North of the Border

The long awaited update

2010-11-01T18:52:00.002-04:00

It's been a long time since I've last inked my pen, stretched out the mind and typed in the url for this blog, I know. So much has happened: Juan Williams was fired; that whacky senatorial candidate in Delaware did something headline-worthy somewhere at sometime; Halloween; Randy Moss was cut (again); Halloween.

So much fodder, so little time to come up with a compelling, unique perspective.

Instead I attended this weekend's Colbert/Stewart rally on the National Mall. While the jury is apparently still out on whether it was a political/nonpolitical/apolitical/anti-media event, my experience was that of a fairly nondenominational Saturday afternoon outing.

Because everybody was there: The Dems, the Republicans, the Tea Party, the anti-Tea Party, the anti-anti-Tea Party, the legalized marijuana folks (they brought demos with them, by the smell of things), liberals, conservatives, greens and libertarians. And everybody else. Apparently, there's an anti-Hitler Mustache as a Political Symbol movement afoot as well.

The largest denomination of folks at the rally were clearly in the "I like to Make Funny Signs" camp. They turned out in huge numbers. The same remains to be seen of tomorrow's election, where many of them will likely sleep late, scramble to work and have that nagging feeling of forgetfulness as they fight the evening commute.

Given my experience with rallies (none to speak of) Saturday was refreshingly vaudevillian, rather unserious and with the core message of: Why can't we all just get along and talk with indoor voices.

In fact, the only people I disagreed with were the folks who decided the rally would be a great opportunity for a Saturday afternoon picnic, blankets, pillows and all, and then got upset when the other 200,000 of us trampled on their "camp site" trying to get a better view.

Virginia welcomes you

2010-09-14T20:04:00.003-04:00

It's official.

I took the plunge (read: I spent an hour or so at the DMV in Alexandria) and got my car registered. New license plates, an inspection sticker and several hundred dollars later, I am officially a Virginian.

Let that roll off of your tongue. Virginian.

Bill Pullman, a fellow UMass graduate (unless you read the fine print on those honorary diplomas, which I don't. Hurts the brain, it does), even starred in a movie called The Virginian.

In honor of my new state of residence - the second commonwealth I've resided in my scant few years - I've arranged some fun facts about Virginia:

1) Virginia was originally part of the Virgin Islands (British, not American) that broke away during the last ice age.

2) There are some mountains here, also trees. And squirrels. I saw a squirrel yesterday. Virginia is a squirrel-friendly habitat.

3) It's a commonwealth, which is derived from the word "Commonweal." Colonial-types often attached commonweals to their carts, forming Conestoga wagons.

4) Local government is seated at the county level, unless you live in Alexandria, which is an independent city. But if you live in the part of Alexandria that isn't Alexandria City, then you live in Fairfax County. If you understood any of that, you've spent time in Northern Virginia

5) NOVA is what those of us in the know call "Northern Virginia." See, abbreviations mean you're hip. Like saying "Noho" instead of Northampton.

6) Richmond is the state capital, or the capital of the Confederate States of America, depending who you ask.

7) Contrary to popular belief, state officials do not hand out firearms, liquor and fireworks at the border. That's only New Hampshire.

8) Virginia was originally settled by tobacco.

9) This state was built on an indian burial ground, ayup. They say there's a lot of history on that road. Sometimes dead is better.

10) The state motto is "Sic Semper Tyrannus" or "A pox on T-Rex."

11) The Commonwealth was named in honor of Sir Richard Branson, its original discoverer.

Road rash

2010-09-03T20:15:00.000-04:00

Nobody knows how to drive in Northern Virginia. And I mean that in the nicest possible way.

Actually, they do know how to drive, in the sense that you get behind the wheel and the right peddle is "go" and the left peddle is "not go" (also "un-go" or "de-go," depending). They just don't know how to drive with each other.

Imagine a playground full of small children. Imagine all of these small children playing their own game with their own sets of rules. You've got kickball over here, dodgeball in that corner, basketball in the middle, maybe throw in a couple of jump ropes and a good game of high stakes poker. That's driving in Virginia.

I blame it on the clash of cultures.

New England is a great case study. Folks in Massachusetts drive one way, in New Hampshire they do it another. Everybody hates Rhode Island drivers; they're the worst.

But at least they understand the rules of the game (in Massachusetts the rules are: every man for himself; it's full contact sport; and "you don't talk about the driving rules in Massachusetts.") So when you're buzzing through Boston you know certain things. Like stopping for a stop sign is really rolling through it unless there is a cop, in which case you probably stop. Most of the time. You also expect the person taking a left after a red light to shoot out first, so as not to disrupt the flow of traffic.

Down here, you get a mix of that, toss in some obnoxious New York City motoring shenanigans and a touch of the Mass Turnpike on a busy day. But you've also got the southern hospitality factor.

The southern hospitality factor means slowing down for yellow light, so as to obey the letter of the law. Southern hospitality means deciding who will go first at a four-way stop needs negotiations reaching the Camp David Accords level. Southern hospitality means the speed limit is 25, dagnabbit, and that's the way it is, y'all understand?

On the roads, these people don't play nice.

While their interaction is amusing to watch from afar, when you're actually in the midst of it, these people will drive you to white-knuckle driving. Now I understand why people here don't stray out onto the streets if there's a snowstorm. Hell, I wouldn't either. Why risk it?

I don't know, when approaching a changing light, whether I can hit the gas or the brakes. I don't know whether I'll be able to roll through a stop sign or have someone cut me off. Frankly, it's unsettling.

And I don't think I'm the only one left unsettled. How else can you explain the Metro raising its rates again? $2 and change is a decent price for living a few minutes longer.

Draft night

2010-08-28T20:22:00.003-04:00

It's that time of the year. Children are heading back to school, college kids are pretending classes don't start for another week, the leaves are changing (in New England, not so much in Northern Virginina where the temperature is dropping regularly below 80 degrees for the first time since April) and preseason football is on television: It's draft night.

I'm phoning it in this year, a marked departure from the last six years. My draft blog diary, a la Bill Simmons is below:

8:22 We're debating adding an extra tight end to the roster. Not sure how this is going to work on the field as there are only so many players allowed on the pitch at any one time. Someone needs to call the commissioner. Also, is pitch a soccer-only term? Discuss.

8:23 Debating whether to keep three or four players from each preceding season. Four sort of defeats the purpose of having a draft, in my book. But that's me. The downside of a keeper league is seeing all the best players taken off the table before the draft even starts. That's depressing. Exponentially so if you've invested in any fantasy football magazines.

8:31 We're still discussing changes in the rules. The league pushes for the extra Tight End. I disagree, arguing that if we're going to add another position it ought to be an extra running-back. I am told that, since I'm not there, I have no vote. The league laughs heartily over this.

8:32 Negotiations over draft picks begin. Shea reminds the group that this should have begun weeks ago. The league again laughs heartily.

8:38 We learn that Cooney doesn't have the money to throw in our annual pot this year, because he doesn't have any cash on him. This is after they've ordered pizza. The league is not pleased.

8:41 It's hard to figure out who is keeping who [in terms of players] when everyone keeps describing each other in not very pleasant terms using various ethnic slurs at the same time.

8:43 Maybe the quote of the night: "If we have to search for who you're keeping [this season] than you already know you have problems."

8:44 Should have bought more beer. On my end.

8:45 Cooney keeps Larry Fitzgerald (WR-Arizona). Too bad that team doesn't have a quarterback. Oh they do? But he's not good, right?

8:47 The league is discussing money options. Apparently, too much pizza has been purchased with too few dollars.

8:49 Some sort of disagreement has broken out over whether we should be using highlighters or pens to cross off our picks. Also, what color highlighters, if we were to use highlighters, would determine what. I'm using pencil. I'm like that.

8:53 Here come the war stories of legend, various players getting injured, arrested or killed right after drafts/trades. I have the ultimate trump card: Tom Brady, 2008. That was a season of rotating QB's on my fantasy team. I finished second to last.

8:58 Someone retains Peyton Manning. The first use of a gay slur follows shortly.

9:00 The chant "Bull-Shit" is less enjoyable when heard over a cell phone.

9:09 I guess Reggie Wayne is taken. I must have missed that in my static-filled world. The league laughs heartily.

9:12 I elect to grab Joseph Addai. Not sure how I feel about this pick, but he's dependable, though he does get platooned with Brown a lot. He's solid and I'd rather not see him racking up points on another team. I can count on him for the goal-line runs. I plan on picking another 'back as soon as possible.

9:14 For my second pick, Pierre Garcon. I know, another Colt. But he saw the ball often last year, the go-to-guy after Reggie Wayne. And Peyton likes to throw, damn him, he likes to throw.

9:27 It's amazing how quickly the list of wide receivers dwindles. Not the physical list, but the list of elite wide-outs. After Round 2 I am officially hoping for some luck on the field and especially the waiver line.

9:29 Over the phone drafts are OK. But I miss the personal contact. Getting to insult some one's mother in person is so much more fun. Also, their mental capacity.

9:33 Wes Welker has been drafted. I am informed he's played every preseason game. Egg on my face. Actually, it's mostly in his knee (although I wish him the best and hopes he kicks butt this season. It's the Pat's fan in me). But seriously, is he playing before November? Matthew Berry says no and when has the Talented Mr. Roto ever been wrong?

9:34 And the first Defense has been picked. It's the Jets! J-E-T-S JETS JETS JETS!

9:38 I'm kinda curious, will anyone draft Edelman? I vote no.

9:39 My first phone call ends as the cellular phone in New England is dying. Just plugged mine into the wall to ensure it doesn't happen on this end. How sad is this?

9:46 PBR, a delicious cheap beer? Or the most delicious cheap beer? You decide.

9:47 LT has been picked. Much sooner than I had expected. I really thought I'd pick him up around midnight, when everyone else was delirious with pizza and PBR.

9:49 We've hit that point in the evening. First pick to get floated as a possible trade for another low pick. Excellent. Let the bargain-deals begin.

9:54 "Remember last year, you were hammered," - could be a contender for top quote of the night.

10:02 My phone is plugged into the wall, feeding off of the electrical current for life. I've just taken Donald Driver. Not sure how I feel about him, but Rodgers is expected to do well this year. And if he doesn't, Driver's only a third stringer.

10:06 I'll say it again, but this is much for fun in person. Although, it's nice to see a league last long enough - and stay serious enough - to warrant phone-in draft picks. When this thing started, we were recruiting girlfriends to fill out a 6-team league. I try to keep that in mind as I fork over my $10 and use up all of my Verizon minutes.

10:10 "Wait, he's hurt? Fuck." Quote of the night, hands down. Thank you Cooney.

10:15 Interestingly, the last few rounds last the longest. Not quite the opposite of professional football, but still entertaining. You'd think you'd spend all of your time debating the first few picks, but everyone knows what the score is. The point is to grab as many of the elite caliber guys as possible in the first 3-4 rounds. Once you get out into the boonies, it's just fun.

10:22 I feel like fantasy football, especially the drafts, is extremely silly.

10:32 It's hard to pay attention when all you can here is people shouting over each other. Not that I'm complaining. Also, we're definitely in the weeds.

10:40 It's official, we're calling off random players and you can hear the sound of people shuffling through the lists to take off names.

10:48 Several awkward good-byes later (The League is very concerned about when I will be returning home again. Mostly to contribute my $10 to the winners pot) I am done. Good night.

Full Count

2010-07-31T15:08:00.006-04:00

Bill Simmons had a great piece on the lackluster interest in the 2010 Boston Red Sox and Major League Baseball in general the other day. Let me just quote a bit for you below that made particular sense to me:

We're feeling the effects of two solid decades of World Series games ending well after the bedtime of any prospective young fan. And don't kids have dozens more choices in 2010 than they did in 1975? Back in 1975, I went outside, whipped a baseball off the wall, dove for it and pretended I was Freddie Lynn. Do kids do that now? Isn't it more likely that they're watching Nick Jr., playing video games, watching DVDs, messing around with the computer ... how could baseball possibly mean as much to a young kid now?

Baseball has become a bore.

I ought to preface that by saying there are few things better in life than watching a ball game on a warm June or July night. The field glows white under the stadium lights and the sound of the bat cracking against the ball echoes into the night. The smell of hot dogs and brautwurst permeates the humid summer air. Children shout scream to pump up the scoreboard's "Noise-o-meter." Old men complain about the pitching. And lack of pinch hitting. And base running.

I love going to the ball park. I absolutely love it. There's nothing better than a live baseball game and I don't care what anyone says about HD this or 3D that. Sitting in a cramped seat, clutching a steadily warming beer and a steaming sausage is about as good as it gets. I find the experience even more relaxing when I don't care about either team. That sounds strange, but then you have to remember the life-or-death struggle every game of every season represented for the Red Sox until October 2004.

So I've had a good run this summer. I saw the Sox play in Baltimore and sure, they lost, but it was the first chance I've had to see Beckett pitch live. I went to a Nationals game in Washington and on this previous Friday night attended my first Brockton Rox game with the family in several years.

And that's what baseball is all about. The game, the plays and the experience. Which is why it's sad to see so many stories of disgust emerging about the *new* Fenway experience, where Yawkey Way is more like an amusement park than a street, the stands are filled because going to a Red Sox game is more of a social outing (look at my Facebook pics! I went to the game!) then appreciating the sport.

I haven't been to Fenway (for a game) since I was in college and in all honesty I haven't missed it much. It's not that I've lost interest in baseball, it's that I've lost interest in the showbiz attitude Major League Baseball has adopted.

Because there's still nothing better than a good ball game with a steaming sausage and a cold beer in hand. If you can still find it for less than $100.

2012: I hope reality is cooler than the movie

2010-07-16T23:22:00.003-04:00

2012 may be some distance in the future yet, but the date had an early arrival in my girlfriend's OnDemand cable box.

Now, it's not fair play to critique a disaster movie, let alone an end-of-the-world flick, at least not on a point by point basis. Are there plot holes? Are there parts of the film that don't add up or make any sort of sense? Well, duh. That's par for course.

But how does it stack up to other films? That's the first question that popped into my head during the final moments of the happy, sunshine-filled conclusion of 2012. I'd say you could file this movie in with disaster films genre, cross-referencing it with the end-of-the-world crowd. For the sake of argument, I'm going to stack 2012 up only against it's end-of-the-world brethren, if only because it was so heavily advertised as such.

My list of end-of-the-world disaster films currently looks like this:

Armageddon

...

Reign of Fire

Dawn of the Dead (remake... I'm no critic, so leave me alone)

...

Everything else (including, but not limited to, Deep Impact (damn you Elijah Wood), The Day After Tomorrow (damn you Jake Gillen... Gilen... Jilenhall?... whatever), 28 Days Later, 28 Weeks Later (worse than its predecessor), Legion (although this wasn't bad), and I Am Legend (did not live up to expectations).

(Note: I am not including in this list dozens of science fiction films that deal with the aftermath of this devastation, because those don't count. World-ending disaster must be a primary plot point, not a jumping point for some deeper discussion of humanity. God forbid we use disaster flicks to move beyond stereotypes and actually explore the human condition under duress)

So where does 2012 rank? Well, not good. But not bad either. The Mayan-justifying apocalyptic movie falls well below Armageddon for failing to promote American exceptionalism (aside from a few acts of heroic stoicism on the part of the president, the Americans in the film are self-serving jerks. Oddly, those friendly red Chinese are our saviors in the end), lack of decent monster, overly optimistic view of humanity, less than realistic ending (I realize this is an end-of-the-world film, but if you're an apocalyptic movie fan, you know what is and what isn't a realistic ending).

John Cusack, however, is an unlikely hero. I'll give whomever produced the flick points for casting him in the role of yet another lovable loser trying to stitch his life back together as the Earth disintegrates.

Also, I enjoyed the film managed to combine many, if not all, elements of disaster films into one, 2+ hour showing.

We had a rain of hellfire, a la Armageddon/The Mummy(remake), we had tsunamis as in Deep Impact, we had fluctuating weather patterns from The Day After Tomorrow and something to do with the Earth's molten core like that other movie where they had to drill to the Earth's core and set off a nuclear warhead or something stupid and anyway South Park made fun of it.

