bit unwieldy at times. The other complaint is that often you can see a hotspot on the screen, and yet you have to pan your field of vision over more before you can interact with it. While an admittedly minor point, over time this does add up to quite a few extra clicks to accomplish simple tasks like examining an object. Fortunately, so far I haven’t encountered any situations where those extra clicks interfered with an action sequence and left me in the jaws of a dinosaur.

While the gameplay mechanics are unlike anything Telltale had done before, the storytelling is as good as you would expect from a company that literally has made its name with storytelling. One difference, though: Instead of relying on the witty, sarcastic tone that permeates many of Telltale’s other titles, such as Monkey Island and Sam & Max, Jurassic Park faithfully captures the cinematic experience and the suspense of the original movie, leaving you expecting a raptor behind every tree and always waiting for a seemingly tranquil scene to turn into a heart-pounding chase. The game even employs some familiar Hollywood devices, from the one-dimensional minor characters whose fates are obviously sealed the second they set foot on the island to the old adage that nothing ever happens in a movie without a reason (Harding’s daughter tells dad that she has a big Spanish test coming up, and then two scenes later we find her having to piece together broken Spanish phrases to communicate with another character).

In Jurassic Park: The Game, Telltale masterfully weaves a new interface with the good traits that have become hallmarks of its games. The result is an experience that not only tells an interesting story, but also puts you right in the middle of the action and often leaves you on the edge of your seat like the movie did.

A behind-the-scene trailer from Telltale

I started the Master of Arts in Technology and Communication program at the UNC School of Journalism and Mass Communication back in late August, and I’ve managed to survive to the midway point of the first semester. “Survive” really is the apt term here; just ask the brain cells that didn’t make it through the past two weeks as I trudged through the literature review for a research project in one of my classes. I’ve spent probably about three hours a night on most nights doing class work since school started. I’ve even had a couple nights where I’ve written or read until I fell asleep in my chair. I’ve been so busy that I’ve hardly watched any TV in the past two months, which is actually one of the pluses so far. I find myself missing television less and less. Now if only I can just get the ESPN and science channels a la carte.

Even fall break isn’t a complete escape: One of my classes is off this week, but I do have assignments in the other class, though the professor has granted the class a partial reprieve by extending the due date on one of the assignments. Still, I’ll be spending the rest of this week plowing through 70 pages of readings about statistical analysis so I can lead a Blackboard discussion on it. The very thought of it makes what remains of my brain cells scream out in pain (and I was actually good at math back in my high school and undergrad days).

However, I already feel like the labor has not been in vain. One of my two classes this semester is a real hands-on course while the other is more conceptual. The hands-on class, Writing for Digital Media, covers mostly either things that I’ve done or have at least a passing familiarity with, so for me the course so far has been more about reinforcing and fine-tuning my existing knowledge and skills than picking up new ones. That doesn’t mean it’s dull, though. On the contrary, the VERY lively discussion boards for that class have been my favorite part of the MATC program thus far, as I’ve not only gotten to know my fellow classmates, but also have learned much from their respective expertise and experience. Also, I find that the course has given me a renewed commitment to, as George Orwell put it, defending the English language when I’m writing or editing.

The more conceptual course, Research Methods and Applications, definitely is the one that’s taking the heavier toll, not just on me, but probably on everyone else in the class as well. The difficulty has come in part from my total lack of familiarity with the subject matter and the methodical pace at which I read. There is a ton of reading for this class, and some of it can be quite dense and jargon-heavy (which makes it an interesting counter to the writing course, where the emphasis has been on simple and clear writing). It seems like each week I’m blitzed with an onslaught of new research-related terms and concepts, and there have been times when I’ve stared at the discussion prompts on Blackboard and thought to myself, “I’ve got zero insight to add to this conversation.”

Despite the difficulties, though, the research class has also been immensely rewarding because I feel like I’m learning so much that I never knew I never knew. For instance, I now know what makes research valid and how to evaluate its validity, so the next time I see anything that says, “a study shows …”, I’ll know the right questions to ask to judge how much stock to put into the findings. I’m learning how to design experiments. I’m learning how to use the library’s databases to find research papers (and one good thing about the literature review was that along the way I came across a bunch of articles relevant to my work).

What’s more, the class has given me a small taste of how researchers work, the processes they follow, the ways in which they see the world, and the principles and ethics that govern how they operate. To me, this has been as useful as anything else I’ve learned in the program, especially since I work with researchers. I’m hoping the new insights will help me communicate better with them.

So in short: A lot of work, but feeling like I’m getting a lot in return as well. Now, back to sampling distributions and Z-scores (I use those terms as if I remember what they mean).

Our church held a “blessing for the animals” event yesterday, and we decided to take Bingley, one of our cats. If there ever was a cat in need of some blessing (and absolution), it’s Bingley, whom we affectionately call Brattus since he seems to always know exactly the brattiest thing to do at any particular moment. Ooh, humans are folding clothes? Let me go flop on top of the laundry pile. Hey, humans are home. Let me go scratch on the couch until they pay attention to me by scolding me. Humans are petting the other cat. I’m going to go chase her off …

There was a pretty good turnout for the blessing, which was held just outside the church. There were mostly dogs, including lots of adorable little ones. We only saw four cats including Bingley, and one of them was the same color as Bingley, right down to the little patch of white on his chest. There was talk of someone bringing a sheep, but alas, there were no exotic animals beyond your usual dogs, cats, birds, and hamsters.

With all the canine around, we decided to keep Bingley in his crate. However, even from there, he managed to make himself the center of attention. He meowed throughout the ceremony, including the silent moments of prayer. He also drew quite a crowd of little kids. Bingley also got a couple visits from dogs, including a big black lab that got so excited that she knocked over the crate. Bingley survived unscathed, but that didn’t stop him from milking it for sympathy and treats later.

A couple updates:

The new house: We’re about two-thirds unpacked, but haven’t done any more painting since a few days before we moved in. Still, the house is starting to feel more like a home than a fortress of boxes. The cats have found new favorite perches on the staircase. The room that has undergone the biggest transformation has been what used to be the dining room, which is now Courtney’s office. It’s amazing what some nice furniture, a new coat of paint, and three days’ worth of blood, sweat, and guts can do to a room.

Before

After

Of course, the work is not done yet. We still need to replace the old chandelier with a Shoji-style flush-mounted overhead lamp, and eventually we’re going to get some nice sliding Shoji doors to replace the temporary curtains on the two entrances to the room.

The master’s program: I’m finishing up my second week in the Master of Arts in Technology and Communication program through the UNC School of Journalism and Mass Communication. It’s been a lot of work so far, and way more reading than I’ve done at any point in the last 10-plus years. However, it’s also been very interesting as I’m already learning a lot about things like research methods and what George Orwell thought about Marxist writings. I’ve enjoyed the discussion boards for the classes. The biggest downside so far is that I’m still searching for the right balance between class and life and trying to keep myself from thinking about classwork all the time. Nonetheless, I’m enjoying the ride, and I’ll probably enjoy it a lot more after next weekend, when I expect to have finished work on the old house and gotten it listed on the market. That’ll free up a little more time for me to sit back and catch my breath in between work, class, and working on just one house (and maybe writing something for this blog).

In the mean time, enjoy the writing I did for the first assignment in my Writing for Digital Media class.

Courtney triumphantly rips down a sheet of wallpaper, only to discover that the battle has just begun.

If you’ve noticed that I’ve been kind of scarce on my blogs and Twitter feed lately, it’s because my brain has been fried from focusing solely on house-related stuff. We just closed on a new house last week and are moving in this weekend, so we’ve been spending our non-work hours this past few days doing pretty much nothing except painting in the new house.

We started out with great ambition, aiming to at least paint the outside of a half bath, the dining room, and our master bedroom before we move in. We began with the low-hanging fruit: the half bath, which is attached to the foyer, which is attached to the living room, forming one giant, two-story-high space. Given the enormity of this connected space, it was going to be a pain to paint the whole thing a different color, so we decided to leave the existing light color paint for the most part but give the space a splash of vibrant red on the outside of the half bath. That only took a a little more than an hour from start to finish, and we were pretty happy with the end result:

Before

After

The momentum from that easy first step, however, quickly fizzled when we moved into the dining room, which we are converting into an office for Courtney. The previous owners had cloaked the walls of this room with a layer of fabric that, while cute, was not our style (though I’m sure our cats would love to sink their claws into it). We yanked off the fabric easily enough, only to discover a layer of batting below that and, beneath that, a layer of regular wallpaper with a pattern that mimics the look of fabric.

Before

During

The outer layer of fabric is about off, but the batting and inner layer of wallpaper remain.

During, continued …

So what lies beneath the layer of fabric? Why, a layer of wallpaper that looks like fabric, of course.

When we started removing the outer layer of fabric, we noticed that it was held in place by staples, many many many many many staples, with one about every quarter of an inch along the top of the walls and around every trim. Fortunately, a good number of them came out when we pulled the fabric off. Unfortunately, because there were so many staples to begin with, we were still left with a bunch that needed to be removed after the fabric was gone. It took four of us — me, Courtney, and my parents — a good two hours prying and digging on the walls with screwdrivers to get all the staples out.

