UGA great Conrad Fink, dead at 80

Conrad Fink, who in his life was a U.S. Marine, foreign correspondent, vice president of the Associated Press, newspaperman, University of Georgia professor, husband and father, died Sunday, according to numerous media outlets and the Grady College of Journalism.

He was something else, as his Facebook page today makes clear.

Just to give you an idea: Go to the 1:02 mark.



Update: A much longer version of his obituary.

"Opinions were mixed on Saturday ..."

The media coverage of Saturday's Pro Combat uniform debut provides several examples of one of my least favorite newspaper traditions: The public reaction story.

Basically, this story assignment translates to "go out, talk to like 5 people, and write what the public thinks about something." At the heart of this practice seems to be a belief that the reader needs to know what a handful of random people think, generally on a subject they know little about.

And despite a number of newspaper headlines telling you how much fans hate the Pro Combat uniforms, I can assure you that's not true. Fans have mixed opinions on these uniforms. People always have mixed opinions on things.

Hell, people can't even come to a consensus on what color the new helmets are. UGA and Nike say they're silver. The Banner-Herald says they're gray. The Macon Telegraph somehow determined that they're white.

There are fans who hate these uniforms. There are fans who like these uniforms. There are fans in the middle. You don't have any idea what the actual split is.

Me, I like them, for one game. I think they'd look better with black pants, though.

Update: The Telegraph changed its helmet description, going with "silver and red."

Bleacher Report: Also successful publishing

"Little by little the look of the country changes because of the men we admire."
- Homer Bannon, Hud

Let me start with this: I did indeed paint with too broad a brush last week in writing about the Idaho iteration of SB Nation. It was unintentional. There are fine writers at SB Nation, just as I'm sure there are fine writers at Bleacher Reporter.

An entity has to be judged by what it does, not by semantics. Blogs can produce great stuff. Newspapers can produce crap. But you shouldn't publish things that look to all the world like a regular article then hide behind, "well that's just a fan perspective," when it contains numerous inaccuracies.

Which brings me to The Bleacher Report. If you think they actually sent someone to all 50 of these stadiums, or did anything more scientific than read other rankings and dither over how to produce the most hits through this list of the loudest college venues, you're kidding yourself.

It's click bait, like so many things you see today from traditional and non-traditional publishers. It's a slideshow with a bunch of pictures. Facts don't come into it.

There's a place for that type of discussion. But does it deserve 43,000 views and counting?

What I'm saying is: Facts are important. Research is important. Actually going to see things in person is important. Please reward that and stay away from publishers who prove, repeatedly, that they don't value these things.

Otherwise, you will get what you pay for. Because one thing's for sure: The media is going to give you what you want, particularly when what you want is so much cheaper than traditional journalism.

Update: In writing this I have asked myself, "am I a hypocrite?" After all, this blog generally contains little original reporting. Then again, it specifically advertises its stupidity. And like other blogs I enjoy reading, it would be hard to mistake for a legitimate news organization. I'm not saying blogging is bad. I'm saying be clear and honest with readers about what you are.

Urban Meyer and Erin Andrews: Is that allowed?

Within the media explosion that followed Urban Meyer's resignation I was struck by comments ESPN's Erin Andrews apparently made to a sports columnist in Pennsylvania:

During her "peephole incident" last year in which a man drilled out a lock in her hotel room door and inserted a tiny camera to photograph her, Andrews confided in the Meyer family and leaned on them to get through the ordeal. ...

"He can deal with haters," (Andrews said). "There were times last year when that whole thing happened to me when I called him up crying. And he was the one giving me advice about people like that. He did the same thing for Tim [Tebow]. He gave me some quotes to remember about how to handle that sort of thing. So, I really don't think it's that. The only people in his life that he wanted to please that I know of are Shelly and his three kids.

“But at this point, I haven't talked to Coach or Shelly and I really don't know anything. This came as a complete surprise to me and people I know in the inner circle are shocked."