To top it off, we even had a cruise ship rolling over after being struck amid ship by a rogue wave. Can you say Poseidon Adventure?

So yeah, I won't recommend it. I probably won't watch it again. And that's the true mark of a great, cheesy film. That you'll watch it again. How many times have I seen Armageddon? Too many to count. Reign of Fire? The same.

But maybe that says more about me than the film.

The LeBronacle

2010-07-09T15:38:00.004-04:00

Let me preface this by saying I really don't follow basketball.

We grew up watching three sports in my household and though my recollection could be a bit hazy, the Bruins always came first. I remember my mother and father putting us to bed at the end of the second period, because that was bedtime. We never found out how the Bruins fared until the next morning. I don't know why my parents tortured my brother and I in this manner.

So Bruins first (I still remember sifting through piles of hockey trading cards to find a Cam Neely or Ray Bourque), Red Sox second (another sport where we would have to wait until the next morning to learn the final score - it was never good) and the Patriots a distant third (They sucked until '97; who could blame us?).

I got into it in '08 when the Celtics went on a tear and again this year. Call me a bandwagoner, a fair-weather fan, call me what you will, because I really don't care.

But this LBJ thing is just too much fun. I tuned in last night for the spectacle, because that's what it was, a reality television show with ratings probably higher than the final episode of MASH. I won't bother offering any commentary, other than to say never before have I seen professional sports drift so close to the theatrics of the WWF of my childhood, but I've instead put together a compendium of "hot sports takes" from around the country:

"Does James want a title because he thinks he deserves one? Or does he want to actually, you know, win it? His behavior suggests the former more than the latter. James seems to regard a championship as a birthright, as if it is something to be given to him rather than to be earned. And the more time that passes, the more you cannot help but wonder if James is just another damaged, spoiled, and self-absorbed brat who cannot understand the simplest rules in life." - Tony Massarotti, The Boston Globe.

"I blame the people around him. I blame the lack of a father figure in his life. I blame us for feeding his narcissism to the point that he referred to himself in the third person five times in 45 minutes. I blame local and national writers (including myself) for apparently not doing a good enough job explaining to athletes like LeBron what sports mean to us, and how it IS a marriage, for better and worse, and that we're much more attached to these players and teams than they realize. I blame David Stern for not throwing his body in front of that show. I blame everyone." - Bill Simmons, ESPN.com

"As you now know, our former hero, who grew up in the very region that he deserted this evening, is no longer a Cleveland Cavalier.

This was announced with a several day, narcissistic, self-promotional build-up culminating with a national TV special of his "decision" unlike anything ever "witnessed" in the history of sports and probably the history of entertainment.

Clearly, this is bitterly disappointing to all of us." - Dan Gilbert, majority owner, Cleveland Cavaliers.

"James made a more grandiose show of free agency than anyone ever has, but he didn’t create the culture of entitlement. He’s just the latest to exploit it, and Joyce was right about one thing: all would have been forgiven had he just told his interviewer, Jim Gray, he was staying in Cleveland, basking in his own stardust.

Maybe that was the main selling point in Miami. When the playoff dust finally settles, it won’t all come down on him." - Harvey Araton, New York Times.

"Now - even though he took less money to go to Miami - he will be seen as a mercenary of sorts. And with the way the Heat have been loaded like a team of ringers trying to swoop in and take a tournament, the club might want to add black hats to their uniforms. They will be the biggest curiosity in sport when they begin play this fall, but they will also surpass the Celtics [team stats] and Lakers as the NBA teams that fans most want to see defeated." - Steve Bulpett, Boston Herald.

"In LeBron, Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh, the Heat becomes more than a basketball team. It's South Beach meets Cirque du Soleil meets Hollywood meets YouTube meets ESPN meets the '27 Yankees.  Now, a Tuesday game against Sacramento becomes a show. Any game against the Los Angeles Lakers becomes a national event. June is reserved for the NBA Finals. They're basketball's Beatles. LeBeatles." - Dave Hyde, The Baltimore Sun.

"When a major American municipality's identity is that wrapped up in one special athlete, what does it say about Cleveland's self-worth? LeBron made that city millions, made an NBA outpost matter again, and Gilbert has the temerity to call the guy who filled his building "callous" and "disloyal."

You're lucky you had him for as long as you did. He just outgrew you, Cleveland. He fell in love with somebody else. Deal with it.

That doesn't make how LeBron handled everything right, but it makes him look bigger than the place he left." - Mike Wise, The Washington Post.

The District, by way of Stamford, Connecticut

2010-07-06T12:57:00.004-04:00

A few notes on traveling.

When in doubt, book a flight. Meg and I flew home for the weekend on last minute tickets from Southwest. Outside of international air travel - where I've always had little reason to complain - I can't stand most airline carriers. There are too many horror stories of flights delayed and then cancelled, less than helpful airline staff and seemingly ridiculous layovers. Southwest is a safe bet, in my book.

But on the way back to the District, we were obliged to drive elderly relatives to New York (or, more accurately, nearby Connecticut) where we caught an AmTrak bound for points further south. It was my first long distance train trip since I was a school child. I have no prejudice against taking a train, but the fact that it's more expensive and less convenient than air travel makes me certain than except for commuters around major metropolitan centers rail-travel will never take off in this country.

I have a few critiques for the good folks over at AmTrak, if they're reading.

First, in my imagination, dining cars should be akin to a moving sandwich store. Small, comfortable, with good food for weary travelers, a full bar with draft beer available, and comfortable seats.

The shipping box and trash-filled dining car left a lot to the imagination. As did the surly employee behind the counter serving frozen salads (which should never be frozen) and microwavable fare about a step below Hot Pockets. The only thing worse than airline food, I've learned, is AmTrak food.

Secondly, air-conditioning sounds like a luxurious frivolity, but when you've got a packed train heading south during a heat wave, it becomes necessary. Please, for the comfort of your passengers (your paying customers!) make fixing a busted AC unit a priority and don't pass it off as a minor inconvenience.

Perhaps most fun were our fellow passengers. There is an unspoken concept of travel etiquette. Please don't lie down and pretend to nap at every stop so as to deter anyone from, God forbid, taking the seat next to yours. The one young lady I watched doing this learned the hard way about karma. She was forced to surrender her section of seating after it became clear the train was full. To a beefy mother and her screaming child. Delicious irony (for those keeping score at home, delicious irony also weighs negatively on the karma scale).

Those are just quick, off the cuff impressions of travel by rail. I actually enjoyed rolling into every station along the way from Stamford, CT to Washington, D.C. Strolling into the center of Union Station and standing beneath it's massive ceiling and rows of overlooking statues after a long trip is certainly an amazing experience. I'll do it again.

Just not anytime soon.

The black star swallows the stars and stripes

2010-06-27T13:47:00.003-04:00

It was a tough day for U.S. soccer fans on Saturday. Despite the masses cheering from home, or at least the BlackFinn tavern on I Street in downtown Washington, D.C., Donovan and Dempsey and team weren't able to move beyond the first round of sudden death football. Defeat came again at the hands of Ghana, the pride of Africa, and the undisputed home team for the remainder of their run in the 2010 World Cup.

This was the scene at BlackFinn roughly an hour and a half before game time. Standing room only, people. I don't know who was more exhausted at the end of that 90 minute + overtime match, the U.S. team or those of us watching from Washington:

And here's the scene at the start of play:

Symbolically, perhaps, the taps ran dry about halftime. Everybody lost, really.

Well, check back for updates in another four years, I guess.

Football frenzy

2010-06-26T10:21:00.002-04:00

If you haven't caught one of the U.S. team's games in a watering hole packed with dozens of soccer fans, you just haven't truly experienced the fun of the World Cup yet.

I was lucky enough to snag a bar seat at BlackFinn on I street for the USA v. Slovenia game a little over a week ago. At 9:30 a.m. (Eastern Time). To the left of me a businessman dressed nattily in a suit and tie downed a Bloody Mary. To the right, decked out in complete US Soccer Team gear two guys drank Guinness after Guinness.

I expected to see a lot of fans crowd into the bar, after all, this is the World Cup and expectations are high for the US team among soccer aficionados. But what I didn't expect was this terrific bonding moment among complete strangers. From the guy wearing red-white-blue face paint, wrapped in an American flag, to the well-dressed office manager, everyone roared to life with each goal, cheering and hugging at the 2-2 score, and screaming at the television in unison when the referees took away a go-ahead goal near the end of the match.

A New Englander, I can only compare it to a Red Sox playoff game or a Patriot's Super Bowl rolled into one. How else can you explain the jubilation over a tie in a sport the majority of us, I'm sure, don't really understand?

So I encourage all of you, my loyal, but silent readers, to check out the scene at 2:30 today. It'll be worth it, I promise:

What in the vevuzela?

2010-06-14T21:35:00.004-04:00

With 32 national teams competing head-to-head to secure official bragging rights as the world's soccer powerhouse for the next four years, a trial of fire where the weak need not apply, a feat of feet, a battle for the ball, a tangle of the toes, an attack of the ankles, what are we all talking about?

Is it the 1-1 US-England draw after St. George's chosen one Rob Green let in the goal heard 'round the world? Is it Italy's struggle to remain at the top of international soccer despite fielding a national team with the median age equivalent to that of the Shroud of Turin? How about Germany's Australian blitzkrieg?

No. We're all talking about the vevuzela.

If you've been following the World Cup I'm sure you've heard (of) them during last weekend's opening matches. The beehive sound that drowns out all but the game's broadcasting team has been drawing international fire for the distraction it causes viewers at home and players on the pitch.

While FIFA will not ban the noisemakers, which I rate as more obnoxious than Pittsburgh's terrible towels, but less so than boom sticks, that hasn't mollified an irate television audience.

But that's neither here nor there. The real question is not whether the noisy horns have a place in international soccer, but rather, where can I get one?

So join me as I scour the Web and the District to find a vevuzela in time for Friday's US match.

P.S. any tips would be much appreciated as a cursory Google search has yet to turn up results. Unless I'd like to purchase them in bulk. Which I don't. One vevuzela can go a long way.

Video killed the newspaper?

2010-06-10T13:44:00.003-04:00

The greatest thing about the Internet is how seamlessly it combines all of our known mediums into one central repository. At the click of a mouse (to use the relatively old cliche) you can find stories, photos, videos and audio of whatever it is on your mind. Curiousity is cured with a Google or Wikipedia search - cats need no longer fear their age old nemesis.

But how to best combine these elements is an ongoing discussion. No where is this more in the forefront than in the news business. Struggling newspapers are trying to balance the practice of giving away information for free while making money. Television stations augment nightly news coverage with the written word and still photography. Radio programs are delving into podcasts, Web cams and video to shore up the audio-only platform.

Who has the best combination right now? ESPN.com.

Where else can you go for sports news served up anyway you want it? If you want video coverage of the World Cup you'll find it there along with podcasts from columnists like Bill Simmons and in-depth articles from some of the best sportswriters in the business. NPR is taking a similar, if less glitzy, approach.

Now, some newspapers are also succeeding - and hopefully making money - with the online platform. From what I've heard and read, both The Washington Post and New York Times have figured out profitable approaches. The Wall Street Journal, with much of it's highly specialized content tucked behind a pay wall, is similarly doing reportedly well.

But my focus today is on video and how to use it appropriately, particularly for newspapers. It's a topic I discussed frequently in the past with Carl Perreault, director of UnionLeader.com in New Hampshire. While video clips are all well and good, unless they capture the scene of an accident or fire or crime, they don't draw much traffic, according to Carl.

By that logic this video should be going viral, if it hasn't already:

So what videos don't work? Not having the page impression numbers in front of me it's hard to say, so I'll have to go from personal experience.

Rarely do I watch news videos online unless it's a breaking news situation. Packaged news, the sort of stuff you see on the nightly news, doesn't stand alone well, not in my opinion. Unless it takes a different angle on the story - the written story - like a sidebar, I don't generally click "play." All too often it glosses over the event without providing enough good footage to make up for what you're already missing in hard news.

Need an example? Tune into the nightly news sometimes. What you'll find, outside of fires/live crimes/natural disasters, is a lot of stock video (i.e. "here's the street where so and so got in an life-threatening car accident yesterday evening" or "here's the front of Town Hall where so and so took this stand.")

It's easier to skim an article than it is to sit through a two minute video. It's also less obtrusive if you're in a public setting or the office, where watching talking heads break down an issue could become a distraction to others.

Factor in the time and effort to make a good video, shooting film rather than taking notes or photos, editing and posting and it is not always in the best interest of the journalist to focus on filming rather than writing.

Here's another good example of using video to augment a local story at NYtimes.com.

And here's an inventive take on combining a photo slideshow and podcast in a video at UnionLeader.com. I'd be interested to see how much traffic this video receives:

Let me know your thoughts, if you have any, in the comments section below.

That once-every-four-years international non-Olympic sports thingy

2010-06-08T08:32:00.007-04:00

Back in college I tried really hard to get into soccer.

I swear, I did.

I spent a couple of days surfing the Web, figuring out the teams, deciding who I would pledge my undying love to (It was a draw between Michael Ballack's Chelsea FC and Liverpool's much cooler logo), learning the rules, rosters, etc.

It didn't take.

And it's not because I don't like the concept of liking soccer. In fact, I'm in love with the concept of following soccer. Who wouldn't want to be an aficianado of "the beautiful" game? On paper it sounds great, very sophisticated even. Like having a taste for 12-year-old single malt highland scotch and Cuban cigars.

But in reality it means scheduling your day around games (or "matches") taking place across the Atlantic, following multiple leagues and ever-changing rosters with little to no emotional connection to what's going on. For me, watching a soccer match was like trying to get excited about a San Jose - Anaheim NHL game. And for me, sports is all about the emotional connection.

But once every four years I have the opportunity to watch and actually enjoy soccer and that time is quickly approaching. The only thing not to like about the World Cup is how it seems to divide sports fans - American sports fans - into three camps: the self-righteous footballers, indignant soccer haters and everybody else.

Of course this could just be overhyped by the ol' sports media, but just wait we'll be inundated with columns, articles, podcasts discussing why Americans can't/don't/won't embrace the world's most popular sport. Here's ESPN's Jeff MacGregor:

Hanging there somewhere between the comic and the tragic, the right and the wrong, the left and the right, the truth and the lie, is our American relationship to soccer. Well, to football. Futbol. Fußball. Whatever. Even as the world gets smaller, how is it possible that at this late date we remain such strangers to The Beautiful Game?

The 19th World Cup, under way this week in South Africa, will at last change all that.

Unless, of course, it does not.

Because predicting the arc of soccer's popularity in the United States is a fool's errand. It is also a cottage industry. Never more so than during the quadrennial global tournament. Thus, by mid-July, we'll all be up to our necks in the oracular math of "what if?" What if the U.S. men do well? What if they do not? What if TV ratings are up? What if they are not? What of Slovakia? What of Slovenia? Or Fredonia? What if Landon Donovan plays like Landon Donovan McNabb? Whatever happened to Beckham and Pelé and all those sky-high hopes for stateside soccer? Who at long last will become the Prometheus of American footie? Of what real use is a goalkeeper, anyway? And what if tens of thousands of words a day are spilled into the Gulf of Lexico in service of the idea that meaning must be made of it all? Who cleans that up?

What if?

"Help!" cries the American sports fan. "Enough! I just want to know whether to send my noncontact sons and daughters to soccer or to band practice after school!"

I hope soccer becomes popular in this country. Because sports are fun. But hearing why the American public is boorish by failing to follow MLS or FIFA on non-World Cup years or why American sports are so much better is the real bore. So sportswriters, do you part, help me learn about the history, passion and everything else there is to love about football without the psychoanalysis.