The battle, however, was still only just beginning at this point. Where there were once a million and one staples, there were now a million and one staple holes that needed to be patched up, along with a strip of exposed drywall — where there used to be a chair rail, we guessed — all around the room that needed to be dealt with. So we spent another couple hours over the course of two nights patching up the wall.

Then it was on to sanding the putty we had slapped on. After Courtney and I spent a half hour smoothing out one little corner by hand at the end of one night, I realized this was going to require some mechanical power if I didn’t want to spend the next three days sanding until my arm fell off. The cheap power sander I picked up worked like a charm, but it also made a huge mess, spewing out white dust that covered the floor and even drifted to other parts of the house, leaving a thin layer of dust on the counters and hardwood floors (which we still need to clean up).

Still During (!!!)

The post-sanding, pre-painting dining room wall

After sanding the wall last night, I was packing up to leave, but by then I could see the end for this project crawling over the horizon, so I thought, “What the heck! I’ll start painting.” Another two hours later, I stood admiring my handiwork. Hey, it may have been midnight and I may have been standing there with my hair matted in dust, my body covered with patches of paint, and my hands feeling rough and sandy from all the putty I had been handling the last couple days, but by golly, man has triumphed over wall, and I’m done with painting until after we move in!

P.S.: By the time I got done painting last night, I was too tired to even think about taking an “after” picture of the dining room. That’ll have to wait.

About three weeks ago, I designed a newspaper sports front page for the first time in six years as I served as an emergency fill-in on the sports desk at my old newspaper, The Herald-Sun in Durham, N.C. Four days later, I found out that that would also be the last time I get to design a sports front at The Herald-Sun. The newspaper, following the lead of the News & Observer and a number of other papers across the country, is laying off its desk staff and moving all design and copy editing functions to Owensboro, Ky., site of a sister paper in the Paxton Media Group chain, which has owned The Herald-Sun since 2005. The last night for the desk staff is tomorrow.

The move toward consolidation of desk functions for multiple papers into a central hub is a trend across the entire newspaper industry. There are (a few) good and (many) bad things about it, and perhaps this move at The Herald-Sun was inevitable. The desk staff at The Herald-Sun — and the entire staff in general — has steadily dwindled to far below the size it was at when I worked there full-time as a sports designer and copy editor in the mid-2000s. The sports desk alone has shrunk from four full-timers and a couple part-timers at the peak of my time there to just one full-timer before this latest development, and that reduced staff was laying out the Sanford Herald’s paper in addition to their own.

I’m no grizzled newsroom veteran, and I don’t pretend to have ever lived in a golden age of journalism. The industry was already starting to fall into flux when I got out of school, even if we didn’t quite realize the magnitude of the changes that were coming. Also, I’ve now spent enough time away from the business and absorbed enough outsider perspectives to be able to step back and see the myriad of things we could’ve done better and the many ways in which journalism in this new age could be better than it had been before. However, it feels surreal that just five-and-a-half years after I left my full-time job there, the entire design and copy desk at the paper will be gone. The Herald-Sun sports desk is a place that has played a big role in my life and career (sometimes probably bigger than is healthy), and upon hearing the news of its imminent demise, I couldn’t help but reflect on my time there and the impact it had on me.

Getting Into the Game

I began working in The Herald-Sun sports department as a correspondent soon after graduating from high school in Durham in 1997. My high school journalism teacher heard the paper was looking for help covering prep sports and passed it along to me since I had been sports editor of the high school paper. So I sent an e-mail — from my AOL address, on a dial-up connection — expressing my interest. Neil Amato, then the preps editor at the paper, had to tell me during our first phone call to stop calling him Mr. Amato. “I only got out of college four years ago,” he said. My first story — an eight-inch lead to a roundup in which I totally focused on the wrong angle — is still framed and hanging on the wall of my old bedroom in my parents’ house. Within a year or so I started working part-time on the sports desk, too, putting together the page in the sports section with all the boxscores and statistics. Throughout my four years at UNC, I spent many a Friday night covering prep games and following that up with a desk shift on Saturday nights. In retrospect, I probably should’ve done a little more partying on those nights like normal college students do. But at the time, it was a sacrifice I made gladly. Even then, it wasn’t easy for journalism graduates to land jobs after college, so I figured every ounce of experience — especially in a professional newsroom — would help.

It was terrific experience, too. I did a little bit of everything: covering games on every level of competition, laying out pages, taking prep calls, driving a bunch of sports editors down to the Durham Bulls Athletic Park one summer when they held their annual meeting in Durham, placating a mentally challenged stutterer named Gary who called (and is still calling) every night asking for brackets for every conceivable and inconceivable tournament and would not hang up until he was satisfied that you were going to physically deliver said brackets to his house right away. I sat in a press box at East Chapel Hill High and gazed in amazement at the half-inch-thick layer of dead flies on the desk; shivered so hard in the chilly wind sweeping across the football field at Hillside High that I spilled half of the cup of hot chocolate I was holding; wilted in the heat on a track in Raleigh waiting to interview Marion Jones, only to have her make a quick exit without talking to reporters; nearly flipped my car off a particularly curvy on-ramp rushing back to the office from a game at Orange High; spent half a season having the same despondent postgame interview with the coach of a football team that went 0-11 and found a new heartbreaking way to lose each week; and watched a kid from Azerbaijan who had the use of only one arm do cross-over dribbles like you won’t believe.

The experiences from my first two-plus years at the paper helped me realize that while I enjoyed writing and sports, I wasn’t really suited to being a beat writer. I was a bit too shy, never feeling entirely comfortable about “bothering” people with my questions even though I did it when I had to. And I found out that I’d get bored quickly if I had to cover the same team or subject night in and night out, especially with game stories, which too often had a formulaic nature to them. At the same time, though, I also discovered a previously unrealized passion for design, in part from my experience putting together sports pages. I liked the idea of taking all the different raw material — stories, pictures, headlines, statistics, captions, graphics — and building something from them that, when done well, can be greater than the sum of its parts. That realization — and the shift in career path it effected — had an impact on my life that reverberates even to this day.

In 2001, the spring before my senior year, a design and copy-editing position opened up on the sports desk in a rather bizarre manner. The guy who had that job walked out of the newsroom one night without telling anyone that he wasn’t coming back. Oh, and it just happened to be the night that the Duke men’s basketball team was playing for the national championship, which, for a newspaper covering Durham, was akin to a presidential election in magnitude. After a couple hours of consternation on the sports desk while we tried to call that guy, wondering all the while if he was lying unconscious in a pool of blood somewhere (he wasn’t), we proceeded to bang out not only the regular sports section, but a special championship section as well. Soon thereafter, the sports editor offered me the position, which I wanted but was unsure about taking because I still had one more full semester of classes left. The paper was good enough to accommodate me, letting me work four nights a week — with benefits — during the fall semester before switching to a full-time schedule in the spring, by which time I only had a couple classes left to take. So while most of my journalism school classmates were fretting over what to do after graduation, I was already half a year into a permanent gig.

I learned a ton in the next three years. While The Herald-Sun has never been renowned for its design, I did have the benefit of editors who took a more or less laissez-faire approach toward design and the tutelage of a fellow sports designer who never hesitated to try something new. That combination created an environment where we felt free to try just about anything and everything, employing a kaleidoscope of cutouts, gradients, funky fonts, drop shadows, outer glows, and motion blurs along the way. We were both figuring it out as we went, and looking back on it, a lot of the stuff we did in those days were hideous, but we also stumbled into some good-looking stuff every now and then. The same kind of thinking that drove us to abuse artsy fonts also inspired us to design a pretty slick football special section cover featuring the starchild from “2001: A Space Odyssey.” Learning my craft in an environment that allowed such experimentation bred in me a mentality to not simply accept conventional notions of what a newspaper should look like. Headline-photo-story was always the fallback, the last option, and even though in my later years in the business I learned that sometimes that could be the best option, I never lost the zeal for looking to improve upon that builder-grade format.

Being a small to mid-sized paper (about 50,000 circulation in the early 2000s), we didn’t have the most resources or the biggest staff, yet even that aspect had a positive influence on me. To this day, I’d never accept not having the latest and greatest equipment as an excuse for not producing good work. The first work “laptop” on which I filed a story had a black and white “screen” that showed about five lines of text at a time. I was running a self-provided copy of Photoshop for half of my time at the paper. The pagination system the paper was still using when I first started in 1997 dared to ask the question, “What is this WYSIWYG of which you speak?” And I still remember the shocked look on the faces of my colleagues at an ad agency years later when I told them that I was laying out pages on Quark 3.something as recently as 2003. These limitations, however annoying, made me more inventive and more proactive in taking the initiative to find a solution. They were hurdles to be overcome, walked around, or tunneled under, not excuses to take the path of least resistance. And even though we often yearned for more time, in the end, I found that when we busted our ass, we generally were able to put together some nice work, especially for non-deadline stuff, even if it meant staying a couple hours longer. Moreover, being on a smaller staff meant we all had to do a little bit of everything, and from that grew my versatility, which I still consider my greatest strength.