Not that I look to Andrews for unbiased coverage of the University of Florida, but are you really allowed to do that as an ESPN college football reporter? To call a coach at a major college program, cry, and lean on him for support and advice?

What sort of a relationship is that for a reporter to have with a source?

Anonymity does not engender truth

There isn't a single sentence in this story that contains new news and doesn't also contain the phrase "according to the source" or "the source said."

I'm not saying it's not true. I'm saying there are good reasons, as a reporter or news organization, not to print accusations based solely on the word of one anonymous person.

And Thayer Evans, who wrote the story, is not without bias:

So listen closely, Heisman voters: Do not vote for Newton.

Update: So.Much(anonymously sourced but hard to doubt).Smoke.

Who holds the NCAA accountable?

The NCAA told the University of Georgia on July 21 that it had opened an inquiry involving A.J. Green. Have I just missed all the newspaper articles pushing the NCAA to publicly explain why it takes more than 47 days to complete that inquiry?

I realize they probably won't comment, but if UGA beat reporters are going to ask Coach Richt every day whether he's got new information, doesn't it make sense to call the NCAA every day, too?

Jeff Schultz: 100 percent right

Quite possibly the best piece I've read on the state of Georgia football and the upcoming season.

The Orlando Sentinel sports department has near zero credibility

This is kind of part two of this train of thought. It was Mike Bianchi's column, arguing that Georgia is the most overrated program in college football history, that set me off. But that's not even close to the Orlando Sentinel's biggest blow against its own credibility.

The Orlando Sentinel is just trolling for hits. You know it. I know it. Stop clicking on their sports stories.

When Mike Bianchi writes "Without this fluke Lindsay Scott play, Georgia would be South Carolina," of course that's not true. The very exercise of asking "what if" about the past speaks to an outfit's intentions.

And where does Bianchi's argument that "Georgia fans have way too high an opinion of their program" take us? Is complacency a newly praised American virtue? Is know your place his actual advice?

"Oh, we're the 12th winningest program in college football history. Let's definitely not try to be No. 1."

That's loser logic, and I doubt Bianchi even buys it himself. Saying things you know people will hate has been a newspaper columnist trick for ages. The Internet just offers new proof that it works.

But it's the sign of a man that you should not trust. Take Andrew Breitbart, the unrepentant rumor monger who told purposeful lies of omission in the now well-known case of Shirley Sherrod.

"I realized I liked being hated more than I liked being liked," Breitbart has said.

What a dangerous attitude, particularly in writers not particularly concerned with the truth.

I see the same idea at work in the Orlando Sentinel sports department. Surely they don't believe their own college football poll. The one that ranks Army, Northwestern, Connecticut, Middle Tennessee and Idaho all at least 20 spots higher than Georgia?

Add that poll to Bianchi's click-hunting columns. Then look to the Sentinel's main sports page. As of this moment it features at least six promos for photo galleries of cheerleaders or dance teams. It's got two promos for lingerie football tryout photos, and those tryouts were held May 1.

The Sentinel's online sports strategy is apparent: Pander to the baser instincts and generate controversy, whether the facts support it or not. Angry readers and girls in their underwear mean hits.

This is a formula for short term success, no doubt about it. But, long term, it wipes out your credibility.

I think that day has come for the Orlando Sentinel. When it comes to college football, the paper no longer has any credibility for me. But, if I need a place to find famous mug shots or guess which celebrity these abs belong to, I'll know where to turn.

Note: Before publishing this I emailed Bianchi and the Sentinel's sports editor for comment. I haven't heard back. I'm emailing them a link to this post, and will publish a response if I receive one.

Coach Richt and the hot seat: It's lazy journalism

I've been a professional newspaper reporter for 12 years. And I've just had enough of this "hot seat" crap.

Mark Bradley made the obvious point yesterday: Coach Richt is on the hot seat in this and any year, if he tanks.

That's like saying a chef's probably going to be fired if he poisons all the customers. Reminding a major-program football coach that he needs to win is akin to suggesting that he breath.