UPDATE: Just came across this Joel Dreyfuss column on largely the same topic. At least I'm not alone:

"There's still a certain amount of snobbishness in following international soccer from the U.S. It doesn't rank up there with squash racquets peeking out of your briefcase, but by rooting for proper "football," you join that secret society of snobs who talk 4-4-2 versus 3-5-2 lineups and actually understand the offside rule. I have to admit, since it's gotten a lot easier to be a soccer snob, that's probably not a good thing for exclusivity. But there are definite benefits in being able to lie on your couch over the next several weeks and flip your remote between two World Cup matches."

Metroquette

2010-06-05T10:52:00.005-04:00

I've got Metro on the mind lately, it seems.

At first glance, the D.C. Metro (or WMATA for short(?!?)) is a step above anything you can find buried beneath the cities across the world. With one swipe of your Metro SmartTrip card, you're given access to the vast labyrinth connecting the District with Virginia and Maryland. Forty-five degree angle escalators whisk you down into the bowels of the city in feeling reminiscent to Dante descending into the inferno.

There you find yourself in dimly lit caverns of a futuristic design that would fit well in any sci-fi film, awaiting a hissing steel (well, probably aluminum and plastic, but why quibble when we've jumped the shark with our prose a paragraph ago) chariot to ferry you away.

Compared to the Boston T, the Metro initially comes off as technology-friendly, clean and just overall more competent. But that's before you spot your first rat, deal with the endless delays and the increase in travel time that just switching lines adds. Then you realize that for all of it's post-modern glitz, the Metro is just another poorly managed mass transit system with a thick layer of gild.

But that's not what I wanted to get into here. No, what I really wanted to discuss was Metro Etiquette or "Metroquette," a word I just made up. The subject popped into my head after I stumbled across wtfmetro.com this morning:

"At Metro Center, the escalators from the upper to lower platforms are 3-wide. On a NORMAL metro day, at least ONE of these stair cases is not operational...often two. Folks, if you have a functioning "up" escalator on the right hand side, what the hell makes you think that the non-functioning escalator on your far left is there for you to walk up? I hate people that do this."

Welcome to the underground phenomenon that is Metroquette. The first rule of Metroquette is you don't talk about Metroquette. The second rule of Metroquette is you don't talk about Metroquette. That's because it's the sort of unspoken system that holds together societies across the globe and time spent explaining its finer points is time wasted.

Actually the first real rule of Metroquette applies to the escalators. If you're in a hurry, stay to the left; if you don't mind wasting precious seconds of your life riding the Metro escalators, by all means lounge on the right. But NEVER lounge on the left.

Tourists are the usual perpetrators and it's hard to get worked up about them (though that Japanese family that held a strategy session on their next destination and inadvertently blocking the escalators a couple of weeks back came perilously close). For DC denizens the punishment is death.

Third rule of Metroquette: Let the people on the train off before pushing your way onto the train. This makes for the efficient transfer of travelers both on and off each car, though a particularly touristy weekend or hectic commuter day (i.e. delays abounding), it can devolve into a blood-thirsty fight to the finish. Punishment depends on the circumstances. You gotta do what you gotta do.

Fourth rule: When you're on the train, make way for those getting off. The Metro regularly makes announcements urging passengers to move to the center of the car as to create room for newcomers. Unfortunately, this is usually ignored. But those who do "follow the rules" pay for their mistake by having to force their way through a thicket of passengers not willing to budget an inch to let someone out, because really, why should they change for someone else? (Yes, I'm talking about you, cool dude with your sunglasses on and iPod buds in your ears. We know you know the rules. Don't be a jerk)

Fourth Rule, Part B: if you've got the outside seat and someone on the inside wants out, let them out.

There are more rules, but most fall into the misdemeanor category, i.e. loud cell phone conversations that just annoy everybody, body slamming your way onto a packed car seconds before the doors clamp shut, begging for change (I've actually seen beggars move from car to car asking for money), blocking seats with luggage, using up more than one seat during rush hour, etc.

I'm just glad I'm not the only person who thinks about this stuff.

(h/t Kate and James)

Vortex Time?

2010-05-28T14:13:00.004-04:00

I took a moment this week to ponder the ever more ridiculous innovations in the beer drinking market ("beervations" to the initiated) after having the opportunity to try Miller Lite's new vortex bottle.

If you missed the commercials and online ads trumpeting this bold step forward in technology, a Miller Lite vortex bottle employs "specially designed" grooves in the spout of the longneck. These grooves, which remind me a bit of rifling, channel the beer in a way that it swirls deliciously into the drinker's mouth. With this level of genius and "outside the box" thinking, we should get these thinkers working on the oil spill problem in the gulf.

Sampling one of these new bottles at McFadden's Restaurant and Saloon on Wednesday evening, I was struck by how ridiculous this trend of one-upsmanship is becoming. Long ago beer executives passed beyond the "hey, why don't we try putting this stuff in an aluminum can" stage of innovation. Now we're in the "hey, my can should tell me when it's at the perfect temperature to chug" stage.

I am sure this has been going on for a while. With my quarter century of experience, I can remember the heralded release of Bud's "born on date" or Samual Adams' "drink by date." How little time appears to have passed since Coor's widemouth pour cans hit the supermarket coolers or those beer cans with the vent to increase refreshocity.

It smacks of overcompensation. If the aluminum can the brewer is using as a "beer delivery system" needs to be outfitted with all sorts of bells and whistles to make the perfect pour at the perfect consistency at the right temperature, then it's probably not a good beer. Hell, the Brits drink their beer at a little under room temperature and it tastes fine (or so I'm told).

I was less than overwhelmed by the vortex bottle. Did it change the drinking experience for me? Not really. I mean a Miller Lite is a Miller Lite is a Miller Lite. A step up from Busch and several flights of stairs down from a Harpoon.

I'll give the execs over at MillerCorp this: they did somehow get me to buy a Miller Lite.

Oh wait, now I remember, the bar's taps were broken. That's why I ordered a Miller Lite.

Metro to consider hikes Thursday

2010-05-25T19:50:00.010-04:00

We know it's coming, but not when. We understand there is a shortfall, but not exactly why. We have an idea of the hole that needs to be filled, but not how much will come directly from our wallets.

We know times are tough, but maybe this is a stretch.

Metro fare hikes are on the way, though the specifics of the plan have not been publicized. Neither the media or the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority have released the details surrounding the plan to make up a $189 million budget hole for FY '11. This much is known: the Metro needs revenue and the best way of getting it is from their users.

On May 13 the finance and administration committee turned their plan for proposed fee hikes over to the full board, according to The Washington Post. Here's what WaPo's transportation beat team reported at the time:

"Options include a 15 percent hike in rail fares and a 20 percent increase in bus fares.

Peak rail fares could go from $1.65 to $1.90 and bus fares from $1.25 to $1.50."

Also being weighed are new "peak of the peak" rail fares, an additional charge during the service times when ridership is heaviest, from 7:30 to 9 a.m. and 4:30 p.m. to 6 p.m."

This is expected to raise about $104 million for the Metro... which just leaves the remaining $85 million to deal with. There's no word yet on how that's going to get resolved, explaining why some members of board are less than pleased with the approach. Once again, from WaPo:

"Other members disagreed with taking the unusual step of moving forward with a significant fare increase without considering the entire $1.4 billion operating budget.

'I'm very uncomfortable," said Graham, the only committee member to vote against the fare package. "This is a flawed process.'"

The full board is expected to pick this up on May 27. So by Friday we commuters may know how much more we ought to start loading onto our SmartTrip cards every week.

One can't help but find fault with the Metro's spin on their "Peak of the Peak" rate hike, if what The Washington Examiner's Kytja Weir reports is correct. Not only will a potential spike in cost help make up some of that deficit, it also will "encourage riders to spread out their trips."

Good to know. I hope everyone who uses the Metro on a regular basis has that kind of flexibility at their jobs.

The official word from Metro officials is a bit more muted. Officials will likely make service adjustments, i.e. cutting back on trains, to fill in a portion of the budget hole. According to a Metro press release, after six hearings on the issue it's clear the public prefers fare hikes over adjustments:

"'During the public comment period, we received a great deal of input from customers,' said Sarles. 'We have taken these inputs into account as we propose a solution that we feel balances the FY2011 budget as well as the interests of all in the region fairly.'"

The release also notes the Metro is considering cutting 313 positions, eliminating pay raises for non-union employees, increased contributions from Virginia and Maryland and divert capital funds to preventative maintenance. You can see their proposed fare changes here and their full release here. Other than that, the Metro hasn't done a particularly good job of outlining why they need cash and why they need it now.

But maybe there's a white knight or two riding in to the rescue. As I write it appears a few members of the U.S. Senate are pulling a cavalry act and pitching a $2 billion Public Transportation Preservation Act of 2010 to ease the pain of floundering public rail and bus services across the country.

I guess in the end, myself and several hundred thousand other D.C. area commuters may be spared the fee hike, thanks in part to generous taxpayers of, let's say, Montana.

So thanks Montana.

Facing Facebook

2010-05-15T17:16:00.004-04:00

I'm beginning to think Mark Zuckerberg thrives off of bad publicity.

Another year, another privacy-related imbroglio surrounding Zuckerberg's brainchild, Facebook.com (I'd throw in a hyperlink here, but what's the point?). This came to my attention a few weeks ago when word was first getting out Facebook was sharing information on your profile page with third party Web sites. I did some digging on the subject after Facebook forced me to adopt linked pages to everything on my profile, from my hometown and high school to my list of favorite movies.

Zuckerberg will have to pry that information out my cold dead hands. I don't want him sharing the fact that I actually really enjoyed Reign of Fire with anybody but my friends.

I'd explain the nuances of Facebook's changes, but a Google news search will bring up several thousand hits from reputable sources. Do your own research, people.

What has piqued my curiosity is the outrage and surprise. Users are deleting their accounts, people are protesting, the media has thrown their spotlight on the social networking site's privacy settings for the umpteenth time and even congress is looking into doing something about it.

I don't mean to gloss over the concerns of others regarding their privacy rights on the Internet and I certainly don't mean to oversimplify their arguments. I can understand why people are upset. I can't understand why they didn't see this coming.

By joining Facebook, you tacitly agree to give your personal information to someone else, namely Zuckerberg and his team of Web geniuses. Thems are the rules. If you don't want to share your name, gender, likes, dislikes, opinions on politics, music and anything else under the sun, you don't have to join.

It's very simple.

What's problematic is that our Internet-driven society has come to depend upon Facebook. Businesspeople use it to network, journalists to find sources, friends to reconnect... The list goes on and on. For many of us, Facebook is a resource we use on a daily basis.

But that doesn't change the fact that we've already agreed to freely hand over everything about us.

If Zuckerberg's recently released college IMs have any truth in them - and still reflect how he feels about privacy - he sees it the same way.

Look at it this way (Editors Note: I'm awful with analogies, so if this falls flat don't blame me): some time ago in Washington, D.C. the authorities built the Metro. I don't have a car, but I work in the city and live in the 'burbs. Thus I depend on the Metro to get to work. Now that I've become adjusted to using the Metro every day, should I demand that it be free? Would I be right to demand it be free?

To sum up, it's a two-way street. Facebook connects us to the rest of the world. It just comes with a price. In this information age, what we've given up is worth its weight in gold.

Oh and do I think Facebook and Zuckerberg are going to survive this? Absolutely.

Around the world in an afternoon

2010-05-04T20:35:00.006-04:00

Who was the guy who decided it'd be a good idea to lick the bottom of a beer barrel?

I only ask because I had the opportunity to try Vegemite this weekend. Sure, I've heard it's awful, disgusting and made from the leftover yeast of beer brewing process. But on the other hand, if Men At Work like it, how bad can it be?

The word I'd choose to describe the subtle yet haunting flavor of Vegemite is... Interesting.

Picture this: It's a warm, muggy not-yet-summer day in the District. The sun bears down from a cloudless sky. There is little to no breeze. We're standing in line outside the Australian Embassy. We're there for one reason. That reason is a Vegemite sandwich.

An embassy staffer, blessed with a charming Aussie accent (put a shrimp on the barbie charming) and donning a Washington Nat's cap delivered Vegemite samples on a silver tray. Color me pleased. Despite the way that taste lingered in the back of my mouth.

Around the World Day, or whatever they call it, in the District of Columbia is the one day (that I know of) you can tour the various embassies, sample local dishes, listen to the music and other cultural engagements. If you don't mind a few lines and the occasional deadbeat foreign government (Croatia only had a tour of their embassy, whereas South Korea served up BBQ ribs. Croatia 0, Republic of Korea 1) it's a great way to spend an otherwise lazy Saturday.

It's a tough day on the feet if you want to scope out as many embassies as possible. Though Mass Ave is the well-known home to the world's representatives to the United States, these stately manors are spread throughout the city. We managed eight, from deliciously strong coffee at Columbia to a dance party at Iraq's place.

Maybe you missed out this past weekend, but never fear, Europe is up next. So get out there. Try some culture.

On commuting

2010-04-28T19:08:00.008-04:00

You can hear the trains rattle by from my bedroom window. At night it's the long, rambling freighters heading up the eastern seaboard. Destination: Baltimore and points north.

But in the morning the tracks belong to the Metro trains and their payload of shuffling, half-awake commuters glancing at watches, flipping through The Washington Post Express and tapping smart phones. For the non-commuter, or the new commuter, the daily migration into the heart of the District is a great opportunity to people-watch.

Maybe it's the tension of the forced co-mingling of thousands of people who want nothing to do with each other, people pretending their driving in to work themselves or still in bed or in a private train car. In reality, they're squashed together like a can of sardines jostling one another with every dent in the rail.

Still, they try. If you squint hard enough you can see the shimmery, translucent light of the "personal space" shield surrounding them. Occasionally, they'll try a diplomatic overture, like "this is my stop" or "get out of my way" before hurtling past you in a vain attempt to squeeze through the Metro doors before they slam shut.

And sometimes the world intrudes on their carefully crafted personal zone. The Great Swine Flu Scare of 2009 may have faded out of our collective consciousness months ago, but you can still spot pristine white and hospital scrubs blue medical face masks tied on here and there on the morning Metro.

There's a whole wide world of people and stories out there. You can find them all on the Metro

It's better than television.

Under Construction. Fines Double in Work Zones.

2010-04-23T14:40:00.003-04:00

In the next several weeks this blog will undergo some changes. While I've enjoyed using "North of the Border" as my blog's moniker for the past two years, I'm no longer a resident of the great state of New Hampshire. In fact, I'm much further south (though renaming this site "South of the Border" would be disingenous, though logical, because that name has already been taken by a ghastly tourist trap on Route 95 in South Carolina) to Silver Spring, Maryland.

I've also left my freelance gig with the New Hampshire Union Leader. So using this site to expand on my day-to-day coverage is no longer possible. Hence, expect a format change in the near future.

I'm not really sure what I'm going to use this space for as I get settled in the outskirts of Washington, D.C., but rest assured it will not remain empty for long.

Until then, I'll be trying to come up with a clever(er) title.

Out like a lamb?

2010-03-31T15:39:00.003-04:00

For New Hampshire and much of the northeast, March has been a lion. With this week's storm and subsequent flooding, there's not much hope the expression "going out like a lamb" will ring true this year.

In Salem, that's meant flooding. Lots and lots of flooding. Rising waters aren't as bad as in 2006 and 2007, but that's little consolation for homeowners stacking sandbags and running pumps or business owners closing up shop because of washed out roads.

Here's a look at what Monday and Tuesday's rain did to Salem:

Clearwater

2010-03-20T19:33:00.003-04:00

Clearwater Beach, Florida. If it's March, you can't beat it.

Election day in southern New Hampshire

2010-03-09T14:23:00.002-05:00

Storm Watch

2010-02-27T12:23:00.002-05:00

If you're reading this, you probably have power. Or a readily accessible library, McDonalds or Starbucks nearby.

In any event, I've fled New Hampshire until power is restored. Here's the Union Leader's actively updated storm-watch blog: http://www.unionleader.com/article.aspx?headline=Granite+State+storm+blog&articleId=4d0f7d5f-7a52-451b-a65d-7687495f67c4

Gimme shelter

2010-02-26T17:42:00.009-05:00

It's been a while, I know. I beg forgiveness upon all of you.