In fall 2003, I felt like I had learned enough to shoulder a bigger load, so I volunteered to design our annual ACC football preview section, one of the few plum design assignments each year. It was the biggest project I had tackled up to that point, and it became my baby, conceived four months earlier when I discovered a Photoshop technique that gives photos a hand-drawn, comic-book-esque quality — the kind of discovery you make when you’re operating in an environment where you’re free to experiment without having to first ask for permission. I spent countless hours on the section, at work and at home, and turned out something that I’m still pretty proud of to this day. A couple weeks after the section was published, I went into work one evening and found an envelope sitting on my desk, containing a thank-you note and a four-figure check, compliments of the executive editor.

Little (or not so little) things like that were among the reasons that newsroom really appealed to me in those days. The paper was still family-owned at the time, and I think that definitely influenced the atmosphere. I couldn’t complain about the leadership since I always felt they treated me well (though I understand this point can differ depending on what you do and whom you work with, like at any company). The newsroom had a nice mix of veterans and up-and-comers, and unlike many other papers that size, it was a place where one could be content building a long career, especially in sports, since the location of the paper put you right in the heart of college basketball heaven (getting to live in the Triangle is a nice plus, too). We were a smallish paper but we were covering some big-time sports programs, and while we didn’t have as many resources as the big boys did, we always tried to hold our own where it really mattered. To employ an industry cliché, I guess you could call us “scrappy.” We didn’t work for awards, but we did collect our share, which was all the more satisfying knowing we were typically on the lower end of the circulation class in which we competed.

As for my colleagues, I got along great with most of them. We worked well together and we generally had fun in the process despite the nightly rush. For news design and copy editing desks, election nights are the busiest and most hectic nights, but as another industry cliché goes, every night on the sports desk is like election night. However, a night on the sports desk also rarely felt like work as one would imagine work to be. No one quibbled with us over trivial things like dress codes or the salty language that was a necessary release valve for the pressures we faced on a nightly basis. We weren’t locked into eight-hour shifts and were free to work fewer hours on some nights because, as the paper correctly figured, it all evened out over the long run as we often stayed well after deadline working on special projects (imagine that: staying at work as long or as short as needed to get the work done). And after that night’s paper was done, a couple of us would stand in the parking lot for hours at a time, talking shop and shooting the bull about all manners of things, sometimes until near dawn as the delivery trucks were pulling out of the parking lot with the edition we had cranked out hours earlier.

I was in a city I liked, at a workplace I enjoyed, doing work I loved, with people I considered my friends, and for people who appreciated my work. So what did I do two months after receiving the nice thank-you gift for my efforts on the ACC football section? I left the paper.

Too Comfortable?

During my first couple years at The Herald-sun, I had received a few inquiries from other news organizations looking for young, cheap journalists fresh out of school — including one for a copy-editing job at ESPN.com — but I was too enamored with what I had in Durham, both at work and in terms of family. The farthest I went in entertaining such inquiries was a two-day interview with the Charlotte Observer sports department (it’s hard to say “no” to the biggest newspaper in the state without at least taking a look). On September 10, 2001, I rolled into Charlotte around midday for a whirlwind afternoon of interviews and meals with various people at the paper. The next morning, I went back to take an aptitude test in the HR office, during which I thought I heard someone outside say, “The World Trade Center towers, they aren’t there anymore.” In the absence of context or further details, I quickly pushed it to the back of my mind; I had, after all, more important things to tend to, like this interview.

After finishing my test, I made my way upstairs to the newsroom and walked into a frenetic scene of people huddling around TV sets, hurrying to and fro, and yelling across the room. One of the assistant sports editors told me what had just transpired and said, “I think the plans for the rest of your day are scrapped. Let’s reschedule.” As I drove out of downtown Charlotte while the cops were setting up barricades, I thought to myself, “Maybe this is a sign.”

In all seriousness, though, I didn’t feel like I was a good fit for the Charlotte Observer’s design style. Don’t get me wrong: That paper is clean and functional and nice looking in an understated sort of way, but for a designer just starting out and looking for opportunities to learn and experiment, it felt too restrained and confining. In a way, the freewheeling atmosphere at The Herald-Sun had already stamped its mark on me. I courteously withdrew my name from consideration, and that was the only time I had even half-seriously thought about leaving until 2003.

The ACC football section I designed in 2003 had put me on the radar of some newspapers looking for young designers to mold in their image (and my obviously Chinese last name probably didn’t hurt either since newsrooms are constantly looking to add “diversity”). In October 2003, The State newspaper in Columbia, S.C., came calling. This time, I felt a greater urge to jump. The football section had whet my appetite for more large-scale design projects, and I knew that at The Herald-Sun, I would always run up against limitations in manpower, resources, and the number of opportunities to flex my design muscles. In addition, I was feeling the lure that most aspiring newspaper designers three years removed from college would probably feel to climb the newspaper ladder to some place bigger, more prominent, more widely read, to be able to point at a page gracing the eyeballs of hundreds of thousands of people and say, “Yeah, I did that.” Finally, I was feeling the fear of letting my career stagnate for no reason other than the fact that I was comfortable in Durham. I had, after all, already turned down a handful of opportunities, including ESPN.com and the biggest paper in this state. If I turned down the biggest paper in the neighboring state as well, how many more opportunities were going to keep coming my way?

So I decided it was time to push myself out of my comfort zone. I interviewed at The State — whose circulation was about two-and-half times that of The Herald-Sun’s — and came away impressed at the quality of its work and felt that its style of design was more in line with what I wanted to do. Those factors, along with the 23-percent pay raise The State had put on the table, convinced me to make the leap. I gave The Herald-Sun a one-month notice — I felt that was the least I could do for a paper that had done much for me at the outset of my career — and then made my way down to Columbia in one whirlwind November weekend.

Mover’s Remorse

On my first night at The State, I stepped outside the building during my dinner break, called a friend while pacing on the concrete steps by the side door, and confessed to her that for some reason I wasn’t feeling as excited as I should’ve been about starting a new job that was attractive enough to yank me out of my comfort zone. Of course, it might’ve had something to do with the fact that I sat down that night in front of a woefully underpowered computer that had less than 100 MBs of available disk space and was running Photoshop 3 — in 2003! The computer situation was remedied within a couple days, but the feeling I had that first night never truly improved. I started to miss the atmosphere and the people at The Herald-Sun almost immediately. I thought it would pass with time, but if anything, it only intensified in the ensuing months.

My new job certainly provided me with what I went there for — more opportunities and resources to do good design work. The sports desk was double the size of the one in Durham, which meant fewer pages per person and more time to spend on each page. I also never lacked for occasions to do special designs, as the sports department put out a giant feature package seemingly every week and was always doing special pages to commemorate this or preview that. I learned a lot during my time in Columbia, the most valuable of which was the benefit of advance planning. After constantly flying by the seat of my pants during my first three years in the business, I was now seeing how the bigger boys did it and how their less chaotic, more organized approach paid off. I received reinforcement on the importance of truly editing stories, not just proofreading. I saw what differentiated visual journalism from merely design, and I knew I wanted to do the former. I learned, I did some good work, and the people at The State liked my work.

Still, through it all I inwardly longed for the freedom and aggressiveness in experimenting with design that I had enjoyed at The Herald-Sun. The creative process at The State felt too formal, with too great a need to ask for permission rather than forgiveness for someone who was used to the exact opposite. I also missed the people I had worked with in Durham, in spite of (or because of) their respective eccentricities. My colleagues at The State were friendly folks, many of them were my age, and I got along fine with them and we hung out on occasion after work. But there were no hours-long bull sessions in the parking lot after work and nowhere near as many spontaneous belly laughs or four-letter words in the office. The place had a more buttoned-down, professional feel. Perhaps it was more conducive to getting good work done, but it also wasn’t as fun a place to work in (perhaps I just prefer being on a rag-tag ship of unruly buccaneers instead of a well-run galleon). There also seemed to be a lot of layers of decision makers, and every decision took longer and became more complicated than it needed to be, IMHO. That was difficult for someone who was used to making snap decisions on the fly because he never had much time to mull over every photo choice or every headline.

All those things, along with the fact that I missed my family and life in the Triangle, took their toll. After a few months, I e-mailed the sports editor at The Herald-Sun to tell him I was looking to move back to Durham if an opportunity arose. A couple months later, he called and told me a position had opened up on the sports desk. I jumped at it, even though it meant taking a sizable paycut from what I was making in Columbia, and a couple weeks later I was on my way back to Durham. The Charlotte Observer, The State’s sister paper, called while I was packing and offered me an opportunity to stay in the Knight Ridder chain (remember KR?). I really appreciated that gesture, but I stood firm, because I had figured out where I belonged.