Even the columnists have started to turn on this ridiculous meme. Some don't even call it the hot seat anymore. It's the "imaginary hot seat," a phrase now popping up in Orlando Sentinel columnist Mike Bianchi's work. It was also used at Coach Richt's press conference at SEC Media Days.

When you're typing that, shouldn't there be a moment when you think "Maybe I should write about things I don't think are imaginary?"

And who's doing this imagining? I don't hear fans or boosters or UGA officials talking about the hot seat. I hear columnists and talk show hosts talking about it.

I'll issue a challenge now, to any sports writer or talk show host or blogger who's written about Coach Richt and the hot seat: Produce for me one Georgia official or significant booster who questions whether Mark Richt is the right man to lead this program.

Produce for me the numerous Georgia fans you've interviewed before writing about the mood of the Georgia fan base. I think it'd be better for you if they weren't a bunch of mouth breathing fools, but, for starters, just give me the name of one actual human being you've talked to.

Otherwise, you're writing in the echo chamber, equating repetition with the truth.

Update: Dean Legge did an excellent job yesterday of drawing distinctions between what Georgia beat reporters think about Coach Richt's job security and what those further removed say:

Perception: Mark Richt is on the hot seat according to some outside observers
Reality: Mark Richt is not on the hot seat according to anyone who covers the Dawgs on a day-to-day basis

Perception: Damon Evans’ departure hurts Mark Richt
Reality: The opposite

Benjamin Franklin

According to this audiobook biography of Benjamin Franklin, Franklin edited the words "self evident" into the Declaration of Indepence.

Thomas Jefferson initially wrote that "We hold these truths to be sacred and undeniable."

A digital copy of Jefferson's original draft, with Franklin's edits, is available from the Library of Congress:


Available in a more readable format here.

I recommend the book, though it's long. As I near the end, I've actually started hearing my own version of the narrator's impression of Benjamin Franklin chiding me in my head, giving me personalized advice about how to live my life. It's a little weird.



As a newspaperman, Franklin was pretty much a gossip and a liar. But he did invent the lightning rod, which he never patented.

Just an example: Free subscriptions

You have been directed to my personal blog, and I hope to test a theory here about charging for online newspaper content. Ignore the date above. This post was written Oct. 1, 2010.




Click here for your free subscription.

Thank you for clicking on Lucid Idiocy's "free subscription" button. Obviously, these blogs are already free. But I'm trying to gauge readers' willingness to click on a free offer for an already free product. I know that sounds strange.

When I was in college some friends of mine worked circulation sales for The Atlanta Journal and Constitution. And they would offer pretty girls free tours of downtown Athens with every subscription.

So you don't always have to have something to sell it, especially when all you want is a name and email address.

My question is whether online newspapers can sign folks up for free subscriptions that don't kick in until the day the newspaper starts charging for online content.

Then as the paper gradually, or not so gradually, charges for extras (I would love to see newspapers charge for commenting), some could be added to an early subscriber's account free of charge. Or, better yet, for a very small fee, and a credit card number.

The goal is to get people thinking that they'll probably have to pay for online news one day, so they might as well start signing up now. Contests, coupons, prizes, these are effective ways to collect information, and they should be employed. But offering people something they already have? If it works, it's golden.

I'm going to keep an eye on how much traffic this post, which is linked only to the ads, receives. If it's low, throw my theory out. Also, I'm not going to collect email addresses, much less credit card numbers, here, so it won't be a full gauge of the strategy.

Still, I expect that enough people will click on a "free subscriptions" link on a couple of Google blogs to bolster my belief that a similar strategy would net interactive readers for a good newspaper. If you think differently, or agree, or have another idea, please say so in the comments.

But increasing interactivity is a route toward charging for content.

For those seeking an actual free subscription to either of my blogs, please consider my twitter feed. Thank you for reading.

This post is part of a brief I've written about online newspaper charging strategies.