If anyone still subscribes to this on and off again news(y) blog, you're probably scratching your head. Why, you ask yourself, would Derrick come out of seclusion after all this time?

Like much of the rest of the state, Windham is in the dark tonight. Routes 111 and 28 are back on the grid, but don't tell that to anyone living in the residential neighborhoods. Police say most of the roads are open, damages are light - depending on where you live - and crews are working as fast as they can. Local utility companies are not advertising any estimates on when power could be restored.

During 2008's ice storm, many were told power would be restored in 1-3 days. That stretched to 7 days for myself and more than 2 weeks for others. Let's hope it's not a repeat.

Anyway, here are some shots I've taken of the ravages left by last night's Nor'easter. It's been a busy news day:

This Meetinghouse Road home was spared the wrath of the storm. Eight trees, toppled by heavy gusts, missed by inches.

Water flows over Emerson Way bridge from a swollen Widow Harris Brook. This is one of several flooded spots around Salem today.

The traffic lights were working again along Routes 28 and 111 by this afternoon, but most of the rest of Windham was still without power, the transfer station included. Officials aren't guessing when the lights will come back on.

Main Street in Salem, closed. Thankfully, the nearby fire station was built on higher ground. Most people avoided the puddle, but a few took the opportunity to put their SUVs to good use.

Cook's Trailer Park in Salem, N.H., off of Route 28, is under several inches of water. The residents are well practiced. The park floods once every year or so.

Outbreak

2009-02-07T13:25:00.006-05:00

It's colder when I get to the parking lot - stretching out like a vast rolling, black desert before me - then when I left my home only twenty minutes before hand. Out in front the Rockingham Park racetrack, known most famously for it's heyday about forty years prior and as the set of a few gambling movies, sprawls out across the horizon.

Completely out of place in an otherwise very quiet, very

deserted locale, are a dozen tents flapping in the cold February wind, parked emergency vehicles with an array of antennas and satellite dishes sprouting up from within them, and very serious looking men and women in body armor and military boots.

It could have come straight out of a movie on the SciFi channel.

Captain William Warnock of the Salem Fire Department assures me that this is all part of a regularly scheduled drill for the regional Hazmat team and this time they're excited to be joined by the New Hampshire National Guard's 12th Civil Support Team - tasked with aiding municipalities handle terrorist threats and natural disasters.

Observing the drill is a team up from Georgia, members of the Army North command. They shiver as the snow begins to fall - we're expected to get between 4 and 8 inches that day - and bundle up.

One officer, wearing two winter hats stacked on top of each other, keeps staring at me in my jeans and leather jacket out from underneath the hood of a heavy duty parka.

"Quit pretending it's 80 degrees out," he tells me and then wanders off to shiver some more.

The drill itself - aside from being completely out of the ordinary in the empty parking lot of a racetrack - is rather mundane. Two teams comprised of local firefighters and National Guard personnel ride up to the site of the "attack" in full biohazard suits.

As patrons walk in and out with curious looks the teams scan the air with a wide range of gear that their commander, Major Erik Fessenden, calls a state-of-the-art mix of military and civilian technology.

In the month of preparatory work leading up the joint exercise the team of observers have set up harmless substances that ought to simulate the readings of a real-world dangerous chemical agent. After getting the perfunctory questions out of the way (What is the scenario? Who is involved? How does this work? How many times annually are these teams tested?) I ask team chief Daniel Robbins if he enjoys doing this.

"This must be fun, right?" I ask. "To put the shoe on the other foot, to test these guys and go about pretending to be on the other side."

Robbins smiles and laughs for the first time since I started talking to him.

"Sure, it's 30 degrees out, snowing and we're from Atlanta, but if you watch the guys they all have a smile on their face."

Walking Tall

2009-01-28T17:12:00.002-05:00

I spoke to Chief Michael Walker for the first time back in July. The Pelham Fire Department had adopted "red shirt Fridays," a program meant to remember the courage, bravery and dedication of the New York City firefighters who gave their lives on September 11, 2001.

Cordial, he answered my questions in a plainspoken manner and without ever lifting his voice above the soft just barely audible enough volume I would later learn that he rarely broke out of. Keeping his tone even, Walker had a funny way of emphasizing specific words - a short gasp that proceeded his answer.

"Ohhh yeah," he would say if he agreed with something I had asked him, the 'o' sound hard and the 'h' stretched out. You could always imagine him vigorously nodding his head even during phone interviews.

He spoke with a flat, almost mid-western accent. Having been raised in upstate New York and working in Fort Madison, Iowa it may have been a mixture of both influences.

"I'm more of a mountain boy," he told me once.

Walker almost never failed to call me back for any reason. During the height of the ice storm recovery operation, when you could hear the fact that he had been working 20 hours a day for almost a week in his voice, he politely answered my questions before hanging up to attend an emergency management meeting.

The best contacts you can have will always take your calls, fit you into their schedule for the day and answer your questions candidly. Walker rose to the top of my list after I interviewed him about the death of a fellow firefighter and friend. The man had been on vacation with his family at the time and suffered a massive heart attack.

"He is one of those people that lives that kind of a life such that he's a decent Christian human being. You look at yourself and you wonder, 'I wish that I could be like him,'" Walker said, the words coming with thick, full pauses between them. "I never heard him say a bad word about anybody. He was always upbeat and supportive. He will do anything for you."

I learned that he and Walker had been workout buddies and yet on the morning of hearing the news of his friend and coworker's death, he took the time to talk to me a little bit about what kind of a man he had been.

I ran into Walker off and on for the next six months, covering the department's fire safety outreach program to school children, their budget shortfalls and the equipment and new facility they so desperately needed the taxpayers to give them. Up until he resigned to take a position as chief of the Yarmouth, Mass., fire department a few days ago Walker was one of my best contacts in Pelham.

I will be sorry to see him go.

Fast times at Windham high

2009-01-16T14:00:00.002-05:00

Residents and officials in Windham are happy to be able to put the issue of a secondary access road for their new $55 million high school behind them.

"It's pretty big relief. I think that my life has been pretty peaceful for the past three days," Dr. Bruce Anderson told me during a conference call with him and Windham's superintendent. "It's a relief that we resolved this without going to court. It put a lot of peoples' minds at ease...the road issue will not get in the way of the school opening."

The brand new state of the art facility ran into trouble this past year after Thomas McPherson, the town's fire chief, told both selectmen and the School Board that he would not sign off on the building unless a second egress was put in place for emergency vehicles.

Whether this mean a full town road or a gravel path was left up to the boards and the abutters.

Complicating the issue, members of the School Board and some residents called into question the legal requirement to have the road built. State officials had signed off on the design plans three years earlier and many felt that this was all the approval that they needed to go ahead and open the school next August.

While the state fire marshall and state education officials ultimately deferred to McPherson's judgement, there was a push to settle the matter in court.

"What it came down to was the majority of the board felt that spending that money to guarantee that this school would open without further legal battles was worth it," Anderson said.

The vote - 3 to 2 for spending $500,000 of the district's budget on the construction of a Class V town road connecting the high school to the south side of town - was razor thin and taken during a non-public session.

"Although it is not the way I would have settled this question, the issue should never ever come back to the school district again," said Chairman Barbara Coish - who voted against signing the agreement with selectmen and abutters. During a Tuesday night meeting Coish criticized the agreement, saying that she could not vote for something that would effectively bypass the voters.

Two earlier attempts to appropriate the funds for the secondary road failed to pass, most recently during a special election in September.

After a few months of political maneuvering between the two boards, everything appears to have been settled and the school's opening is no longer in doubt. Everyone I have spoken to agrees that they've let out a "big sigh of relief."

Between a rock and a hard place

2009-01-14T16:25:00.004-05:00

Superintendent Michael Delahanty sounds a little on edge over the phone as he explains to me for the umpteenth time why Salem ought to have a kindergarten program in place by the start of the new school year.

"The rest of the world except for eleven or twleve towns in New Hampshire have decided kindergarten is beneficial," he says. "What we're really trying to do is present an education for the kids and the tax rate isn't the only story there."

"Right," I say and then go on to play the devil's advocate.

"I believe that the state has told us that we're obligated to have kindergarten to meet the definition of adequate education. If we're obligated to meet that then the money belongs in our budget," Delahanty says finally, drawing a visual of the spot in between the proverbial rock and the hard place the school district has found itself in.

Which is an apt analogy for the problem that Salem and a handful of other towns mostly clustered around southern New Hampshire have found themselves in after the state mandated that those communities without kindergarten get started on putting one together.

In Salem, the financial burden is particularly onerous. While the state will send the town roughly $900,000 in aid, the total cost of implementing the program - hiring teachers, buying materials, etc. - will run up to about $1.6 million. Which leaves the town responsible for the remaining $700,000.

Complicating the issue is a matter of constitutional debate. Under Article 28A of the New Hampshire constitution, the state cannot present towns with an unfunded mandate. Some residents are now calling redefining the state definition of an adequate education to include kindergarten an "unfunded mandate."

Which is the stand the town's budget committee took last week when the voted 5-4 to strip the funding for the kindergarten program out of the school district's operating budget.

"I think the state has mandated it to us. If it's a mandate they should pay for it. If it's not a mandate then we should have the right to vote on it," said Michael Carney, who cast the deciding vote.

Now the school board has to take up the challenge of either convincing voters to restore the funding during a Feb. 5 deliberative session or make budget cuts in other areas, like eliminating busing for the town's high school students. In another year this would already have been an uphill battle, but against the backdrop of a recession and the loss of Windham students who are moving to a new high school in their own town - taking with them a cool couple million in tuition money - people are not likely to be convinced easily.

"Salem is suffering the way every other town in New Hampshire is and every other city in the country is," said Stephen Campbell, another member of the budget committee and vocal supporter of nearby Hudson's lawsuit against the state mandate. "You just have to look at the houses for sale, the empty businesses up and down Route 28. It's hard to imagine the School Board could ask for so much that the taxes would raise over 10 percent."

Into the fire

2009-01-09T11:39:00.003-05:00

Atkinson firefighters battle a fire that enveloped a Stage Road barn and significantly damaged the adjacent home Thursday night. Crews from nearby Hampstead, Plaistow and Danville were called in to help. Capt. Rockwell said his team was able to keep the fire contained while they waited for assistance. The fire began sometime around 4 p.m.

Six months on the job; a retrospectus

2009-01-07T17:15:00.003-05:00

After half a year spent covering the southern portion of New Hampshire I've received quite a bit of experience and learned plenty of lessons about real world journalism. Six months ago, being a wet-behind the ears recent graduate of the University of Massachusetts with one internship under my belt I made a lot of pretty obvious mistakes.

Looking back, there are a lot of things I would change if I had the chance. But since no one has invented the time machine yet and every misstep is a learning experience, I figured it would be more beneficial if I just posted them here. At the very least, I'll have a set of guidelines for starting out in an unfamiliar world saved somewhere for wherever my career takes me next.

1) Meet everybody that has anything to do with your beat.

I think this applies universally, no matter what your beat actually includes. Coming to Salem I only met the local fire and police chiefs, the town manager and a couple of librarians. Retrospectively, I should have gone out of my way to introduce myself to all of the selectmen, school board members, education officials, town department heads, local citizens groups and anyone else I could think of. As a result of not doing that, I still have trouble getting in touch with important individuals when I need to. Nothing like leaving messages at three different places while sweating under a deadline and wishing you had a selectman's cell phone number.

2) Never generalize.

Which I also learned to my detriment after I told a police chief that Pelham seemed to be a "quiet little town."

"Let me give you some advice," he said, cutting me off. "Get to know a town before you say things like that. Maybe you ought to spend some more time in Pelham."

Since then, I've learned that Pelham has a darker side, mostly dealing with drugs coming up across the Massachusetts border. People don't like it when you pigeon-hole their community, profession or opinions.

3) The devil's in the details.

Specifics make or break a story and while it can seem easier to gloss over information you don't have when you're writing on deadline, it's important to remember that the more specific you get the better the article comes out. Making a habit of asking a specific set of biographical questions when I interview people (age, profession, home, etc.) has definitely made my descriptions of interviewees better. Even when doing those man-on-the-street interviews a good journalist covers all the usual bases.

4) Don't burn bridges...

...Unless you have to. Writing an "investigative-type" piece on something that doesn't deserve the scrutiny will blow up in your lap. As will overly dramatizing a piece of news that is straight forward. Sure, it might make for a better read, but if you annoy your contacts to the point where they won't speak with you anymore you're pretty much screwed. I haven't fallen into that problem yet, but I can see where it would come up. One such incident involved an local crime piece that the home office covered by a staff writer. A day later I got called up by the local press liaison at the police station wanting to know if I could pass along a message to the staffer that basically read "off the record means off the record." It was a little awkward after that.

5) Secretaries are key...

...To getting hold of anybody important. Get in good with the secretaries and you're set. Otherwise, there's always that chance that they might lose that message you left. Or stonewall you with "he's in an important meeting" every time you call.

6) Features will put you in like Flynn.

One of best contacts is just that because I wrote a feature on his son's return from Afghanistan. Was it hard news? Was it an investigative piece of work? Did it involve a lot of leg work? No, but it did help me ingratiate myself with a couple key members of town hall. Now they're always willing to help me with a story. Soft news stories can lead to good contacts with a high level of respect for you.

7) Play fair.

People will respect you if you record their opinions and adequately explain their positions on key issues. When the time comes that you have to play hardball or grill someone with a couple of tough questions, they're more likely to be on board.

8) Follow up.

I can't list how many times I've missed a good story because I failed to follow up. Though it is tougher to remember everything that's going on when you're responsible for four different towns, a little organization goes a long way. Sticking a "save the date" note on my calendar for various arraignment dates and important meetings would have helped a lot, especially in the beginning.

9) Speaking of meetings...

...They're all important. Every single one. Even that budget committee meeting that goes until midnight. Government meetings are always a source for stories, whether you're looking for a feature on some prominent local benefactor, a story on an interesting project organized by a citizens group, school issues or small town political spats. I leave every meeting with a list of things I can look into throughout the next week.

10) Become embedded in the community.

People are a lot more apt to trust you if they recognize you, respect you and realize that you understand the issues completely. This might seem like a combination of some of the earlier lessons (meet everybody, features, play fair), but being recognized as a member of the community first and a reporter second has helped me in the past. During December's ice storm, Windham's fire chief let me use his fire station as a base of operations. I sat in on emergency meetings, hung out with firefighters, charged up my equipment and even dictated stories from their emergency operations center. Knowing that I was a Windham resident myself, and without power, people ended up treating me like a fellow human rather than a reporter (the two can get confused at times).

There will always be more lessons to come and I look forward to each of them individually as I continue to grow and learn as a reporter. They don't call cub reporters "cub reporters" without reason. While it doesn't take a lot of sophisticated training to become a reporter, a good reporter rolls with the punches. At least, that's how I'm interpreting it.

The eye of the storm

2008-12-18T16:34:00.004-05:00

The power went out just past 11 p.m. one week ago today.

It wasn't until about Tuesday that things began to get back to normal after over 300,000 residents in New Hampshire sat in the dark and the cold and wondered just how much would they would have to burn to keep the pipes from freezing.

Out on the road Friday morning trying to navigate roads lined with down wires, tree limbs and other debris, fathoming the damage of the storm remained nearly impossible. Rockingham County had been hit hard; you could tell that just from the size of the trees that had been pulled out of the ground by the ice storm the night before.

Cellular service remained largely weak that morning and without Internet capabilities or a land line phone that meant hitting the road to find out what was going on. Passing under blank traffic signal after blank traffic signal - emergency generators had at that point not been set up at critical intersections - created an eery Mad Max effect. Only the near continuous howl of sirens in the background added to the mood.

Otherwise it was a perfectly normal winter day in New England.

Salem firefighter Dave O'Brien called it the most chaotic he'd seen his department in his 20 years of service to the community. Four days later, when the call volumes had dropped back to a level of normalcy, he told me the entire department had let out a sigh of relief.