Back Again

I first read this passage from a 1999 Sports Illustrated story on John Stockton when I was back in college:

If simple works, why change? If the Jazz franchise fits you like your favorite pair of khakis, why even think about playing anywhere else? Why even have an agent? Just figure out a salary you think is fair, tell the owner to do the same thing, and meet somewhere in the middle. If you’ve always worn your shorts a little snug and no longer than mid-thigh, why change just because everyone else is letting them billow down around the knees? If the hometown girl you began dating in college will give you a lifetime, no-cut contract, why go looking elsewhere? Marry her and settle down. If you’ve never been happier than you were in the neighborhood you grew up in, why not get yourself a house right next door to your parents’ and re-create your childhood for your five kids? “You don’t do anything just because other people do,” Stockton says. “My father taught me that.”

Obviously this approach to life and career isn’t for everyone, but it made sense to me. It took leaving The Herald-Sun for me to realize how much I enjoyed being there and that it was the right fit for me. My seven-month sojourn in Columbia had helped me figure out what really mattered to me in life and work, and those things were waiting for me back in Durham, not some other corner of the journalism world, even if that corner was offering more resources, more recognition, or more money. Thus, when I returned to The Herald-Sun, I knew in the back of my mind that this would most likely be the last newspaper I worked for, with the caveat that by then, I had also figured out that I would eventually want to leave journalism and explore other lines of design before possibly settling in one (possibly journalism). Nonetheless, I felt like there was still a lot left for me to do and try in journalism, and The Herald-Sun was where I wanted to do that. I was 25 when I started my second tour of duty there in June 2004, and I could easily see myself being there until I was 30, and possibly beyond.

Soon after returning to The Herald-Sun, I became the lead designer on the sports desk, and I threw myself into the role, adding the discipline and appreciation for planning that I had acquired in Columbia to the freedom and control I rediscovered in Durham. I was now the go-to guy for designing the special projects in the sports department, and I relished all those opportunities. That coming year, by coincidence, had more special projects than usual, and I also created some additional opportunities by applying some of what I learned in Columbia. I tried, and sometimes succeeded, in improving not only the design but also some aspects of how the sports department operated. I tried to make us plan in advance more, and some of those efforts paid off. I also played mentor to a couple younger designers who were in the shoes I once had been in.

I could see that I was affecting more than just the pages I worked on, a feeling I didn’t get in Columbia. At The State, the paper was big enough, with a culture and method of operation entrenched enough that one designer wasn’t going to make waves. In Durham, thanks to the smaller staff size and the more informal operation, it felt easier for one person to exert an influence on the paper, as long as he had the desire and didn’t mind putting in the hours. I was young, single, working a job I loved with a schedule that made it impossible for me to hang out with my friends who had normal jobs. So what else was I going to do but spend too many of my waking hours thinking about how to make the paper better? It was a time when I did a lot of my best work and a time when I did a lot of work, period. In retrospect, it would have been difficult for me to keep up that pace over the long haul, but at the time, I loved it. This was what I came back from Columbia to do. This was a virtually perfect fit for me, and I felt zero need to look around and wonder if there’s an even better fit out there somewhere.

Change of Plans

Several months into my return, things were going well. I was enjoying work and enjoying the fact that instead of four hours, I only had to drive four minutes to get a delicious meal at my parents’. By August 2004, two months after coming back to Durham, I had bought a house and was ready to settle in for the long haul.

But then late that year, we were rounded up in the newsroom one night for a surprise meeting. The top honchos announced that, after being family-owned for 115 years, the paper was being sold to a chain, the Paxton Media Group, which most of us hadn’t heard of. We were stunned, concerned, but still cautiously hopeful.

The cautiously hopeful part began to waver as we heard more and more whispers about our new masters, and it crashed and burned soon after the calendar flipped over to 2005. While spending an off day with my family just after New Year’s, I got a call from the sports editor informing me that the new ownership took control that day and, within half an hour of entering the building, had dismissed all the top management and said layoffs were on the way. The axe fell swiftly in the ensuing weeks. The first round claimed one of our four full-time sports desk guys and one of our veteran sportswriters, both solid, hard-working journalists. For someone who had never gone through a layoff before, it was a traumatic experience. The night I found out about those layoffs is still the only time in my career, at any job, that I found myself so unable to concentrate on the work that I had to take a stroll to focus my thoughts long enough to get the paper out. After the initial shock and anger subsided somewhat, I began to feel the inkling to start my exploration of other fields of design ahead of schedule. I still loved what I did, and if you pointed me in the direction of a newspaper page, I’d unquestionably attack it with the same vigor I always had, but were the new masters deserving of such efforts?

Still, I didn’t leave right away. The day the sports editor informed us about the two casualties in the sports department from the first big round of layoffs, he finished with, “I’d understand if you guys have other opportunities that you want to pursue.” I told him at the end of that meeting, however, that he could count on me not going anywhere at least through April. I felt an obligation to stay at least through the Final Four, the busiest time of the year for the sports desk. It’d only be fair to the people I worked with. Besides, the paper had been good enough to give me an opportunity to come back to Durham from the wilderness only a half year earlier; I felt I owed them at least that much. While that year was the most turbulent and difficult of my time at The Herald-Sun, that basketball season was also when I felt like we, the sports desk, did some really good work. As an added bonus, North Carolina, my alma mater, was on its way to claiming the national championship and I fulfilled one of my goals when I set out on my newspaper design career — to do a UNC championship special section.

April came and went. With the euphoria of UNC’s championship getting ever more distant in the rear-view mirror, I started looking around for other jobs but was always hoping that the new ownership would show me that they cared as much as the former owners did about quality journalism. “Just give me a couple signs, and I’ll stay,” I thought. The signs we got, however, indicated quite the opposite. From big things like more layoffs to smaller things like increasing penny-pinching in the day-to-day operation, it was clear that this was a new day and that the rules were now very different. As can be expected, the mood in the newsroom was souring rapidly, and there was a chasm between the new management and the surviving staff that could not be closed. All the way until the day I left, I never uttered more than the usual necessary pleasantries to the new, Paxton-imported top editor. In a way, I felt like here I was, enjoying my own little slice of Eden when the serpent not only slithered in, but also kicked down the gate and poisoned the flowers.

Despite the initial layoffs, we had enough momentum left over from the culture that existed in the newsroom before the ownership change to carry us through that college basketball season as we had in years past. However, I sensed that the negative changes I was seeing were only the beginning, not the end, and I didn’t want to stick around for things to deteriorate further. Being a longtime 49ers fan, I was also mindful of the pitfall of overstaying one’s usefulness in the eyes of the company, loyalty or skills be damned. After all, if Joe Montana, Roger Craig, Ronnie Lott, and Jerry Rice could all be considered expendable by an organization known for its willingness to spend money on good players, what was I to a company that, as word had it on industry message boards, was ruthless in its pursuit of a profit margin much higher than the industry norm? There’s an old Chinese saying that came to my mind more than once during that period: “When the nest is broken, how can any egg be safe?”

As the months wore on, I became more and more convinced that I did not want to stay long. I had several non-journalism job interviews during that time, and when nothing materialized, I started an application for the masters program at the College of Design at N.C. State, an idea that I had been toying with for a while. I did get some e-mails from other newspapers expressing interest, and I even talked to the News & Observer, which had been busy scooping up some of the layoff casualties from The Herald-Sun to beef up its operations and the new Durham edition it was launching (I’m sure the massive changes at The Herald-Sun looked like a giant “C’mon into our turf” sign to its competitor on the other side of the Triangle). Part of me was a little tempted, but never seriously so. The N&O seemed like it had the potential to be a less-than-optimal fit for me as a designer, as Columbia had been, and I knew I’d always feel a bit weird about working for the paper I had viewed as the competition for years. Most importantly, when I considered the landscape of the newspaper industry, I saw that it was only a matter of time before the same tsunami that had just made landfall at The Herald-Sun swept into newsrooms everywhere, and I knew I didn’t want to have to relive that experience again and again. During my meeting with the N&O folks, one of them told me, alluding to what had happened in Durham, “We don’t lay people off.” My immediate, unspoken thought was, “Yeah, not yet.”

I was done with newspapers, I decided. It didn’t happen quite the way I had envisioned, but The Herald-Sun will, as I had suspected when I went back there, be the last newspaper I work for.

How Can We Miss You If You Don’t Really Leave?!

In December 2005, as I was busy taking the GRE and chasing down recommendation letters for my graduate school application, a chance to be the graphic designer at a nonprofit program at UNC came my way, and it seemed like such a good opportunity that I scrapped my grad-school plans and took the job instead. I put in my notice at The Herald-Sun — my tenure would end a day before the calendar year did — and submitted a four-page letter as part of my exit interview. It wasn’t a bridge-burning rant, but a calm listing of the reasons that made me leave, ending with the expression of my hope that the paper would someday return to being a place that values quality journalism. I wasn’t naive enough to think it would make a difference, but I wrote it all the same so I could feel at ease that I had said and done all that’s within my power, and that what happened next would be up to the other party. The HR lady conducting my exit interview scanned through the letter and said something to the effect of, “Yeah, we’ve certainly seen similar sentiments from other people who have left.” We then exchanged a what-can-you-do look.