Ninja baby gets drunk, wears dress, steals presents

This story is datelined Chattanooga:

The child, Hayden Wright, was found around 1:45 am Tuesday, wandering the streets of his neighborhood. In a police reports, officers said he was wearing a little girl's dress and drinking a beer. The police report says the child had to be taken to the hospital to be treated for alcohol consumption. ...

(His mother April) Wright says she woke up that night at 1:45 am and panicked when she found Hayden was gone. She says she put safety devices on all the doors so her kids couldn't get out, but Hayden was able to break the safety device off the doorknob and get outside.

Once out, Wright says her four year old followed his father's footsteps and was found on Blue Spruce Road, drinking.

"He runs away trying to find his father," she said. "He wants to get in trouble so he can go to jail because that's where his daddy is."

There's video on the link, with an in-house interview of the mother.

"It may be one of the strangest stories we've ever reported to you," the anchor says.

May? It starts like a wild joke, and ends up punching you in the stomach.

Hale: Why has Georgia struggled?

It is the editorial position of this blog that David Hale is the best Bulldog beat writer, and it's not because we both work for The Macon Telegraph. The editorial board voted, and it was unanimous.

His piece today is just chock full of honesty:

ATHENS — There are nearly two-dozen first- or second-year players seeing significant action for Georgia this season, but none of them threw a ball up for grabs to avoid a sack Saturday against Tennessee. That was senior quarterback Joe Cox, who threw a killer second-half interception.

None of them fielded a punt at their own 1-yard line Saturday. That was senior Prince Miller.

It gets worse from there, partly because Bryan Evans is discussed.

...

As for Hale's coverage plan the rest of the season, it's a good one:

I don't think I need to take the time to put into perspective just how far Georgia has or has not fallen with respect to its chief rivals. You'll see plenty of columnists, like Bradley, do that this week and in the weeks to come. It's not my place.

What I am interested in are these questions: Why has Georgia struggled, what are the players going to do about it and what changes will the coaches be making -- or more to the point, should they be making -- in the weeks to come.

No one is getting fired tomorrow. Georgia can't go sign a few free agents to help the defense. There's not much point in debating any of that until there is actually something to be debated.

Walter Cronkite

Walter Cronkite, quite possibly the greatest T.V. newsman of all time, and certainly the most famous, has died.

I don´t have much to add, except that it was important enough for me to seek out an internet connection on a tropical island.

CBS News´ coverage, including photo archives.

His obituary in The New York Times

Walter Leland Cronkite Jr. was born on Nov. 4, 1916, in St. Joseph, Mo., the son of Walter Leland Cronkite Sr., a dentist, and the former Helen Lena Fritsche. His ancestors had settled in New Amsterdam, the Dutch colony that became New York. As a boy, Walter peddled magazines door to door and hawked newspapers. As a teenager, after the family had moved to Houston, he got a job with The Houston Post as a copy boy and cub reporter. At the same time, he had a paper route delivering The Post to his neighbors.

“As far as I know, there were no other journalists delivering the morning paper with their own compositions inside,” he wrote in his autobiography.

When he was 16, Mr. Cronkite went with friends to Chicago for the 1933 World’s Fair. He volunteered to help demonstrate an experimental version of television.

“I could honestly say to all of my colleagues, ‘I was in television long before you were,’ ” he said in an interview with CBS News in 1996.

Sanford Stadium from the air, aboard the Georgia

While returning home from this story on a military flight, one of our photographers took this shot of Sanford Stadium:


Image: Jason Vorhees, The Telegraph.

The military plane Jason and reporter Joe Kovac flew on? An Army C-23 named Georgia, shown below at the Athens airport.


Image: Joe Kovac.

Keep your hat on

Kirk Vonnegut used to tell just the punchline of an old joke. "Keep your hat on," it went. "We could end up miles from here."

I have just realized tonight that, not only do newspaper people not know where journalism is heading in the internet age, no one does.