While the duration of the power outage will surely end up raging into a public firestorm directed at someone - likely the utility companies like PSNH - those in public service became the shining bright spot in the whole mess. Most of the senior emergency management teams I met throughout the weekend and into this week worked days on end, only taking breaks to go home and make sure their families without power were okay. As Windham's Assistant Fire Chief Robert Leuci put it "We're out straight."

Still they remained cavalier at most times, joking with me when I showed up knocking on their door for more information.

"Are you out of power too?" I asked one firefighter as he took me to the Chief's office.

"Oh I'm fucked," he said. "No power at home, no heat, no running water. I'm just fucked."

The storm did not spare anyone and the nature of the subsequent crisis left the entire playing field level. No one had power and everyone wanted power. Windham's state representative spent several days after the storm staying in one of the Red Cross shelters set up in Salem, Londonderry and Nashua.

On Sunday I watched half of the Jets game at the Salem emergency relief shelter while I charged up my laptop and cellphone. In a town where at that point over 5,000 remained without power, only a handful had chosen to come to the shelter. The rest left town or stocked up on wood.

By Monday some sense of normalcy had returned to the southern portion of Rockingham County. While residents in nearby Derry still described their town as "a warzone," officials in Windham and Salem were reporting roads as cleared, whole neighborhoods back on the grid and the number of emergency calls returning to normal.

Still, there were some dark times.

On Tuesday a 77-year-old Salem resident succumbed to carbon monoxide poisoning. His was the fourth storm-related death since Thursday. Sadly, he died after power had been restored. His boiler malfunctioned and without working carbon monoxide or smoke detectors he never had a chance, Salem's fire marshal told me.

Misuse of generators or other alternative heating appliances resulted in dozens of hospitalizations across the state and were involved in at least one other death following the storm. In Windham two individuals were placed in a hyperbaric chamber to remove the carbon monoxide from their system. Salem's Chief Kevin Breen told me that going door to door his firefighters had found dozens of improperly used generators.

Ironically, though the storm had passed by Friday morning the worst was yet to come.

Now, seven days later things are still not back to normal. While Salem and Pelham are only reporting a few score of houses still without power, Windham has as many as 1,400 (myself included) and in Atkinson 20 percent of the town is in the dark.

And there's more winter weather on the way...

On the beat

2008-12-04T13:34:00.003-05:00

Beat reporters are the foundation of print journalism.

Or at least a vital part of the final product. Without beat reporters developing articles, contacts and storylines becomes a more daunting task, especially in a climate where people just don't trust reporters anymore.

It's something I've come across over and over again since entering the real world and taking hold of a beat of my own. Granted, it's not a senior political position with the Washington Post or the New York Times, but it's my own little slice of New Hampshire where I'm expected to know everything and everybody, understand the issues and capture life on a daily basis.

There were obvious challenges at first and some I still come across. People were hesitant to talk to a new reporter, especially a cub reporter. In some cases it would take days for people to give me a call back as I struggled to file stories on the deadlines I had been assigned. Over time that issue faded as I developed and then cultivated relationships within the communities I cover. Rare are the folks in Salem who won't give me at least a call back these days and more and more frequently I have people coming to me first, with news and information they would like to see put out.

Some of those early challenges remain, of course. There are the town administrators who still don't feel the need to talk to a reporter from the Union Leader or the occasional selectmen here or there who doesn't trust a kid from Massachusetts not to rip their words out of context.

Reporters now fall under that suspicious category of people who are just waiting to take the words out of your mouth and throw it into a slanderous article that might have far-reaching consequences. We slander, libel and muck-rake our way to the top, tear down governments and exhibit and increasingly partisan bias. Worse than that, with the Internet, anything you may go on the record about will undoubtable become an object of scrutiny for some future employer.

That is the hurdle that fresh reporters, new reporters must overcome. You don't stand aloof above the beat, be it a community, police station, business, etc., but join with it. People talk to me because they know who I am, they've seen my name in the paper and they know I'm not out to make a name for myself by producing hyperbole.

Which is what gets me back to my original point and that is that the relationships I have established with so many different people in Salem, Windham and Pelham - from the superintendents to the members of the planning board all the way to the town manager who calls me "reporter-man" whenever he sees me lounging around town hall - makes it that much easier to do my job.

Which is to know everything.

But only in Salem, Windham and Pelham.

Shop 'til you drop

2008-11-28T12:51:00.002-05:00

I've never been a big shopper.

I like to go out and get whatever it is I'm looking for, usually after some comparative price searching on the Internet, and that is that. Done deal.

So when I joined the mass of shoppers at the Mall at Rockingham Park today, it was the first time in my life I've participated in the Black Friday spending spree. In fact, it was probably the first time since I was six that I got up before 7 a.m. on the day after Thanksgiving.

My job was to get reactions and shopping stories and the key to eliciting a good story from a man-on-the-street perspective is asking the right question. Unfortunately, when it comes to shopping, I have no idea what that question is.

Thankfully, despite the long lines and heavy crowds, most of the people crowding the mall (known affectionately by the local police as the M.A.R.P) were in good spirits.

"I'm spending more (this year). I'm trying to help the economy," said one laughing man. "This is the busiest I've ever seen it here. I don't know who's pulling whose leg on the economy."

A glum faced gentleman holding a bag full of purchases outside of an Aeropostale told me he was there for his wife.

"Anything for the wife," he said, before mentioning something about getting skinned alive if he hadn't been at the mall shopping with her on Black Friday.

The last person I interviewed, a mother shopping with her two daughters, had been up since 3:30 a.m. When I asked her for her motivation, she smiled and said it was an annual tradition with her daughters.

"I'm not a big shopper," she said.

Sure. Maybe not 364 days out of the year, but waiting in line for a register at Kohl's for an hour is more than I'm willing to go through.

I was happy to sneak out of the parking lot with a minimum of problems and be back in bed by 9:30 for a quick nap. Between drop-dead-deals and dozing, I'll always take a few extra hours of sleep.

Salem's Lot

2008-11-24T16:37:00.011-05:00

Salem is a town in transition.

It's known mostly for the Rockingham Park racetrack, Canobie Lake Park, the mysterious America's Stonehenge archeological site and a downtown strip made up of pawn shops, smoke stores and tattoo parlors.

Situated next to Methuen, Mass., and closer to Lawrence, Lowell and Haverhill than Manchester or Concord it can at times feel like Mass-Lite. Most of the residents are from south of the border - a fact that has been attributed as a reason why Rockingham County remains a "red" bedrock of conservatism in an otherwise left-leaning state (Obama won by the some of the closest margins in New Hampshire in Rockingham County which also backed John Sununu and gave Jeanne Shaheen a run for her money and elected a slate of republican candidates - and only one democrat - to Concord).

In Salem, a Boston accent is more commonly heard than in Western Massachusetts.

Much of the crime is imported from out of state as well. According to Capt. Shawn Patten of the Salem PD, about fifty percent of crime is committed by out-of-staters.

Salem is very much a collection of vividly different people; a mesh of separate communities with very little in the way of town spirit outside of the local schools and the Boys and Girls Club. North Salem is the only part of town that feels like New Hampshire, complete with lakes and a forested horizon. The Route 28 corridor encompassing North and South Broadway streets is littered with cookie-cutter "big box" style stores like Best Buy, Target and the rapidly liquidating Tweeter store. Aside from the stores and shops lining Rt. 28 and nearby Rt. 38 the rest of the community is relatively quite and composed of suburban-style homes ranging from the sprawl of working class ranches to even a few McMansions.

At the moment, the town's planning board is considering a proposal that would require the development of land larger than 25 acres undergo a "master plan" process that would let board members work with developers to create a mixed-use piece of land that would incorporate commercial, residential and recreational facilities. A downtown pedestrian district, board director Jim Keller told me earlier today and several other times in past interviews, is something Salem is very interested in creating.

I've heard the same response from Ross Moldoff, Salem's planning director and from members of a group that is rebuilding the Salem Depot Station (part of the new defunct Boston-Manchester rail line) with public donations.

At the moment, Salem's downtown consists of a municipal complex that houses the high school, library, town hall, local DMV, housing authority and district courthouse all on the same stretch of road off of Main Street. The closest thing to a town common is the old veteran's cemetary next to the historical society down the street that houses two first world war era artillery pieces.

Creating a downtown district that would encompass parts of the old Salem Depot - where Main Street intersects South Broadway Street creating horrific traffic between 3 p.m. and 7 p.m. - remains a vision for the town's planners.

They understand that it is not going to happen in the near future and if the management at the Rockingham Park racetrack ends up opposing a new ordinance that officials believe would encourage such development as it did in 2003 it may take even longer than that.

In the meantime, Salem will remain a distant suburb of Boston.

Post-post-election coverage

2008-11-20T12:35:00.002-05:00

I strung for the Associated Press on election night.

I like to tell people that without explaining the background or really adding any context because it just sounds cool as a stand alone phrase. Plus, it helps me convince everybody that I've become a successful journalist.

I strung for the AP on election night.

Doesn't it just have a ring to it?

The truth is much more mundane. The AP office in Concord was looking for extra stringers to help get the ballot counts from communities in Rockingham County (southern New Hampshire) into their database. I agreed to sit in the gymnasium of the public high school in Pelham, NH and wait for the town clerk to tally up the absentee ballots and combine them with the numbers from the voting machine.

Two hours of waiting, sitting in a school desk with absolutely nothing. Next time I'll bring a crossword puzzle.

Still, I do like to tell people that I've worked for the AP before.

Critical thinking on media criticism

2008-11-19T11:48:00.004-05:00

The problem with media criticism is that it is mostly handled by current or former members of the media. True, they are likely in the best positions to speak intelligently and offer a naunced critique of the coverage, bias, trends and tools of the media world, but after years of wheeling and dealing in the press themselves, doesn't it open them up to an ethical dilemma?

It strikes me as having about as much of a potential for conflicts of interest as say, a the chairman of your local selectmen's board writing up articles for the area weekly.

Washington Post's Howard Kurtz took a look at the love affair between the press and the Obama Campaign on Nov. 17, only a couple of weeks after the election. It might have been more interesting - not to mention timely - had he taken the time to analyze the bias (or lack there of) in the press prior to Election Day.

More interesting was the New York Times' subtle declaration of death of the conservative movement in the United States this morning.

Skip over the editorializing for a moment (though do notice the lack of sources):

"Now, thanks to the coarsening effect of the Internet on political discourse, the (National Review) may have lost something else: its reputation as the cradle for conservative intellectuals and home for erudite and well-mannered debate prized by its founder, the late William F. Buckley Jr.

In the general conservative blogosphere and in The Corner, National Review’s popular blog, the tenor of debate — particularly as it related to the fitness of Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska to be vice president — devolved into open nastiness during the campaign season, laying bare debates among conservatives that in a pre-Internet age may have been kept behind closed doors."

Now I'm not one to overtly criticize a major journalistic institution in this country, but I fail to see how this article is in fact newsworthy. It appears to be a non-story that has been blown up into a mountain.

Certainly, the reporting raises some interesting points. William Buckley's son endorsed Barack Obama during the campaign and popular writer David Frum is leaving the publication to strike out on its own.

But the storyline, the larger whole, that these bits of information have been presented as part of is a thinly stretched piece of veneer:

"The magazine, like some others devoted to ideas and politics, has the luxury of not needing to make money. It is judged by how fervently it can incubate ideas — not as a going business concern. This year, there has been a small increase in circulation. At the start of the year, its circulation was 169,000, which has grown to about 185,000 for its latest postelection issue, which will arrive this week in mailboxes. The magazine’s Web site has also been successful. In October, it had 788,000 unique visitors, up almost 200 percent from the previous year, according to comScore. By comparison, The Weekly Standard had 490,000 unique visitors in October."

So, circulation is up, online hits are up, but let's sound the death knell anyway. And yes, I do see the irony in criticizing media criticism.

UPDATE: Click here for the National Review's response to their fading into irrelevancy.

Credit where credit is due

2008-11-10T11:35:00.002-05:00

Leaving behind a lasting legacy is a drive that propels most people forward in life - some more so than others, it would seem - on a daily basis as well as over the long term.

The evidence is in the decisions people make on a daily basis and the goals they aspire to in the long run. Marriage, a stable career and raising a family, though a bit less glamourous than someone shooting for the Oval Office, is certainly a reflection of that drive; children mean a physical and genetic legacy.

On a smaller scale I think each and every one of us hopes to leave something behind at every stop on the long, meandering bus ride that is life. How else do you explain nostalgia?

Looking back at the Daily Collegian I take a significant amount of pride in the legacy that I like to think I left there five months ago. When I click over to their web site I see an incredible amount of well written news articles, something that has been going on all semester as far as I can tell. Last year, just getting student stories into the newspaper was a weekly challenge and I hope my successors have found it easier than I ever did.

I like to think - especially when I'm falling prey to my excessively enlarged ego - that the foundation laid by the staff last year plays into that success. Reorganizing the news department to encourage student-staffers to essentially give it their all to a publication that did not pay well (or at all) and suffered a fair amount of on-campus insults was something I took an inordinate amount of pride in.

Now the "kids" have taken it to the next level, bringing in a massive writing staff of names I don't recognize at all from my two and a half years working for the Collegian and probing the issues that I was forced to gloss over in my own tenure in the basement of the Campus Center.

Just last week I was on the verge of writing an e-mail to the staff congratulating them for the work they've done already in a year that is still fairly young (though as they gear up for finals, it probably doesn't seem that way). What drove me to that point?

Well a couple of glasses of wine, some nostalgia and the terrific job the entire staff did at covering the election. Check out their rolling coverage of Election night here. I was blown away at the work done and a little bit jealous; adapting old print journalism to "new media" has proven to be a bit more clunky and less driven in the real world where making mistakes in order to learn has a bit of a stigma associated with it. I miss posting audio from live meetings and doing podcasts with James and Will, just like I miss trying to convince Kate that she needed to blog more often.

So I sat down at my keyboard to bang out a quick e-mail to the desk editors, but a piece of inadvertent advice that Eric Athas gave me last year stopped me from going forward.

To paraphrase an e-mail I got from him in October of 2007: It can be annoying when past editors try to advise you.

Which was never the case when it came to Athas' advice - he was usually right on the money about the things that needed improvement - but I can see how it could be that way.

So I shut my laptop and figured that the next time I'm out in Amherst I'll run into Will or Joe or Kate (maybe even King if he's not too busy) and congratulate them in person. In the meantime I'll leave this blogpost up as a heartily written "congrats" and a thanks for keeping the up the work that all of us put so much into last year.

A good old fashioned school scandal

2008-11-08T10:44:00.001-05:00

Say what you will about "new media," but it takes a good old fashioned newspaper story properly convey this kind of a story.

I spent Friday bombing around Salem trying to get in touch with teachers, administrators, students and parents.

My favorite quote came from senior leaving school early to beat the daily traffic out of Salem High's parking lot.

"Most of us think it's funny," he said. He laughed and then took off.

It brought back some memories of my own high school experience that I had forgotten over the past couple of years. Several dozen students and athletes were suspended from their sports teams after photos of them drinking and smoking "illegal substances" turned up online. I don't remember if it was MySpace, but it probably was.

I ended up getting interviewed by a young man hanging out across the street from the school. He was a reporter from the Brockton Enterprise (the local daily in southeastern Massachusetts). It reminded me a lot of what I was doing yesterday, trying to catch reactions from students as they tried to get out of the parking lot on a Friday afternoon.

The reporter at that time was doubly happy to get a quote from me once he found out I had played football that fall. Six months earlier one of the fathers had arranged for a stripper to do a show at one of our night before the game fires/pasta dinners.

After the team captains talked it over, they decided to thank the father and the stripper, but sent her home.

That didn't stop Fox 25, CBS 4, NBC 7 and everybody else from showing up. On a national level, Howard Stern called us all "gay" on his radio show and during SNL's Weekend Update Jimmy Fallon mocked us after delivering the news by fist pumping.

"Goooooo Northeastern Gay Birds," he said.