When I walked out of the office after deadline shortly after midnight on Dec. 31, 2005, I knew I would be back. I had already agreed to help do the sports agate page on Saturday nights. In a way, my career at The Herald-Sun was coming full circle since this was what I had done at the start of my time there. While I’ve never been wealthy enough to say I cared nothing about the extra $150 to $200 a month from that arrangement, the money was always by far a secondary concern. The main reason I agreed to do it — offered to do it, in fact — was to help out my friends in the sports department because I knew they would have a tougher job than ever. So, for the last five-plus years — like most of the nine years before that — I’ve spent most Saturday nights in The Herald-Sun office. It has been a pretty decent part-time gig — relatively undemanding in both time, energy, and brain power. I basically worked when I was able and/or willing, and the people at the paper were always grateful for the help. The arrangement gave me a chance to catch up with my newspaper friends who now existed on a schedule opposite from mine, a place where I could curse like a sailor in the office and no one would bat and eyelash, and a way for me to keep a toe in the journalism waters without getting wet.

I’d be lying if I said I didn’t miss the newspaper game for a good while after I left. As I told Neil Amato — the man who got me started in the business in the first place and who, like me, has since left it — over lunch a while back, no job you take from here on out will ever give you the same thrill. It was like a siren song, always trying to pull me back in. Almost six years later, however, I’ve finally moved on from that phase of my life. I’ve had three jobs since I left newspapers, and I feel more distant, more detached from the industry now, in a good way. Life after journalism has been pretty good to me, though I do still have a special place in my heart for that decade I spent in newspapers.

Perhaps it’s part of moving on, but in the time since my departure, even my attitude toward the Paxton management at the paper has become a little bit more mellowed, due in part to my gaining a wider perspective on what’s been going on all around the industry and in part to becoming a bit wiser about life and the world in general after having lived outside of the newspaper realm for a while and seeing the same or even worse ills out there. Or maybe it’s just a case of me no longer being at the paper to suffer from the new management’s decisions. But I came to see — and I wasn’t necessarily able to see this at the time — that even if a different chain had bought the paper or even if the original owners had never sold it, chances are good that it still would have suffered similar cutbacks in the past five years. The economic changes in journalism are far too powerful to be stopped by trivial things like whether a news organization is family-owned or part of a chain or which chain it belonged to. I would still never invite the Paxton-imported editor out for a drink, but a few years after I left my full-time job at The Herald-Sun, on the rare occasion that he and I crossed paths in the newsroom on one of my Saturday nights in the office, I would at least make eye contact and could sometimes even flash a bit of a smile as we exchanged greetings. Gradually, I stopped seeing Paxton as the serpent in the garden, but rather just a particularly virulent manifestation of the slash-and-burn approach that was sweeping across the entire industry.

Watching Death from the Periphery

One of the negative side effects of my continuing association with the paper, however, is that I’ve gotten an up-close look at its steady deterioration over the past six years. The Herald-Sun’s circulation has plummeted to half of what it was at the time of the ownership change, while staff size, ambitions, and quality of work have all waned drastically. A couple times each year, it seems, I would go into the office and be informed that we had more “churn” and so-and-so had been laid off. And as more of the familiar faces left on their own accord, fewer and fewer of their empty positions were being filled. The turnover rate has also increased. Of course people have always come and gone at newspapers, but this was different. For comparison’s sake, I’d estimate that about two-thirds (and definitely at least half) of the people who were in The Herald-Sun sports department when I started there in 1997 were still there when I returned from Columbia in 2005. Now, of the 10 people in the department when I left in 2006, the sports editor is the only one remaining. A sports department that was 12 strong at the time of the ownership change has been slashed to a current headcount of three, a 75-percent reduction in six years. No amount of innovation or “working smarter” can offset that level of loss. Add to it the fact that the desk has also been laying out the Sanford Herald’s pages, and it was inevitable that the quality of work would start to slip. Fewer and fewer events were being covered, with less and less depth. Time for editing, or even just proofreading, became ever more precious and virtually disappeared on some nights. Instead of visual journalism or even just design, the desk’s job quickly slipped toward mere production — fill the pages with stories and let them go. Instead of complaining about not getting enough space for a special section, the concern was now about getting an abundance of space because there aren’t enough people to work on it. Whereas we once busted ass so we could do great work, people were now having to bust ass just to get the paper out.

Outside the paper, the world has moved on. While the initial layoffs right after the ownership change had incited outrage from the community, each ensuing layoff made increasingly fewer ripples, until almost no one outside the paper noticed anymore, even in the journalism world, since such news had become commonplace. And in the current economic crisis,  one newspaper’s financial woes just blended into the tableaux of bad news everywhere. Inside the paper, however, the deterioration was hard to miss. The newsroom was hemorrhaging talent and experience and increasingly not replenishing either. The fat had long been trimmed, and most of what has been happening the last few years has been more akin to deciding that you don’t need one of your limbs anymore and cutting off that limb and carving out the part of your brain that controls it, and then doing it to another limb a few months later, and then another, until what you are left with is a limbless, near-brain-dead trunk. The newsroom, once alive with activity, became increasingly empty, especially at night. One cubicle after another became derelicts, serving as eerie monuments to the people who once inhabited them, a few still sporting their last occupants’ nameplates and belongings, untouched since the day they left, which, in some cases, was several years ago. On the night shift, the desk is now often cloaked in a silent solitude interrupted only by the drone of the air conditioning and the occasional ring of the phone echoing in a newsroom that had never seemed so cavernous. There’s no other way to put it: For someone who knew what that newsroom had been like just a few years earlier, this was a demoralizing scene to walk into, even if I only walked in once a week. It reminds me of “North Country Blues,” the Bob Dylan song about the death of an ore-mining town that includes this verse:

So the mining gates locked
And the red iron rotted
And the room smelled heavy from drinking
Where the sad, silent song
Made the hour twice as long
As I waited for the sun to go sinking

I understand that the journalism landscape is changing and that newspapers and their staffs — and staff sizes — have to change with it. However, that need for change touches on the other part of this tragedy. The changes at The Herald-Sun would be easier to stomach if the company was doing more than just shedding staff. I can live with reducing staff if it was part of a bigger plan to turn around the paper’s fortunes. I’d be ok with reducing ambitions if you’re altering your approach so you can focus your limited resources to specialize in a few areas. I’d be ok with reducing or even eliminating the desk if it was part of re-inventing your workflow, and the role copy editing and design within that workflow, for the digital publishing age. I’d be ok with the newspaper no longer being a place where someone can or want to build a long career if it took steps to transform itself into a place that consistently attracted young talent by offering them good opportunities to practice the new journalism skills they’re learning in school and hone their craft before moving on to bigger and better things. Unfortunately, with few exceptions, I saw none of that, a missed opportunity made even more frustrating by the fact that other newspapers facing similar pressures are trying to innovate and, in some cases, finding some success.

Still I kept going in and helping out about once a week, increasingly more out of loyalty to friends than anything else. There have been times when, upon being begged to pull an extra shift on a week night — something I typically loathe to do as it means a short night’s rest before work the next morning — I felt tempted to say no, to let management reap what it had sowed. But each time, I relented, because I knew the people who would suffer for it would be my friends and colleagues, who would be asked to work an extra day, to drive back from an assignment to squeeze in an extra desk shift, or to adjust their vacation plans to make up for the widening gap between workload and body count. So I kept saying yes, again and again, for the sake of loyalty. But as more and more of my friends have departed — and as the people who replaced them have departed — I’ve found myself wondering on more than one occasion, “How long am I going to keep doing this? Until the last of my friends have left?”

The parent company was good enough to alleviate me of that potential dilemma two weeks ago by announcing that it was moving all of The Herald-Sun’s desk functions out of state. That includes the work I’ve been doing on Saturday nights (the sports editor and I have discussed throwing some correspondent work my way when or if my schedule allows it, which is uncertain since I’m about to start grad school). Of course, I’ve never really considered what I’ve doing at The Herald-Sun the last five-plus years employment, but rather more as an arrangement among friends, and I’m fortunate enough that I can withstand the loss of that income without too much trouble. I had been considering cutting back on my work there anyway once my masters program starts. I’m sure this change will produce its share of negative consequences, given the loss of local knowledge and the tender loving care that only an in-house design staff can give a paper, but for the people who will be left after this round of layoffs, this change could actually be somewhat of a blessing since they will no longer have to worry about spending part of their time filling in on desk and can instead focus on just reporting. However, there’s no denying that the news hurts. I am, after all, watching something that I had once poured so much of myself into — and something that has had a big influence on my life and career — first wither away steadily and now finally die.

My experience at The Herald-Sun over the last 13 years is hardly unique in the journalism world. What has happened at The Herald-Sun is a microcosm of the cost inherent in any revolution, a reminder of the inevitable casualties that get thrown overboard as journalism plows full-speed ahead into a future it cannot fully comprehend and which no one can truly predict. It can be a gory, bloody mess that we don’t necessarily want to pay too much attention to. The notions of creation and new opportunities, after all, are a lot more appealing than the ideas of destruction and shipwrecked careers. It’s always easier to look away and tell yourself, “These changes are hard but necessary,” or “The laid-off people will find other jobs.” The future will arrive; it always does. I’m sure it’ll offer its share of goods and bads, and it will never stop changing and moving. But having had a front-row seat from which to witness the destruction involved in bringing that future into being is perhaps why I’m a half step slower to hail the coming of a golden age, even if I do find much to like about the new possibilities in journalism.