And that is a level playing field.

Thanks to Paul Westerdawg for linking to this today, out of the blue, on the 9th anniversary of my coming to work at The Macon Telegraph:

That is what real revolutions are like. The old stuff gets broken faster than the new stuff is put in its place. ...

When someone demands to know how we are going to replace newspapers, they are really demanding to be told that we are not living through a revolution. They are demanding to be told that old systems won’t break before new systems are in place. They are demanding to be told that ancient social bargains aren’t in peril, that core institutions will be spared, that new methods of spreading information will improve previous practice rather than upending it. They are demanding to be lied to. ...

I don’t know. Nobody knows. We’re collectively living through 1500, when it’s easier to see what’s broken than what will replace it. The internet turns 40 this fall. Access by the general public is less than half that age. Web use, as a normal part of life for a majority of the developed world, is less than half that age. We just got here. Even the revolutionaries can’t predict what will happen.

Awesome: Spiderman saves autistic child

This may be the greatest spot news story of all time. From the French Press:

A Thai fireman turned superhero when he dressed up as comic-book character Spider-Man to coax a frightened eight-year-old from a balcony. ...

"I told him Spider-Man is here to rescue you, no monsters are going to attack you and I told him to walk slowly towards me as running could be dangerous," Mr Somchai told local television.

The Russian Bear is from Canada, and other wrestling tales

My girlfriend is a reporter in Raleigh. And that's how I found myself in a converted basketball gym Saturday night in Clayton, North Carolina, watching wrestling matches with about 400 people and talking to a couple of professional wrestling icons.

For more than 30 years, Ivan Koloff was a scary guy that the crowds shouted down. He and his tag team partners wore the evil red of the Soviet Union.

But "The Russian Bear" is from Canada. His real name is James Perras. The Bear is a 60-something-year-old man living in North Carolina. He's more than a full head shorter than me and walks with one of the worst hitches I've ever seen.

He has an embracing smile. But there must be nights when his body is a knot of pain.

I met him Saturday night. And I heard other names I vaguely remembered from when I was a kid and my grandfather loved Saturday night wrestling. I saw faces that had to be worn out wrestlers I never recognized.

Even for the famous ones, the crowds had gotten smaller.

Jake "The Snake" Roberts was there. He looked the way you'd imagine. Large. The stringy, curly hair. The big, bushy mustache now gray. He had a middle-aged woman with him selling DVDs and pictures that were clearly printed from a home computer.

He was balding on the top. But, then again, he was always balding on the top. He was friendly, like an uncle. He smiled and had eight different markers with him for autographs. His T-shirt had a picture of a snake with a big, open, purple mouth on the front.

A line formed quickly when Roberts arrived. The first picture he took with a guy, he stood up and put his arm around him. And with a smile under that big bushy mustache he said, "Somebody's touching my but."

The woman to his side, the one accounting for the money, had glasses and a mullet. A newspaper reporter who had written a story about Jake years ago brought a copy of the article.

"I didn't know he'd make it back then," the reporter said. "You never know which ones are going to make it. You never know which ones want to make it."

The woman smiled. "They all want to," she said. "Let me just clear that up for you. They all want to make it."

Roberts was charming. He tried to guess kids names and asked them questions. He was cool. He should have been. It was $10 to have your picture taken with him.

The woman said he actually hates snakes. He has bite marks up and down his arms. His famous snake, Damien? There were more than 40 of them, she said, always bought or rented by the wrestling federation.

The crowd was something to behold. There was this massive fat guy. He must have weighed 450 pounds. All he did was sit in a chair against the wall and call people over to say hello and shake his hand. He seemed to know half the people there. I never saw him stand up in nearly 3 hours.

There was a guy there in Pitsburgh Steelers jersey. I noticed because it was a Kendrell Bell jersey. It looked like the guy's right hip was half-displaced the way he walked, and his right shoulder dipped far below his left. He had two young blond kids with him and a massive beer gut. He got to shake The Russian Bear's hand.