11:15 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 4, Election Day

2008-11-04T23:14:00.001-05:00

Hey, it ended at a reasonable hour.

Usually Monday Night Football lasts longer.

Bringing Halloween home

2008-10-27T15:24:00.002-04:00

Halloween is probably one of the more entertaining holidays to write about. It could just be me - I love all things creepy, from bad horror movies to haunted houses and ghost stories - but it seems like there is always something interesting to write about during the month of October.

As a reporter who develops most of his own stories, Halloween gives me a chance to have some fun and write some articles that while not breaking-news caliber are very much enjoyable to report on.

Some of the stories I've worked on for the Union Leader over the past month include:

A look at haunted house security following an incident that occurred during a haunted hayride in Candia, NH where an exchange student from Venezuela punched a "scare-actor" in the face during the ride.

Trying to dig up some old ghost stories in the Salem, NH area (not very successfully. The response from local librarians and historians could be summed up pretty much as "nope, no ghosts here." Which is weird for an area that has been settled for the past 300 years or so)

Looking at how local pumpkin farmers have been hit by the bad economy and a very rainy growing season.

I've also begun looking into the past a little bit and trying to get local police chiefs to tell me their wackiest Halloween incidents.

You can also definitely do easy articles on safety tips for young trick-or-treaters. I'm particularly interested to see what the police log yields on Nov. 1. Should be some good stories there as well.

Out with the old, in with the new

2008-10-20T13:31:00.004-04:00

An interesting side-story of sorts concerning local police departments developed from the economic crisis and the previous year's soaring fuel costs. With every municipality worried about their financial future, more and more town agencies and departments are taking steps to tighten their belts.

One way this has manifested itself has been in the gradual shift away from the classic Ford Crown Victoria Interceptor model that so many police departments in the past have deployed. Disappearing are the iconic police cruisers of yesteryear, so well ingrained in the American imagination as the standard for a "cop car."

Police department's in my area, southern New Hampshire, are making the switch to alternative models and brands as they attempt to cut back on fuel and maintenance costs. In Pelham, NH the police chief is asking selectmen to give him permission to lease seven new Chevrolet Impalas.

Nearby Windham began making the same transition a little under a year ago and now employs four marked Impalas and two more for administrative purposes.

According to both of the police chiefs, John Roark and Gerald Lewis, the Impalas are a front wheel drive, six-cylinder vehicle with less cabin space than the older eight-cylinder, rear wheel drive Crown Vic models.

The advantages include better braking, better handling in adverse weather and lower mileage. Lewis told me that it would take a few more months to determine if the vehicles could handle the full-time rigors of police work, but overall he has been pleased with their performances.

They also use up less fuel than their eight-cylinder Ford counterparts.

New Hampshire's State Police force has also begun switching over to the Dodge Charger model designed for police work.

So far Salem has only begun to consider the option and still employes a sizable fleet of Crown Vics across a multitude of town departments.

Still, from talking to Chief Roark, who went out to Milwaukee this past year for the annual police cruiser car show, it looks more and more like the classic "cop car" is on the way out in favor of smaller, more efficiently built vehicles.

(video: Chief Gerald Lewis of the Windham Police Department explaining the advantages of employing the smaller Chevy Impala cruiser for routine police work)

Palin around

2008-10-16T12:25:00.004-04:00

Yesterday I was on the front line of American journalism. Huddled in the trenches of the 2008 Presidential Election I stared discomfort in the face as I peered over the parapet into the heart of the fight for control of a New England battleground state.

At least that's how I imagined it, covering Sarah Palin's rally in Salem yesterday. But, to be fair, it was not a war-zone, just cold. Really cold. And I forgot to bring a sweater.

This wasn't my first brush with presidential politics, but it certainly was entertaining. One of the major advantages or reporting in New Hampshire - at least for now, though it could change in the future - is the state's position above the rest of the country. In a normal election cycle New Hampshire is routinely bombarded by presidential hopefuls to start off the primary race. For a couple of weeks you can spot the average Mr. and Mrs. New Hampshire informing the rest of the country why you should vote for one candidate or the other.

This year, the fun has been two-fold. With New Hampshire playing the role of a battleground state suddenly candidates are taking a little bit more of an interest in America's northland. Obama will be speaking in Londonderry today (A five minute drive from my house) while Palin and Biden bumped around the state earlier this week.

Which is why I had the fortune of covering Palin's third rally of the day in New Hampshire on Salem High School's Grant Field.

No, my name isn't on the byline. But if you scroll down to the bottom you'll find your evidence that I braved the nearly 55 degree weather with nary but a well pressed shirt and tie. You try writing on a deadline when you can't feel your fingers.

(Video of Shonda Schilling - Curt Schillings wife - introducing Alaska Governor Sarah Palin to a crowd of 4,000 in Salem)

Local news and localizing news

2008-10-06T16:30:00.002-04:00

A criticism I hear often of media, press and television both, is the push for local fluff over real news. For example: "There might be a major economic meltdown right now, but all Channel X is showing is a piece on a cat-fashion show."

There has been a noticeable trend towards local news over national news in the mainstream media and whether this is a good trend or a bad trend is still up to debate. Local, local, local has been the mantra of every newspaper and television station other than the New York Times and a few other outlets of note. The economics behind that push are easy to see: A) people are at least interested in learning about things that are happening in their own communities because they can't find out about them anywhere else and B) you can get national news and analysis on the Internet for free, so why pay 75 cents for a newspaper with the same information?

The pitfalls of too much local, local, local have come into focus as a result. While people don't want to read about the underpinnings of the national credit crisis (when they can get it on www.wsj.com for free), they'll be more dismissive of your credibility as a news source if you run an article or piece on the cat-fashion show instead of the same AP story they can find on Yahoo.com.

We saw this a lot at the collegian where people did not want to read about national issues, but still faulted us for not running them on the front page. "Why do you have a story about a fraternity as the A-1 story when people are dying in Iraq," was a common complaint.

The answer from our perspective: "Because you can pick that story up in the NY Times, USA Today, or Boston Globe. But you won't find the story about the fraternity in any of those."

The same sort of complaints come up across newspaper Web site comment sections all the time: "Why are you covering this when there are so many important things across the world to report on."

Clearly, what the public expects of their news source is completely different from what the news source thinks its public needs.

Localization is the flip side and while you won't see it on those national outlets like the Times or USA Today, you ought to be seeing it with more frequency in your local newspapers. Figuring out a way to find a local angle on a big story is often the best way to keep your readers attracted while also making them look at the community around them.

Russia invades Georgia? Are there any Georgian or Russian expatriates around? What is there opinion? What is their take, their view and most important: what is their story?

Market crashes? How does it affect local investors? Find out by talking to small investment firms, tax companies, and financial advisors.

Taking the national and making it local can at times be daunting and require a stretch of the imagination from time to time, but it remains an effective package for bringing together all of the interests of your audience. They can still get that article on the massive funding cut for federally sponsored highway work on Yahoo.com, but they won't get the article on how that is going to delay the completion of the local interstate for another five years.

A little advice for a cub reporter

2008-10-01T14:10:00.003-04:00

My second note on yesterday's activities is a little less optimistic about the shape of journalism - particularly print - in the world today.

I don't look very old at all. In fact most people are not surprised to hear that I am A) a cub reporter B) fresh out of college.

Still, this endeared me somewhat to the two reporters covering the Sledge arraignment from the Eagle-Tribune based out of Lawrence. One of them, Jim Patten, is a veteran police/crime reporter in the area. He's well known and well respected and his son is the press liaison over in Salem, N.H. The other was a photographer attached to the Patten and ended up being our pool photographer (meaning he was the only one allowed into the courthouse and the subsequent AP photos you can find online are all his).

They were talking about how the arraignment was already more than an hour late and commenting on how they (particularly the photographer) had had to bounce around southern New Hampshire on a wild goose chase of sorts before finding out that the court appearance would be in Derry.

"There just isn't any fun in it anymore," the photographer said as he sat next to me.

"As a recent college grad, that's sort of down turning to hear," I said after butting in on the conversation.

"I'll tell you what I tell all the other kids around the newsroom," Patten said to me after a short conversation about the state of things in print media. "Have a fall back career. Find something else you like doing that you can get paid for."

He related a story about a young woman who had just been let go and told me that she had been making more money at her side job, waitressing, then as a journalist.

"They tell you, 'you're not doing this for the money, are you?' Well, it shouldn't be a vow of poverty either," he said.

Wise words.

Perp walks and mainstream competitiveness

2008-10-01T13:52:00.004-04:00

Two notes on yesterday's media circus outside the District Courthouse in Derry, New Hampshire.

The first is that jockeying for position is still alive and well in main-stream journalism. Maybe not as much as in the glory days of the great competing newspaper editors like Hearst and Pulitzer, but as much as can be expected in the age of the Internet, mass media and "ethical" journalism.

Some background: A Lawrence police officer, accused of kidnapping, raping and sexually assault a woman while on his shift and in uniform last Saturday morning, was informed by the LPD that a warrant for his arrest had been issued.

Kevin Sledge, 45, of Salem, N.H., upon being informed of his imminent arrest left his home in such a way that his family requested the Salem police do a wellness check for him. Jim Patten at the Eagle-Tribune reported that the family was concerned that he might commit suicide.

Salem police tracked him into Pelham, N.H., where local police located Sledge near a Pentecostal church on Route 38. Upon finding out about the warrant for his arrest Sledge was placed into custody on fugitive from justice charges. His arraignment - where he would ultimately waive his extradition rights and climb into the back of a Lawrence PD cruiser for a return trip to Massachusetts - at 2 p.m. at the Derry District Courthouse proved to draw media from across state lines.

All of the major network affiliated stations were on hand, channels 4, 5, 7 and 25 as well as myself and the AP photographer. Jim Patten, from the Eagle-Tribune, was also on hand with a photographer.

You can imagine the commotion when a police cruiser and an official government car rolled up into the courthouse parking lot. The journalist swarmed forward, cameras clicking, live video feed streaming from the television folks, notepads out and pencils sharpened.

Of course, Sledge was still in the custody of the Pelham police department.

But that didn't stop one fellow from ABC's Channel 5 from walking over to the journalist pool and saying: "what, you didn't see him get out? He was ducked down in the backseat the entire time. They just took him inside."

This led to a few profanities and shocked expressions. We had not seen him in the vehicle and we had certainly not seen him leave either vehicle. For a few moments the area was a fervor of journalistic outrage...until one of the court officials informed us that he would be arriving with the Pelham police officers in five or six minutes.

The ABC 5 guy chuckled to himself.

"They told me to tell you guys that he had already been taken inside. Wanted to see what would happen," he said.

We were not amused.

But had the rouse worked, had I and some of the other reporters there not thought carefully and clearly about the situation, I would have been inside the courthouse while the Pelham police brought Sledge in for his arraignment.

It was a tricky, mischievous, competitive, selfish move on the part of ABC. But had it worked they would have had an exclusive shot of Sledge.

Can't blame them for trying.

(photo of the Pelham police bringing Kevin Sledge into the back of the Derry District Courthouse)

School daze

2008-09-26T10:45:00.002-04:00

It's been a busy couple of weeks.

Not in Salem, however, where it's been the usual weird crimes, political infighting and general citizen apathy.

Windham's been where its at, all thanks to the new high school. What once was a town without a center, without a heart and without an identity, has suddenly emerged as a rollicking hotbed of partisan politics.

It can be surprising what gets people motivated to speak out and to take an active role in government, especially town government. For the residents of Windham - a bedroom community known for its upscale residents more than anything - a multimillion dollar high school that may not even open on time has galvanized the public.

As one elderly man said pointing a finger at selectmen during a debate over the possible construction of a second access road required by the fire department in order for the school to open: "We don't trust you anymore."

Voters rejected that proposition to take an extra $1.25 million out of taxpayer pockets for an already over budget $55 million project by a wide margin only a few weeks later.

More so than anything else, the new high school has given this once docile (and no community likes to think of itself as "docile") town and inspired it. No matter how it plays out - odds are the town or school board will get its hands on the money to meet the fire department regulations one way or the other - it'll be interesting.

Quote of the day

2008-09-12T09:41:00.003-04:00

There is a certain joy in hearing outside perspectives on U.S. politics and policy. Europeans offer some of the sharpest, most biting, and strangely accurate assessments of the modern American landscape. Gerard Baker, of the Times Online, offers a compelling analysis of the closeness of this year's presidential election today along with this great description of the Republican Party:

"Democrats," he writes, "are more eager than ever to align the US with the rest of the Western world, especially Europe. This is true not just in terms of a commitment to multilateral diplomacy that would restore the United Nations to its rightful place as arbiter of international justice. It is also reflected in the type of place they'd like America to be - a country with higher taxes, more business regulation, a much larger welfare safety net and universal health insurance."

As for the Republicans:

The Republicans, who still believe America should follow the beat of its own drum, are pretty much against all of that.

Read the rest of the article here.

The Big Something...

2008-09-11T18:57:00.004-04:00

Found this today on Slate.com. Might be a bit outlandish as far as analysis goes, but the commentary and supporting arguments are priceless. Read the last paragraph and play the thirty second bit from the movie and try not to laugh out loud.

I couldn't.

The Dude speaketh.

Notes from abroad: Ghost Recon revisited

2008-09-10T16:50:00.003-04:00

Certainly, the old communist fears have been on the backburner for a few - maybe ten or so - years now. For anyone born after 1979, the fears of nuclear war, Soviet aggression and socialist revolutions in Iowa were replaced with fears of nuclear meltdowns, rogue nations and terrorist attacks by the mid-90's. While for that epic greatest generation of Tom Brokaw fame viewed the threat of the Soviet Union, and international communism, as paramount in the years after the end of the second world war, their children and grandchildren are more concerned with the state of major league baseball.

That all changed - or at least shifted slightly - with the Russian invasion of Georgia. With the subsequent (and probably permanent) annexation of two rebelling provinces and the beginnings of what looks to be a Russian Anschluss the old geopolitics of the Cold War seemingly reemerged, coming full bore from the woodwork.

Prague remains a symbol of Soviet - and Russian - aggression in the post World War II world. No where else were the aims and tactics that embodied the Soviet Union during that period of world history better displayed.

Marking the height of the Prague Spring in 1968, Russian tanks allied with their Warsaw Pact partners put an end to burgeoning political freedoms in the Czechoslovakia. Though there was no military resistance to the occupation, 1968 marked a low point for the West, which watched on earnestly as one of the earliest attempts to shrug off the stranglehold of Stalinism failed spectacularly.

With the current Russian invasion of Georgia still fresh in the mind, the site of the beginning of the end of the Prague Spring takes on special importance, as does the city of Prague itself. Here is a place that for the past four hundred plus years has served largely as a political football for the larger European powers, who suffered under Austrian, Nazi, and then Soviet control for decades and faced defeat and failure at every attempt to pull itself back together until 1993.

Now, a bustling tourist city, opened to the west fully for the first time since the interwar years, Prague stands as one of the most poignant symbols of rejection of Marxist-Leninism. A single tank still stands outside of the National Museum, along with a bent cross consisting of warped and shredded wood to commemorate the victims of communism. Around these two symbols - and the grossly commercialized American owned "communist museum" down the street - a bustling, democratic, free market city has emerged.

You might miss it for the discotheques, designer clothing stores and street vendors if you're not careful. Fitting, I think.

Notes from abroad: The Czech connection

2008-09-09T08:09:00.005-04:00

Rarely in my life have I been in a place where I could not understand one word of the language, not even to make out the meaning of a road sign or decipher a menu. Prague (Praha), the capital of the Czech Republic is one of those places.

Saying "thank you" or "you're welcome" became a herculean task of flipping through guide books and attempting to sound out what must have come as pure gibberish to the poor Czechs watching me with flabbergasted expressions (Dekuji vam - pronounced "dyek-ooee vahm" - means 'Thank you' while the slightly easier Prosim - pronounced "proh-seem"- means 'You're welcome' and 'Please').

Only Paris and Rome, with my unbelievably limited knowledge of the French and Italian languages, came close to baffling me as much.