Perhaps one day we’ll look back on the times when each news organization had its own in-house copy-editing and design desk and wonder in amazement how they could’ve ever operated in such a manner. But for me, having lived through those times and having been shaped by one of those desks, seeing the copy and design desk at The Herald-Sun pass from the stage leaves me with an undeniable sense of loss. It has nothing to do with whether the new era of journalism is better or worse. Instead, it’s like seeing your childhood home get bulldozed. They may be putting up a new mansion in its place, shinier and better in every way, but you know it’ll never quite be the same, and part of you will always miss the old house that once stood there, leaks, cracks, and all.

Update (Aug. 14)

At 12:05 a.m. today, with no special fanfare, the last page for The Herald-Sun produced in Durham was sent off to composing. Here is what’s most likely the last newspaper page I’ll design.

As I got ready to leave the office, I discovered on one of the desks in the sports department a copy — my copy — of The Newspaper Designer’s Handbook by Tim Harrower, the textbook that helped lay the foundation for many a newspaper designer. I got this book when I was in college, and I brought it into the office years ago as a teaching aid in mentoring the younger designers on the sports desk. On this night, this book seemed to belong to a previous lifetime.

Also, former Herald-Sun colleague Ginny Skalski also shared her experience at the paper. Read it here.

For those of you not familiar with the industry lingo, “slot” can mean different things at different newspapers, but the general idea is that you’re in charge of the desk (the origin of the term is succinctly explained here). In this particular case, it meant figuring out what goes where in the sports section and designing and editing the sports front in addition to other pages in the section. It’s not exactly rocket science once you know how to do it, but it is much more involved than the work I’ve been doing for the paper for the past six years. I used to enjoy slotting when I worked fulltime in newspapers because it meant I had control over the whole section, and because I always did enjoy the challenges and opportunities that came with designing a section front. And after not doing it for six years, I was actually kind of looking forward to getting my hands dirty again this past weekend.

Here are the pages I ended up doing that night:

I really liked the track and field pictures on one of the inside pages. It makes your job as a designer so much easier when your photographers get you great shots. I just wish I had more space to make the hurdle picture bigger. I wasn’t planning to get fancy schmancy with the centerpiece package on the sports front, but when the photos we thought we’d get from the Associated Press didn’t materialize, I said what the heck and just went for it. It was kind of fun to get back in the process of working with the stories, coming up with a headline, doing some typographical treatment, doing a cutout in Photoshop (I can’t remember the last time I did that for work), tracking down information for an accompanying graphic, and pulling everything together to form (hopefully) a cohesive package. This was what I loved most about my old job and what I miss most about it now. And of course, what’s a night on slot without some kind of boneheaded mistake to beat yourself up over the next morning? See the extra E on the end of the winner’s name in the Senior British Open headline on the golf page (and I even caught it on the proof and could’ve sworn I fixed it on the page).

I found that a lot of the things associated with slotting came back to me pretty quickly. However, whether it’s due to rust or the ravages of age, I found slotting this past weekend to be a lot more mentally demanding than I remembered. A Sunday night in July is typically the deadest time of the year for sports, and Sunday nights are easy on the sports desk anyway because most events, when there are some, end relatively early. A six-page section on a Sunday night was typically a breeze. On this particular night, though, it felt like my brain was churning nonstop from the moment I sat down at my desk around 4:30 p.m. to when I walked out of the building at about 12:30 a.m. I was feeling the adrenaline rush, which I liked, but also the mental fatigue about midway through the night. By the time I was driving home through empty streets at 12:30 a.m., I was thinking that I was glad I got a chance to do this again, but also glad that I don’t do this every day anymore.

Bora Zivkovic, the blog editor at Scientific American, posted a piece few days ago about the rise of forms of storytelling other than “the kind of short, inverted-pyramid article many in the professional media think of as “The Story”. Instead, Zivkovic envisions this “middle” form fading away in favor of either very short (tweet-length) reports or much lengthier narratives:

My bold prediction is that the length of a typical article will go in two directions: super-short, just the gist of the news, like a tweet; or super-long, an in-depth, detailed explainer or narrative. Long articles are doing very well these days, are popular and are quite capable of fetching money from their readers who are paying for such quality content quite willingly.

I especially agree with Zivkovic’s push for storytellers to make much greater use of the wide array of new forms at a storyteller’s disposal, such as tweets, links, and visualizations. However, there are a couple points in his piece I want to address in greater detail.

First, as some commenters on his post have pointed out, it is a false caricature to think that “for journalists, a story is a filed, fact-checked, 400-word inverted pyramid with the punch line in the title followed by the most important stuff.” Sure, that form was taught in journalism school, but so was feature writing — where we definitely did not write 400-word inverted pyramid stories — and now so is multimedia storytelling. Journalists write everything from three-sentence briefs to features, explainers or investigative reports that are thousands and sometimes tens of thousands of words long, and all of these are referred to, in the the industry lingo, as “stories.”

Second — and this is the point I want to focus on — the length of the story and, to a degree, the style in which it was written (e.g.: inverted pyramid vs. narrative), are not really the appropriate criteria by which to judge the effectiveness or usefulness of stories.

The beauty of the Internet and the new forms of storytelling is not that they give us the freedom to turn every piece into a lengthy narrative or a video or a tweet, but rather that they give us the flexibility to make a story exactly as long as it needs to be to serve its purpose and lets us pick and choose the optimal style and format for that particular story. A story’s value to its audience lies not in whether it’s 140 characters, 400 words, or 30,000 words, but in what the storyteller does within that length. Used correctly and effectively, any story length can inform and satisfy. Used poorly, any of these formats can make the audience loses interest and focus, and the story in turn loses its audience.

Zivkovic presented the example of how he used to “filter” a newspaper by selecting certain sections that he’s interested in, then skimming headlines before picking a story that he might be interested in reading. He concludes:

The point of this exercise is to realize that for the most part inverted pyramid can be reduced to just the headline. The ultimate inverted pyramid article is a single tweet.

And for those who want to know more than just that one sentence, a short inverted-pyramid article is not sufficient, so one has to look for a longer narrative explainer.

There is not much utility for the short article in the age of the Web, where limits of the paper medium do not apply, thus no article needs to always try to be both a part of River Of News and a part of News In Context – it does neither perfectly. And in the age of the Web, the two can be separated, yet linked by hypertext.

I’ll offer up my own example of filtering here by describing how I read Zivkovic’s post. I found his post via a link on Twitter. The tweet interested me and so I clicked on the link to read the story. When I got there, the headline at the top of the story kept my interest, so I read on. But then, the first five paragraphs had nothing to do with the subject of the tweet or the headline, which was what brought me to the story in the first place. I skimmed the first two sentences and quickly realized this to be the case, so I skipped past the first 300-some words of the 5,400-plus-word post.

After the real intro of the story, which sets up the rest of the narrative, I got to the section titled “What is a story?” and the first sentence I saw under that subhead started with “According to Wikipedia …” and immediately my attention began to waver because of how overused the “The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines X as …” device has become and how ineffective its usage tends to be in the first place. So I quickly skimmed through that paragraph and resumed actual reading with the paragraph below it. The ensuing section, “Narratives vs. Inverted Pyramid”, held my interest throughout.

And then I got to three consecutive sections that seemed to take a detour from the story up to that point — “Typology of science stories”, “Science in the story: hero or villain?”, and “Is a scientific paper a story?” While interesting, these three sections interrupted the train of thought and the line of argument that had been built in the previous parts of the post, and it wasn’t until almost 1,400 words later that we jumped back onto the narrative-vs.-inverted-pyramid train, with the section titled “How do readers know what to expect: inverted pyramid or narrative?” So for almost 1,400 words, I skimmed and my attention was starting to wane and I was beginning to wonder where this was all going because, after all, I have work to do and my job description doesn’t say anything about sitting here all day reading lengthy blog posts, as much as I wish it did (and yes, I do use Instapaper, but keep in mind there are also countless other stories out there vying for my attention and trying to keep me from coming back to this one).

The point of recounting how I read Zivkovic’s post isn’t to imply he’s a bad writer, to line-edit his post, or to suggest that all of his readers read the way I did. Instead, it’s meant to illustrate that filtering takes place not only while one chooses which story to read, but also on an ongoing basis while one is reading a story. The more someone has to skim and filter while reading a story, the harder one has to work to get to the central message of the story, the less effective and satisfying that story becomes, and the less likely the reader will continue reading. On the point of losing readers’ attention, Zivkovic wrote:

Unlike with Inverted Pyramid articles, in which the reader’s focus rapidly falls off after reading the headline, the narrative sustains focus (it may even rise as the reader progresses through the piece). The reader needs to concentrate better in order not to miss important clues and information. Thus, more information is retained. Thus, narrative form is more educational – readers can actually learn and retain new knowledge, not just get temporarily informed.