One of the women taking money at the door (the sign said $10 for adults, but they were taking $5) said her grandson is a local wrestler named "Sudden Impact" Louis Moore. It's his dream to go pro, she said.

Moore challenged The Bear to a match during one of the intermissions. The Bear had a better idea. He said Jake The Snake would handle this upstart.

"No," said Moore. "Anyone but that."

It was theater. A guy with a big black afro came out wearing a ripped American flag like a cape. He wore American flag shorts and American flag boots that said "Creed" on them. Like Apollo in Rocky IV, he came to the ring to James Brown's "Living in America."

Creed and his partner put on a high-flying act. It was legitimately impressive. A little different, I figured, than what "The Snake" had in store later on. Hell, he's in his 50s now.

We left before Roberts made it to the ring. My girlfriend had a deadline. Two no-name young guys were wrestling when we left. As I walked to the car, I could still hear the rumbling on the mat, and the roar of the crowd inside, loud through the gym's brown brick wall.















"The Russian Bear" Ivan Koloff.














Jake "The Snake" Roberts.










I didn't get his name. His partner was an old Indian guy people called "The Chief."



UPDATE: My uncle, whose father was a huge wrestling fan, just sent this note: "Don't you know you should consult your uncle before putting a picture of a wrestler in your blog and referring to him as unknown? Hell, everybody that's anybody knows The Barbarian."


You can buy Jake "The Snake" Roberts merchandise here. I don't think it's his own site, but Ivan "The Russian Bear" Koloff photos and DVDs are available here.

It seems like I've met an inordinate number of professional wrestlers over the years. This was a piece I did on Lex Luger.

Chewing glass in '09, Jermaine Phillips, and the death of various radio stars

There comes a moment in every off season when you realize that you're ready for the next season.

Mine was Friday about 6 p.m. And all I could think about was the Alabama game, and how I felt after it. And that reminded me of the Florida game, and how I felt during the middle of that thing.

And all those people who think the months after a disappointing season are the time to lessen your support, you can leave.

Because in 2009 the Bulldogs chew glass.
----
Jermaine Phillips is now a free agent. And on Sunday the Falcons announced that they won't renew Lawyer Malloy's contract.
----
With last week's resigning of Mike Leach, Texas Tech proved at least one thing: They're not as dumb as Auburn.
----
Georgia Tech record holder and multiple felon Kelly Campbell has signed with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

What will the Edmonton Eskimos do without his services? Or various drug cartels, for that matter.
----
The song "Video Killed the Radio Star" takes on a lot deeper meaning when you work for a dying industry.


... and now I understand the problems you can see.

Sources: Bobby Knight is already new UGA coach

The Bobby Knight story has legs. Ridiculous legs, but legs nonetheless.

USA Today, or at least one of its blogs, is even in on the Bobby Knight to Georgia? (To be read like "I'm Ron Burgundy?") story.

And Ugasports.com is quoting an anonymous source, who appears to be quoting another anonymous source, about Gov. Sonny Perdue getting brought into this situation:

According to a source within the UGA athletic department speaking on condition of anonymity, Knight contacted a former SEC athletic director to ask how best to express interest in the Georgia job.

Knight was then told to call Georgia governor Sonny Perdue, who the source said is friends with, and occasionally goes fishing with, the Hall of Fame coach.

"(Knight) was told to have (Perdue) call Dr. (Michael) Adams and it would get done," the source said.

My actual job is covering state politics for The Macon Telegraph. I am also a moron. So I actually contacted Gov. Perdue's press office to confirm or deny this story.

They declined to comment. I believe they also laughed at me.

But I'm persistent. And I was able to pry some information from a source close to the governor, who I must quote anonymously, of course.

Apparently Perdue and Knight go way back, and used to fish the idyllic streams of Houston County, where Gov. Perdue grew up.

In fact, my source said, "Knight's son, Pat, was actually named after an invisible friend that played alongside the two."