Truly, it is a unique experience, one that I imagine many foreign correspondents around the world must enjoy on a daily basis. Certainly, this must be true with American reporters, who - if they speak a second or third language - are most likely to have a romantic European language under their belt as opposed to the currently much more valuable Arabic or Urdu.

From the perspective of a tourist, you depend on the good will of the people you meet and the hope that because it is a city full of vacationing Germans, Brits and even the occasional American they might understand english.

I would hope that as a journalist you might be better prepared and equipped with a translator or guide. In some cases I know this to be true, judging from the stories I have heard Charlie Sennott tell of reporting in Iraq and Afghanistan for the Globe.

Entering into a new, foreign environment, getting a handle on everything that has and will happen while not losing the subtleties in the meanwhile, must be a remarkable challenge. Shifting from state to state, market to market, in American may proof difficult enough, but can you imagine making the same leap to the lesser known points on the map? Places like Somalia, Lebanon or Thailand?

It must be unbelievable.

Photos: Street life in Praha (Prague) outside one of the larger underground stations (top). A jazz band plays for the throngs of tourists crossing the Charles Bridge under the backdrop of the Prague Castle complex (bottom).

Notes from abroad: Army life

2008-09-04T01:31:00.004-04:00

Dropping my brother off at his office so he could finish up the paperwork he had to get to after spending the last couple of weeks out in the field training - after he had bought beer and other much needed supplies for us at the PX - it struck me that his base in Grafenwoehr, Bavaria looked a lot like a college campus.

Just with a lot more discipline.

Perspective seems to be something a lot of people are missing these days. The ability to take something and place it into a context, to analyze it based on past events or behaviors is a basic part of human nature. Without perspective we would be unable to process the incredible amount of information we receive each day - a quantity that has exploded with the Internet.

Which makes a distinct lack of perspective all the more curious. More and more members of the media, politicians, pundits, bloggers and even your average civic citizen seem to be taking things out of context. Perspective, it would seem, has been thrown out the window.

Maybe this is a result of the Internet, a backlash against the inundation of ideas, news, opinions, commentary. Maybe the Internet fundamentally impairs our ability to imagine anything happening outside of "now."

Perspective, it must be hypothesized, comes with experience. Whether that experience stems from years of studying or from hands-on application does not seem to matter. What does matter is the ability to use that experience to filter out bad information, link good information and arrive at a conclusion that is both aware of the past and weary of the future.

What does that have to do with an Army post in Germany? Not much on face value, I suppose, but it was a chance to expand horizons. Having met and interviewed soldiers throughout my short career as a journalist it was always interesting to listen to them draw parallels and comparisons to life as a university student. Now I can see all of those similarities and differences up close.

Photos from the top: My brother chatting it up at his barracks as we get ready to go out to a beer garden for dinner in town. The overlooking tower at the Gofenwoehr base.

Ambulance chasing

2008-08-25T23:27:00.002-04:00

I have been on the job since mid-way through June and I have yet to see a body.

My landlord, Carl, was a correspondent in the same territory I have maybe ten years ago now. Driving back from a charity softball game in Manchester a couple of weeks ago we got to talking about the ins and outs of the job.

"Have you seen a body yet?" he asked.

"No," I said. "Been to a couple of accidents, a house fire and a home declared unsanitary, but I haven't seen a body."

"You will," he said.

He has tossed me a couple of war stories from his days before he moved over to the Internet and working on print journalism from the other side. He said he once stood out in the cold during the middle of winter to take photographs of police carting off a homicide victim. Before that he helped EMT's work around a car accident, setting up a stretcher for them to haul a victim away from the scene.

Today I ended up on Interstate 93 northbound, just before the Cluff Crossing bridge and before Exit 1 in New Hampshire. A van had rear ended a truck hard enough that the emergency responders had to use the Jaws of Life. I got there just as the helicopter was lifting off, bound for a hospital some eighty miles south in Boston.

If you've never seen a helicopter take off from a highway with the sun setting behind, the red and blue lights of emergency vehicles flashing behind it, kicking up the dirt and dust nearby roadwork...it's a sight.

I still haven't seen a body yet and I know it's only a matter of time, really. I'm not quite sure how I'll react. There are times when I worry I'll get freaked out or end up vomiting on myself, but more often than not I'm afraid it won't do anything for me. It'll just be another story rolling past in a body bag.

Journalism on the march

2008-08-25T23:21:00.002-04:00

Check out this cool new feature from the National Review Online. You may not agree with the politics, you may hate the analysis, but the concept is A-1 (as in the steak sauce).

The only downside I can see, is that print journalists still need to work on getting comfortable on camera.

Ghost Recon's silver lining

2008-08-19T17:32:00.002-04:00

I've been caught up with the coverage of the Olympics, the Georgian Crisis and all the other excitement that seems to have propelled the generally boring dog days of summer into high gear. After four years of studying both history and political science, including one entire class that revolved largely around Soviet politics and the "new" Russia's role in a world of international institutions, you can forgive me for watching way too many reports coming out of the Caucuses instead of updating the blog.

Watching Operation International Handwringing these past few weeks has been a bit depressing and the lack of good concrete coverage of the initial struggle over South Ossetia and then into the heart of Georgia has been downright upsetting in this day and age of technology. Still, that seems to have stabilized in recent days, though the best coverage of the international political cage-match has come out of the BBC.

Here is something of a silver lining - of which there don't seem to be many coming out of that region of the world - for both the United States and the rest of the NATO allies:

What a difference a short war can make. By sending its 58th Army through the Roki tunnel into South Ossetia, Moscow hoped at the very least to deepen Nato divisions.

The opposite has happened. Instead of arguing that the crisis proved her point about the need for restraint, Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, has explicitly endorsed Georgia's bid for membership. France may still have its doubts. if so, they remain private. There are two main reasons for Nato's newfound unity. First, there is a strengthening consensus that Moscow would have acted with more restraint had Georgia already been in Nato, protected by its principle of collective security.

As one expert with long experience of the region put it yesterday: "The thought of the US Air Force on its way would have deterred even Vladimir Putin."

Read the rest of the Times Online here.

The story least taken

2008-08-04T17:16:00.003-04:00

Stories have a lot in common with bad pennies. They always turn up and often in the places you least expect them.

It's something I've known for a while, but never put any proper thought into. Covering the Fourth of July celebration in Salem I found out that most of the proceeds were going to the town's Special Olympics team. A better example would come from a recent trip I took down to the Salem Senior Center.

I originally wanted to do a story on computer lab the center had for seniors - five motley looking machines that were outdated by at least five years or so. The Council on Aging had donated three new computers to replace the center's existing administrative computers. In return those would replace some of the older models in the lab.

On a nice Wednesday morning I made my way over to the senior center and wandered up to the second floor to take a look at the lab and meet some of the kindly senior citizens checking their e-mail and doing their banking online.

What I found was an empty computer lab. And a room full of guys staring at me.

"Are you from the newspaper?" one of them asked. "They said someone from the newspaper was going to come today."

When I nodded they lit up.

What ensued was an hour long conversation with constant interrupts, interjections, and rude jokes about male anatomy. These guys got together three times a week to shoot the shit and then some pool. Retirees for the most part, they enjoyed spending their time with each other rather than wasting away alone at home.

"Look at'im write," said another as I scrawled half remembered quotes onto a notepad. "He's gonna have a novel."

Afterwards they clapped me on the back, telling me what a great paper the Union Leader was (much better than that rag the Eagle-Tribune) and thanked me for stopping by. When I left they were arguing over whose turn it was to shoot.

"We talk for 15 minutes and then no one can remember whose supposed to shoot, who's high and who's low," said a third. "We spend most of our time arguing about it."

It wasn't the story I was looking for, but it was a good story.

Blogging political

2008-08-02T14:46:00.003-04:00

As I recall, blogging as a journalistic tool was just coming into being during the last presidential election. At the time many were unsure of how to properly utilize the power of the blogosphere or what the role of new media would and should become in American politics.

Four years later there are still no concrete answers to those issues and despite this the unregulated, shapeless and uncontrollable power of the blogosphere has taken a prime spot in how the news - especially politics - is reported.

Blogs are no longer the mouthpieces of the fringes, the soapboxes of cyberspace, but a collective that has come to represent the underlying subconscious of the American people. Where, in 2004, bloggers were still struggling to break out of the "nut wandering up and down Mass Ave with a sandwich board sign proclaiming the coming of the end and handing out pamphlets on Jesus Christ" mold, now they command the healthy respect of both journalists and the informed public.

The role of blogs in the 2005 "National Guard papers" debacle at CBS that led to Dan Rather's early retirement certainly had something to do with it.

Only a few years later, with Internet access available to almost anyone who wants it in the continental United States, the long decline of print media and the seemingly general malaise towards the accepted establishment and authority of this country by the public, bloggers have become everything from a source of the news, commentary on current events and a weather gauge for the American people.

Just look at this story on the rapidly expanding "race" controversy that has both presidential candidates shadow boxing with one another:

"As Mr. Obama carefully addressed the issue on Friday, his campaign's formidable network of grass-roots activists, and the Web sites crafted to give them "talking points" to carry into battle against republicans, remained uncharacteristically quiet on the matter, even though the issue dominated political blogs for the second straight day." - Michael Powell, NY times.

While it has not yet become apparent whether mainstream media has fully come to an understanding about blogs and their role in reporting, the paladins of new media have begun to grasp their role in shaping the political world and how journalists report it.

Sidebar

Blogs of Note:

While the wide world of the blogosphere can sometimes seem beyond comprehension, there are few "truck stops" for the political junkie to get a quick slice of pie and a good cup of coffee.

Metaphorically, that is.

Here's a few that seem to do well for themselves:

Huffington Post
The Daily Kos
The Blog (weeklystandard.com)
The Corner (nationalreview.com)

As always, take them with a grain of salt...and maybe an aspirin.

Happy Daze

2008-07-29T17:49:00.002-04:00

I don't know how the market works, but after hearing that oil prices have begun dropping again simply because they could not sustain their high commodity price I've decided that I really don't know how the market works.

Regardless, those happy days are here again.

Kitten corner

2008-07-28T16:46:00.003-04:00

I did a follow up on a heartwarming story coming out of Salem's Animal Rescue League today. Turns out their first ever "kitten shower" - an ingenious sort of idea designed to help alleviate the overcrowded conditions for the unusually high number of cats at their shelter - worked remarkably well.

A little over 50 animals were adopted, including several dogs, but mostly kittens. The ratio of kittens to older cats adopted was roughly equal, which Valorie Hayes, the community relations director at SARL, called "wonderful."

It was a fun story to work on. I got to talk to a few people I hadn't met before, learn about a new issue (more abandoned cats and dogs, in large part due to the downturn in the economy) and pet some kittens.

An aside

2008-07-24T14:54:00.002-04:00

I don't like to get into politics, especially not on the world wide web where punditry has run amok in the same sort of sense that an alien species introduced into a fertile environment runs amok.

Still, as it so often crosses with journalism, it's hard to stay above the fray.

Or to use another bad analogy, when the weeds finally overrun the garden what choice do you have?

Anyway, what has finally ensnared my limited attention span is the explosion of Obamania in the media. Right now three major network news anchors are following Obama on his grand tour of the Old World reporting live wherever Obama touches down like the charismatic tornado he is, while press on both sides of the atlantic sit spellbound as they wait for his latest "John F. Kennedy-esque" speech.

Not that I plan on ranting and raving about that damned liberal media. If you're interested in that, I can direct you to the National Review Online. Still, the situation lends itself to a proper media critique.

Let's conduct a simple and completely unscientific experiment, shall we? On my Google homepage I have RSS feeds to several different new sources, including the Union Leader, Boston Globe, CNN, Google News, and the BBC. At one glance Obama's name lends itself to...4 headlines.

McCain? Just one: "For McCain, Net deficient with young" from today's Boston Globe.

Doesn't quite match up with "Obama calls for world to stand as one" at CNN.com.

The things you learn

2008-07-23T16:35:00.003-04:00

When I was interning with the Newton TAB one of the other reporters took me out for a quick lunch at the eatery/bistro just over the Needham line. While we were eating $8.00 gourmet sandwiches she asked me how I liked being a real reporter.

"I like it a lot," I said. "It gives me a chance to go out and experience stuff."

"Good," she said. "You know, one of my professors once told me that journalism is a license to explore your interests."

I return to that sentence whenever I'm digging up story ideas, whether it was back in the basement newsroom of the Collegian or sitting in the downstairs living room/converted office I use in Windham, New Hampshire. When I'm not busy chasing down ambulances, calling police officers to get the official report on some bit of crime here or there, or rewriting press releases into briefs, exploring my interests is exactly what I'm doing.

And the fun part is the learning.

When I was in college I enjoyed reporting on various issues and subjects because it gave me a chance to learn outside of the classroom - among other things. Now, as a graduate, it gives me the opportunity to learn even beyond college.

Which was why today I headed down to Route 28 in Salem (the same 28 that runs through Bridgewater, Brockton and Boston, for those of you keeping score at home) to find out if local mechanics had seen a rise in the number of customers coming in to find ways to increase their fuel efficiency.

Turns out that quite the opposite was happening, but that's the subject for another blog update on assumptions based on logic that are wrong.

I did learn an incredible amount of how to keep my car in tip-top shape. Turns out there are literally dozens of factors that contribute to either higher or lower gas mileage in a vehicle, from wheel alignment to spark plugs. From Jeff Husson, owner of Husson's Motors, I learned that the best thing to do was get the air filter changed regularly and to keep an eye on my tires. The manager at Meineke stressed proper tire pressure, telling me that softer tires increase friction with the road and can wreak havoc on your gas consumption.

Down at Midas they told me about a number of different avenues I could take to keep a lean gasoline diet. Among them were replacing the spark plugs, regular oil changes and tune-ups.

At the Jiffy Lube I heard a rumor that fully synthetic oils did a better job than the regular refined stuff. I can't vouch for it, Tim Bergeron - the mechanic on duty - told me that he had heard about a couple of major companies doing research into the matter had arrived at that conclusion.

When all was said and done I learned that basically, the best way to keep your car efficient was to change the oil and air filters regularly and keep an eye on the tire pressure. After that the cost of keeping your car well maintained on a regular basis rose from $50 a trip to $500.

Well out of my price range unfortunately, but good to know.

NC State

2008-07-22T16:44:00.003-04:00

North Carolina - where I spent several days earlier this week - and specifically Topsail Island is one of those odd conglomerations of modern Americana that you can't do anything but appreciate.

Like parts of Cape Cod or Hampton Beach, Topsail island is a hodgepodge of lifestyles, culture and contemporary American society. From the local fried seafood place to the overpriced beach store, you can find a Topsail Island just about anywhere in the country. But of course, then it wouldn't be Topsail Island anymore.

You can hear the nasal Yankee twang as often as you pick up the southern drawl in a conversation. Everybody drives a truck, though only the locals have the American made pickups. License plates vary not only in number combination, but in origination. They range all across the eastern seaboard, from Connecticut and Massachusetts to Florida.

By and large the houses are owned locally and many are rented to northerners - who aren't given the ignominious distinction of carpet-baggers, though I did hear a couple folks talking about Bill Belicheck and the "Cheaters" - or other out-of-towners.

Like the Cape, Topsail Island has a transient feel to it, at least while I was there during what was presumably the height of the tourist season. Every Saturday the new group of renters sits in traffic to cross the bridge onto the island while last week's renters wait in equally awful traffic on the other side of the road.

Still, the local flavor stimulates the palate. A roller-rink, open nightly, sits above the town's post office which one person described to me "could have come straight out of Mayberry."

I didn't get a chance to sample Topsail's townie-bar (and restaurant and pub), but after getting turned away at the door by a lanky looking fellow standing next to one of the town cops having his evening beer in uniform I had my fill. I did get a chance to sample the fair at the local crab shack and sucked down fried scallop, french fries and onion rings along with a couple of Coronas.