Here’s one place where I disagree with Zivkovic. Readers may need to concentrate more in order to not miss important clues and information in a narrative, but it doesn’t follow that they will. The latter only happens if the story, regardless of format, gives them a reason to stay engaged. What sustains focus isn’t so much style or length, but rather substance. A story loses readers not because it’s long or because it’s short, but because it runs out of interesting substance or becomes so much work to follow that it outweighs the quality of the substance being presented. A 400-word story that runs out of steam after the first three paragraphs is bound to lose readers, but so will a narrative that takes too long to get to the point or takes so many twists and turns that the readers give up after a while (ever hear someone tell a story in excruciating detail and think to yourself, “Get to the point already!”?). In fact, I’d argue that it’s more difficult to keep readers engaged throughout a narrative — especially in online reading — because by its very nature, a narrative takes longer to develop and covers more ground and more angles than an inverted-pyramid story, and thus has to contend with more potential distractions. It’s different when someone opens up a novel. That’s a situation where one not only expects the narrative form, but also a case where the narrative journey to the big reveal is as much a payoff as the reveal itself, if not more. In online reading, however, and especially in online news, where the overwhelming majority of pieces tend to be more informational, one is conditioned to expect a more direct path to the point of the piece — since the point of the piece often is the payoff — and generally has less time or tolerance for detours.

The Internet has removed the space constraints that previously prevented us from saying what needs to be said when more needs to be said. However, it cannot do anything about the pitfall at the other end of the spectrum — saying too much and getting in the way of what we are trying to say. A lengthy story where one ends up mentally filtering out big chunks of the story may not be as effective as a much shorter story that grips people’s attention throughout. The same idea applies no matter what length or style a story adopts. The 400-word inverted pyramid is definitely not the perfected universal form of storytelling, but neither is the 140-character tweet, the 5,000-word narrative, or the 90-second video. Each style serves a particular purpose better than others, and the ideal choice changes from story to story, depending on a myriad of factors, including the content, the intended audience, and the aim of the storyteller.

While the Internet has liberated storytellers to write as much as they want to, no less significant, especially in the realm of news, is the fact that it has also liberated them to write as little as they need to. I’ll be happy to see the extinction of the short stories where the writer strains to turn three sentences into 400 words because that’s the allotted space, but I will be just as happy to celebrate the continued existence of the short stories where someone writes 400 words because that is exactly what’s necessary to serve its purpose, no more, no less. I suspect Zivkovic and I probably agree on the idea of “the right length and style for the right story” (see the example of the runaway elephant story in his post). I think where we diverge is perhaps how often a short story is the appropriate choice. Whereas he seems to think the Web selects against short stories, I think people’s reading habits on the Web will help keep that format alive. After all, as Zivkovic points out in his post, reading a short, inverted-pyramid story is a less risky venture because it requires less investment of time and it’s easier to quit at any point (though I don’t think guilt has anything to do with it, as he suggests), whereas longer narratives require readers to be more selective in what they read because they are a much bigger investment.

Also, this is not necessarily an either-or scenario, since we’ve seen that people are segregating their reading into different times set aside for content of different lengths (think Instapaper). True, the short story does not do the “river of news” as effectively as tweets, nor does it do explainer as effectively as lengthy narratives (then again, neither of those two formats would effectively fill each other’s role either). However, those two are not the only important niches, and the short story can serve as an effective compromise of the two, balancing our need for more details than what’s conveyed in a headline and our need for pieces we can finish and get something out of without making a substantial time investment. Aside from being appropriate for the low-information stories that Zivkovic wrote about, the short story can also serve as the risk-free trial period for meatier subjects — a low-investment gateway to help you figure out if you are interested in a topic. In fact, Zivkovic entertained this possibility in the section of his post titled “A link is worth a thousand words” (and to serve as an effective gateway on the Web, a short story would indeed need to embrace linking as he describes). If you find you’re interested in the subject, you can move on to the linked narratives for total immersion. If not, you can quit without having lost too much time.

I think this gateway function will become an ever more important niche — important enough to keep the short, inverted-pyramid story a key part of people’s daily reading routine — because it helps people filter through the endless streams of available information vying for their eyeballs. In the age of the Web, it’s no longer the limits of the paper medium that we should worry about; it’s the limits of the human audience — their time, their interest, their attention span. With a little evolution, the short, inverted-pyramid story would still be an important and effective tool in that role.

Update (7/18)

See the discussion (below) I had with Zivkovic on Twitter after this post went up. He makes a good, and important, point that he was talking specifically about science stories, which often require much more context to truly make sense of and be useful to readers. After our discussion, it does seem that we pretty much agree on the key things and where we may disagree is only a matter of degrees. And also an important mea culpa: While writing my post, I had misread a sentence in Zivkovic’s post in a way that was definitely not a matter of degrees, as you’ll see in the Storify item below:

As I maneuvered the car around the hair-raising twists and turns of N.C. 194 between Valle Crucis and Banner Elk on the first afternoon of our North Carolina mountains vacation on Thursday, Courtney joked that I should start getting driving merit badges for successfully completing obstacle courses in England and now the North Carolina highlands. If that were the case, I would’ve added one more merit badge today — driving up Grandfather Mountain in the fog.

Today being the final day of our highland getaway, we packed everything into the car and bid farewell to our lovely vacation stay around mid-morning. After getting coffee, tea, and breakfast at a cute little nearby cafe that we’ve quickly come to adore, we started driving up to the top of Grandfather Mountain around 11 a.m., driving past the thinning traffic for the Grandfather Mountain Highland Games along the way. The entrance fee for the mountain was $15 per person, which struck me as pretty steep (it is just a mountain, after all), although it did come with an audio tour guide CD with a soundtrack straight out of “Back Porch Music.”

The price of admission, as it turned out, was nowhere near as steep as the drive up to the top. After a few expectedly curvy loops around the mountain, the bends in the road started approaching ridiculous levels in steepness and curvature. Every turn was a blind turn, and there were parts that were so steep that my Camry was revving hard just to make it up the hill. We were very glad that we took this car instead of our other one, a subcompact, which would have no doubt struggled on this ascent. Add to it all a thick layer of fog or cloud that enveloped the whole road, reducing visibility to only about 10 feet, and it was one of the more … umm … interesting drives I’ve had.

Nonetheless, we managed to make it up to the top of the mountain, where the fog continued to engulf everything. After we parked, we could only faintly make out the visitors center building on the opposite side of the road. The center contained an elevator that took us three floors up to the top of the mountain, where we crossed the Mile High Swinging Bridge. Even though I had been to Grandfather Mountain before, this was a different bridge than the one I remembered, as it was rebuilt in 1999. The 228-foot suspension bridge, named for the fact that it is actually more than a mile above sea level, spans an 80-foot chasm. On this day, the abyss below was mostly concealed by the heavy fog, yet the fog also added a sense of mystery to the scene and made you feel like you were even higher up since it was as if you were walking amongst the clouds.

After crossing the bridge, we were briefly diverted and entertained by the sight of a tiny, chubby mouse that was scurrying back and forth among the feet of a circle of visitors and trying to find its way back into the shrubbery, which it eventually did. We then pushed on, traversing a stretch of rocks to reach a ledge sitting on top of a cliff. This was, as a sign informed us, as far as we would go. The view from up here was breathtaking, even with the veil of fog limiting our field of vision. After snapping some pictures, we made our way back across the bridge and started back down the mountain, stopping at a couple more lookout points along the way.

We then made an extended stop at the nature museum and animal habitats at about the midway point of the mountain. I don’t remember these being here when I visited as a kid. I really liked the animal habitats, which were basically a mini-zoo with bears, otters, cougars, eagles, and deer, all housed in large, picturesque backdrops. The bears exhibit was especially impressive, as the four bears lounged around in an expansive exhibit set against a breathtaking backdrop of the peaks.

We got to the animal exhibits at the right time, as the staff was just about to give the animals their enrichment activities, which basically meant making them work a little bit for their food. Of course, not all the animals cooperated. One of the cougars watched a bundle of ground turkey wrapped in paper towels drop and roll right into a little crevice in front of him, yet made no attempt to retrieve it, acting as if he didn’t know where it went and eventually just giving up and flopping down next to a tree way off in the distance. The bears, meanwhile, did exactly what the enrichment activity was designed to keep them from doing all day — sitting in front of the exhibit wall and begging for food. Initially, the keeper threw handfuls of food into their little pond, hoping to motivate them to get off their butts and go in the water to get them. However, only one of the bears actually did that, while the others showed no inclination to follow suit. Eventually, the keeper caved in and tossed each of them a few treats while they sat on their behinds and caught the food in their mouths. It must be a good life being a kept bear on the mountain.

Combine a track meet, a state fair, and a music festival, and throw in a dash of Scottish flair, and you have … the Grandfather Mountain Highland Games, where we spent spent day 3 of our North Carolina mountains getaway.

Our day began with a topsy-turvy ride on an old school bus with faded yellow paint. Since the Games were being held on the mountain, there was no public parking at the site and we had to park in nearby Linville and take the shuttle, aka said school bus, to the event along a steep, winding, gravel-covered back road up the mountain. This was definitely the road less traveled, since few in their right minds would want to drive on it in their car, much less a giant bus.

Upon getting off the bus, we made our way through a path lined on both sides by tents and campers until we were greeted with two giant flags — American and Scottish  – at the front entrance to the Games. The event could not have asked for a more picturesque setting, as the mountain and sky provided a beautiful backdrop for the bustling scene in front of us. The event was centered around the track on which most of the competition was taking place. The heavy athletics — such as caber toss and hammer toss — were taking place on the infield, while the track itself was used for running events. Stationed all along the inside of the track were bagpipers and Scottish country dancers who performed virtually nonstop. From the moment we got off the bus, we were enveloped in bagpipe music that never ceased, blaring on until it blended into the tapestry of background sounds.

The spectators were kept behind the fence ringing the track, along which a tent city had formed, with each tent proudly sporting a banner announcing the Scottish clan that particular tent belonged to. Among those not fortunate enough to have a tent, the savvy ones had arrived early with their folding chairs, which now piled a couple rows deep along the fence and occasionally interspersed among spectators who sat on the ground. The metal bleachers in the back were generally full, though there was never really any trouble finding a seat as people came and went throughout.

We walked around a bit when we first arrived, taking in some music at one of several stages set up in the fields away from the track. We also checked out some of the stands behind the spectators, including a stand where you could look up your family clan. However, that tent proved to be a place of reckoning for Courtney, who was always told that one of her grandparents was Scottish but was miffed to find that his family name was missing from the registries at the tent and to be told that “maybe he went to Scotland from England.” We then stopped for a lunch of haggis and chips (the first time I had haggis, which I thought was delicious with all its livery goodness). After that, we found ourselves a spot on one of the bleachers and waited for the action to really pick up.

The competition schedule for the day was jam-packed, but we mainly came to see big guys toss weighty objects around, and we were not disappointed. We had arrived just as the Scottish wrestling competition was taking place. After about an hour of tossing each other around, the wrestlers made way for the heavyweights — big burly guys in kilts who were preparing to hurl hammers, boulders, weights attached to chains, and giant telephone poles.

The big guys started off with the hammer toss, in which they swung a giant sledge hammer 360 degrees above their head several times while spinning and then let fly, at which point the hammer always seemed to have an affinity to seek out the guys marking the spot where it landed, as those guys seemed to be always scrambling away from the hammer while it sailed through the air and then scrambling toward it after it landed.

After the hammer toss, the guys moved on to boulder throw. It was funny to watch the competitors line up in two rows during warmup, face each other, and hurl a big boulder back and forth like baseball players playing catch before games, except of course no one was going to try to catch one of these throws.

The highlight of the day was no doubt the caber toss, which involved guys picking up, running with, and then trying their darndest to not only throw, but also try to make bounce end-to-end a giant lumber pole the length of a telephone pole. Somewhat disappointingly, none of the competitors were able to make the caber go end-to-end, though a couple did come sort of close. Nonetheless, they received enthusiastic cheers from the crowd, which was obviously as jacked up as we were to see big guys toss big objects while wearing kilts.

We awoke on day 2 of our highland vacation in the western North Carolina mountains to find that a local black cat had made itself quite at home on the hood of our car. It was just chillin’ on the car for a whole hour or so while we got ready to go out and explore the area around Linville.

Before the exploring, we stopped at Pappy’s Barbecue and Country Breakfast for brunch. When the food came, I found that I had severely underestimated the size of the item listed as Pappy’s Big Ol’ Breakfast. It was so much food that it came on two full-sized dinner plates: pancakes, bacon, sausage, hash brown, and pretty much anything you might think of with breakfast.

The giant brunch turned out to be a good thing, though, as we got in quite a workout while hiking to our next destination, Linville Falls. There are a couple trails leading to various vantage points around the falls, and we chose the “moderate” route, which, as it turned out, was more than enough exercise for us. The shady, rhododendron-lined trail meandered along the uneven, undulating landscape and took us to several overlooks with spectacular views of the falls and the surrounding mountains. It was a relatively cool and breezy day, though we did work up a sweat when the humidity kicked up with a brief shower midway through the hike. Aside from the beautiful scenery, I also enjoyed the falls because they gave me an opportunity to play around with my camera, slowing the shutter speed way down to get pictures of the blurry water like in so many beautiful water pictures I’ve seen.

After we descended from the last lookout point at the falls, we decided to do some driving along the Blue Ridge Parkway. Instead of just wandering aimlessly, Courtney picked a destination — Emerald Village, a mining museum and tour located at a tiny community along the parkway called Little Switzerland. The mine, as it turned out, was a pretty podunk attraction. The so-called museum was just a room filled with old mining equipment. Then you go out the backdoor to the mine, which was just a tall, shallow cave bordering a pond and littered with more old mining equipment. Even at just $7 a person, this “tour” felt like a ripoff. When we were driving away, we saw a guy pulling over at the side of the road overlooking the cave and snapping a picture. That’s what we should’ve done instead.

The drive along the Blue Ridge Parkway, though, more than made up for the disappointing mine tour. The sparsely traveled road wound up and down the mountainside, offering up plenty of awespiring views of peak after tree-covered peak, all with vapors wafting upward toward the blue sky. It added up to a very relaxing afternoon drive.

We’re spending a few days near Grandfather Mountain in North Carolina this week. Our main reason for coming here is the Highland Games, but we’re not attending until Saturday, so we’re spending the rest of our time here exploring the area.

After arriving at our lovely vacation rental in Foscoe around mid-afternoon, we backtracked into Boone and spent a couple hours checking out the shops along King Street. Since Boone is home to Appalachian State University, it was no surprise that the area had a very college-town feel. Being amateur potters, we stopped into Doe Ridge Pottery and checked out its studio, where we picked up some tips on painting over glaze with wax and were impressed with the giant glaze buckets that were so big that they needed to be stirred with oars.

After we were done with King Street, we decided to drive to Banner Elk for dinner. That’s when the adventure really started. Our GPS pointed us onto a quiet backroad that went through the beautiful, secluded community of Valle Crucis. This little stretch of rural paradise offered up some wonderful scenery, with vast tracts of pasture and farm land backed by lush green peaks and crisp blue skies dotted with white clouds. The whole scene reminded me of some the views we had when we were driving through England last year.

Then the road really started to remind us of England. Somewhere along the way, the “highway” we were on — N.C. 194 — turned into a bellicosely curvy beast, with ascending hairpin sporting cliffs on one side and big dropoffs on the other. The pleasant sightseeing drive soon devolved into a white-knuckle affair. We had to slow down to well below 30 mph in order to safely maneuver around the bends and twists without clipping rocks, swerving into oncoming traffic, or falling off the mountain. It went on like this for about 40 minutes, and we were very, very glad when the road unwound itself back into a straightaway as it fed into Banner Elk.

Later, after we had returned to our vacation stay (via a much straighter, less hair-raising route), we googled NC 194 and came across this description of the stretch we traveled, which pretty much said it all (check the link for some nice pictures of this part of the road)

NC 194 in its three miles of climb to Matney has more hazards thanPebble Beach . The pavement surface is rutted, patched, negative cambered, and unmarked in many places. The edge of the road has drop-offs, deteriorating asphalt, 18 inch tall posts with connecting chain link fence, asphalt berms, exagerated crown and even some barb wire fencing. There is one double switch-back that is unbelievably tight and steep. Want to see the action here? Rent the Shook Home called Sweet Retreat right in the corner. And you might meet some truck and trailer traffic with just inches to squeak by. NC 194 makes the Dragon look like a safety course.

But that wasn’t our last adventure on the roads. After dinner, we returned to our vacation home and was about to settle in for the night when we realized that we didn’t have any soap. So we drove back out onto N.C. 105 looking for a place to pick up some soap. Alas, there was basically nothing around here except a few restaurants and a bunch of home-remodeling businesses, and everything except the restaurants closed around 6 p.m. (another reminder of our England trip). To add to the fun, the road was almost pitch black since we’re in the middle of nowhere and there were no lights along the road since all the businesses were closed. Even with headlights, I couldn’t see much more than about 20 or 30 feet in front of me. After about 20 minutes, we decided we could do without soap for one night.

To end the post on an upbeat note, I should tell you a little about the place we’re staying in. It’s another one of those independent vacation rental listings on VRBO.com and homeaway.com that we’ve become so fond of discovering on our travels. This place sits near the top of a peak rising up on the side of N.C. 105 in the tiny community of Foscoe. To reach it, you must drive up a narrow, meandering mountain path that rises sharply.

Sporting three bedrooms, the house is kind of big for just the two of us, but it actually was cheaper to rent this big place than most of the other smaller properties we had looked at. The thing I really love about this house are the little touches and accents: coffee tables with slate tile tops, a half log for a fireplace mantle, rafters running across the ceilings, oil-rubbed bronze fixtures throughout the house (it’s amazing how much more attention you pay to the finish of the fixtures when you’re right in the middle of buying a house). It feels very cozy inside, and there is both an outside deck and an enclosed patio on the back of the house, looking out on to a steep hill covered with trees. With the elevation and the lush trees surrounding the house, we feel like we’re far removed from civilization (such as it is in Foscoe) even though we’re basically right off of a major artery in the region.