So while the view might have been the same as you could get somewhere on Cape Cod, and the restaurants and nightlife could have been found anywhere along the boardwalk at Hampton Beach, Topsail Island deftly maneuvered between the crass empty over-commercialization of a place like Daytona Beach and the almost oppressive tightly-woven fiber of a Nantucket town.

The perfect get-away.

Meet and greet

2008-07-15T17:33:00.003-04:00

There are many things I enjoy about my job.

One of which is exploring new areas, issues or ideas and meeting new people every day. Fostering some of those relationships and making new contacts, be it within city hall, the police station, amongst the selectmen, is extremely enjoyable. One of the things I have missed about reporting on UMass was the ability to know offhand who I needed to get hold of for any situation.

Crime? Deputy Chief Pat Archbald down at Dickinson Hall. Student Government? Aaron Buford (depending on whether he was answering his cell phone that day or not) or Sean down at Student Affairs. Some sensitive issue you knew the University wasn't going to talk to you about? Ed Blaguszewski at the News and Information office.

I knew I was going to eventually get back to that point no matter where I ended up, but the process of rebuilding those contacts has been unbelievably enjoyable.

I've established a good report with the Salem PD lt in charge of dealing with the press (he was "just busting my balls" last week when he chewed me out in a friendly sort of way for misspelling his name). I'm also in good favor with many of the officials in town hall - especially after that feature on the son of the director of Public Works' return from Afghanistan. I've also written a couple of articles on the various fire department's in the area and they no longer just consider me a voice on the telephone.

A big part of this job appears to be establishing those contacts early on and doing a good job of nurturing those relationships as they grow. Sure, I could end up burning bridges here or there down the road, but only if necessary, and as a last possible move.

Oh, and the other thing I love about my job? I sat out on the back porch this afternoon sipping ice coffee and working shirtless to keep up on my tan.

Lost in translation

2008-07-10T17:34:00.003-04:00

I stumbled across this very interesting analysis of a heart-wrenching international story spun out of proportion across the global media all throughout this week. It raises some pretty interesting ethical questions that a journalist at any level would be fain to find clear-cut questions to.

I think the first, and probably the foremost, would have to be trust. How much trust can you place in the information given to you by a source? And since every story, no matter how big or how small is derived from various sources of even more varying credibility, how much can a reporter, a newspaper, or a media outlet put into corroborating information?

It's a question I can't answer.

Though I do believe the New York Times did the best it could with what it had. While the old standard of American journalism may have become tarnished in recent years, this isn't a case of sensationalization or a false report (*cough* Jason Blair *cough*), but a story that editors evaluated fully.

The Times did the right thing by saying "hey, we didn't get this completely wrong, but we didn't get it all right either. And for that we apologize."

In a situation where editors could have easily made a number of excuses for the problems with the mother's account of her tribulations, approaching deadlines, corroborating evidence, the credibility of the photojournalist, etc., they took the higher road. In a time where every mistake, every missed fact, every poorly chosen adjective chips away a little bit more at the public trust of newspapers, editors, reporters and photographers alike, the Times may have made a step in the right direction.

Headliner

2008-07-08T13:00:00.002-04:00

The "House of Filth" story (as it has been dubbed by at least one of my editors) did make the front page today. I thought the layout was pretty nice...made me miss the nights spent swearing under my breath while trying to make a story wrap around a headline and a photo in InDesign.

Only a little though.

Legwork, legwork, legwork

2008-07-07T18:51:00.004-04:00

Nothing beats doing a story in-person.

What I mean by that is pretty simple. With all the tools given to the modern journalist it has become increasingly possible for the reporter to never have to leave his or her desk. If some news breaks call the parties involved and get a statement. Need background information? Just a quick Google search away.

I can't remember the last time I actually used a phonebook to find a phone number. Hell, if you're lucky, you can get most of an individuals background information straight off the Internet.

Of course, the downside could mean missing the real story.

Earlier today I received a press release detailing the closure of a split-level house in a nice neighborhood of the Salem suburbs. A 2-year old girl was found wandering down the street naked by a neighbor - who called the police. After they returned the child to her parents, about 1/8 a mile down the road, police noticed the smell of rotten food and trash coming from the house. Inside they found raw sewage backed up in the upstairs toilets and sink, rotten food and trash throughout the house, as well as feces and dirty diapers on the carpet. Town officials quickly closed the house due to the unsanitary condition of the home.

Now, I could have written up the story pretty quickly with only a call to the police department and another to the Health Department. Would have been all I'd have to do to get the story filed by tonight.

I actually did all of the above. And then I drove down from Windham to the house. Which is where I ran into a couple of cops, a detective and the health inspector. It made the whole story for me. Not only was I able to get photos of the investigation team as they went into the house (which was later called "unfit for human habitation), but I got a heads up on where the investigation was going and the ability to describe the house and yard in my article.

I put a link to it up here tomorrow when it runs (rumor has it front page material, but we'll see).

The lesson is, as always, to do the legwork. I was given a lesson (thankfully a happy one) in doing the extra work and going the full nine yards over just mailing it in from behind my desk.

"Today, we celebrate our independence"

2008-07-04T13:36:00.003-04:00

"[The British] came over with about a million men and we had a bunch of farmers with pitch forks and we beat'em like a drum."

-Roy O'Bannon, Shanghai Knights.

Happy Independence Day!

I'm off to cover the celebrations in Salem. Barring any rain tonight, it will include a DJ, vendors and fireworks just after dark. Windham and Pelham were scheduled to have their festivities last night, but severe thunderstorm warnings and torrential downpours throughout the early evening, left both postponed.

Pelham expects to celebrate Sunday evening instead. Windham is rescheduling for Labor Day. Who ever heard of Labor Day fireworks?

Need help getting into the spirit of things today? Look no further:

"We are an army out to set other men free."

"No bastard ever won a war by dying for his country."

Training day

2008-07-03T14:17:00.000-04:00

I got this handy journalism training video passed on to me earlier this week. It made up for not having taken more than a single journalism-related class during my entire college experience.

And when I say class, I don't mean a course...I mean literally that one literary journalism lecture I audited during the last week of the semester.

Checklist for entrepreneurial young journalist:

Reporters notepads (check)

Camera (check)

Fedora

Pens/pencils (check)

Press card

Laptop/typewriter (check)

Fake mustache

Please plan your shopping trips for my birthday accordingly.

It's always sunny in Windham

2008-07-02T14:58:00.000-04:00

I got to be the bad guy the other day when I arrived at the scene of two homes damaged during last weekend's severe thunderstorms. Nobody likes talking to a reporter, I have found, and especially not when you have a tree lodged through the second story of your house.

The best way to get someone who has no interest in talking to you, who is in fact insulted that you're stepping on their property to ask them what sound like inane questions about their home, their life or their loved ones is to empathize with them. Doesn't always work, but if you get lucky they'll bring down the barriers and treat you as if you weren't a member of the paparazzi.

This time I got lucky. "I'm sorry for your loss," I told the two women I found sitting in lawn chairs and staring at the mess that once served as a focal point in their lives.

"I can understand what you're going through," I say, after initially being brushed off. "My family cabin up in the Lakes Region was destroyed last year. Couple of trees took most of the porch and a portion of the house out. Same situation as this."

"Thank you," says one and the other nods slowly.

We begin talking about the homes and the amount of damage and I don't come off as much as a walking turd with neither the sense nor the etiquette to let them mourn in peace. Often times, if you show a little respect and good manners, and display a certain amount of patience by not giving into the pressures placed on you by the editors waiting on the story, you can get the full story.

The best example I can think of off the top of my head would be the death, allegedly by suicide, of a UMass student last year. Under the pressure of trying to get the news out, both myself and Eric Athas posted immediate stories on our respective online media outlets. Since the family wasn't talking and friends were being asked not to talk to members of the press both of us borrowed - in varying degrees - information from her facebook page.

Both members of her family and her friends criticized our decision to do so.

Which I don't question. Journalism is a double-edged sword that way. You do what you have to do to get the story out and ask questions later.

Still, Will McGuinness found that middle road and resisting pressure from me to get a story on her life, alleged suicide, and mourning friends out as soon as possible he contacted the family and stood back, waiting for them to decide the appropriate time to speak out.

What he got was a great story and a personal connection to the family that exceeded anything the other newspapers - competing to get her tragic, paper-selling story out - had.

Sometimes a little patience, and a little deference, can go a long way.

Failure to launch

2008-06-27T14:17:00.000-04:00

I've spent much of the day trying in earnest to upload two videos I took of the Fire Explorers learning how to tap a fire hydrant properly without much success. For some reason blogger keeps refusing the two 3 minute videos; I hope it's a temporary problem.

In the meantime, I'd like to express my newfound devotion to the Old Spice corporation. For years and years I was a Right Guard type of guy, with the occasional dabble into Gillette brand deodorant. I can't honestly say that I've ever own anything made by Old Spice until this past year.

What did it for me? The commercials.

I think I'm like most Americans when I say that the most annoying by-product of living in a highly commercialized, disposable economy are the ads. You can't go anywhere without seeing them, billboards, newspapers, books, athletic fields and arenas, Web sites, etc. It has reached the point, I believe, that the average American is completely saturated with advertising.

Which has the dark-humor sort of effect by canceling itself out. When was the last time you honestly went out and purchased something because of an ad (I'm discounting movie ads here, because that's just not fair)? You buy things because they're recommended to you, by a friend, a relative or a teacher/boss, not because you saw a billboard on I-95 strongly urging you to get that new Mach Turbo 9000 with 16 blades for the smoothest shave in your life.

So when a company actually goes out and does some original marketing, not a dance mascot, or a series of shots of satisfied customers, but a real inventive line of advertising, I'm sold. Hell, I started buying Old Spice brand products just out of appreciation.

This spot, which I believe came in the middle of a Super Bowl, was confusing, but had potential nonetheless. I was intrigued, but not yet sold. In fact, it probably wasn't until I saw this that I began to truly understand what it meant to be an Old Spice kind of man. Still, I didn't buy my first stick of Old Spice deodorant until they began running this already classic spot. Now I can happily say I not only own Old Spice deodorant, but Head and Body wash as well!

Ahoy!

Fire watch

2008-06-26T20:46:00.000-04:00

The past couple of days have been exceptionally fun. I finally seem to have enough momentum rolling with the features I'm working on to keep myself busy when news isn't breaking in Salem.

On deck, I've got a story about a new wing opening at the Salem Animal Rescue League, a pet-food drive sponsored by the Rockingham Park people, and a pair of librarians retiring. I've also got a decent story on how the town's planning to switch over to a fiber optic connections between all the buildings in town.

Salem is definitely a bustling town on the verge.

And when I say on the verge, I mean on the verge of transforming into a city. At the crossroads of route 97, 28 and Interstate 93, the "gateway to the White Mountains" and home of Canobie Lake Park and America's Stonehenge, Salem is primed to get to the next level.

Already a commission is looking into changing the town charter to create a local government comprised of a city or town council, rather than a board of selectmen.

Still, Salem has a lot of throwbacks to what can only be described as a "simpler time." There is a small town mentality that has stuck with the people of this area. They know their selectmen, they follow local politics, and they care very deeply about their community, which resides somewhere very much away from the commercial district called "The Depot" where 28 and 97 meet.

One of those throwbacks is a group called the "Fire Explorers." It's a group of teenagers, ages 14-21 who volunteer to help out down at the fire department. In return, they get training, the ability to ride the trucks on calls,

and EMT practice. It's a pretty exciting and rewarding program.

I took a bunch of photos (look Tedder, I'm a photographer! Ain't you proud?) and got to hang out with a bunch of awkward, shy teens trying to figure out if they should be more embarrassed that I was interviewing them or happy.

All in all it was a great experience for myself. I learned a little bit about firefighting and managed to meet a few more of the guys on the local fire department. That makes two town departments I'm officially tight with at the moment.

Post or perish

2008-06-24T17:31:00.000-04:00

I haven't blogged in quite some time; a vicious reversal of my daily posts when I was still with the Massachusetts Daily Collegian struggling to keep a dying news blog alive.

In my defense, I've been busy. Pelham and Salem manage to eat up a good sized chunk of my time when I'm not paying attention. I got this great story out of Pelham last week that I will definitely have to e-mail Katie Huston when I get a chance. She told me before we all left for the summer that if I came across anything ridiculous that I was to send it to her right away. I think this qualifies.

Crime-wise this week has been much less entertaining. I've gone two weeks without a major press release out of Salem PD, though they did arrest two coke dealers last week - unfortunately the officer in charge of media communications was out for the day - and only the occasional wackiness from Pelham.

Last week a hot air balloon landed in Pelham and scared a dog enough to send him flying out into the street where he was promptly hit by a car and killed. It may have been one of the most ridiculous public safety-related events I have ever heard. Unfortunately, the officer on duty at the time went home early and didn't file a report on the event until almost a full week later...

I guess those are the breaks.

My Marathon Day

2008-06-17T23:18:00.000-04:00

For the first time in about a month I felt like I was a reporter today.

My day started out slow enough, visi

ting the various police chiefs and communications officers in the area, as well as stopping in at a couple of town offices. I'm happy to report I successfully found Atkinson.

Around noon, as I was gathering material together that looked like it might turn into a story or two (and actually start to earn my paycheck) when I got a call from my editor informing me that an 21-year-old soldier and Afghanistan veteran was returning to Salem for the first time in over fifteen months.

It was his first time home since his initial deployment a little over a year ago.

I met up with David Wholley and about twenty other members of the Salem Department of Public Works erecting a flag display on one of the Route 93 overpass in Salem. Turns out the young soldier, Thomas Russell, was the son of Rick Russell, Salem's director of Public Works.

His co-workers arranged for a squadron of DPW trucks to line the road, lights flashing, to line the overpass, while the town employees waved American flags as a motorcade of motorcycles - many of them ridden by off-duty police officers, fire fighters, and other town employees - escorted the vehicle carrying Russell and his family home from the Manchester Airport.

It was just about then that one of the DPW guys got a call indicating that a water main had been struck by a construction crew digging a hole to replace a power pole on Main Street. Jokingly, they mentioned that they had another story idea to me and the other member of the press present.

I quickly hopped in my car and ended up beating many of the public works guys to the scene of the accident. Nice.

I threw that story together after about a half hour watching water bubble up from a good sized hole on Main Street before wandering down to the town library. Free wireless is a plus, as I learned today after going to Barnes & Nobles on Route 28 hoping for a chance to check the ol' e-mail.

Afterwards I met up with Thomas Russell, his family and friends, and interviewed both him and his parents on his return from Afghanistan. I always enjoy doing a story on a veteran...something about it just gets my journalism gears churning. He seemed like a great guy to go out with sometime, reminded me a lot of my little brother (also a veteran). The family was gracious in letting me interview them and offered me drinks and food if I wanted to stay.

Thankfully, I declined. As I wrote copy back at the Salem library I got a call from the equivalent of a Collegian Night Editor letting me know that there was a major accident on Route 38 in Pelham. Mind you, I'm only halfway done with the Vet story and enjoying every minute of writing it up.

I'm told this is my number one priority. I agree and hop back into my car, speeding off towards Route 38. After about ten minutes I arrive at the scene of the accident - 4 mangled cars and a completely backed up road. Glass scattered across the pavement, hot from a day full of sunshine with only the tinge of humidity. There is no blood, but I arrive late, maybe half an hour after the accident itself. This despite the fact that the rescue teams used the Jaws of Life to remove several of the passengers trapped in one car, including one woman five months pregnant.

For the second time today I meet up with the competition. A photographer from the Eagle-Tribune and then a little later a reporter from the Lowell Sun. We meet up, exchange pleasantries and then laugh at how we keep trying to sneak into the scene of the accident to take photos when the police officers aren't looking. Despite the rivalry in this area between the Union Leader and the Eagle-Tribune, not to mention the Sun, we all get along well.

Keep in mind, all the injuries were minor. I'm not that big of a jerk.

Long story short...I get my three stories in, complete with photos. Today was a good day.

First day on the job

2008-06-16T19:08:00.000-04:00

I got my introduction to Salem, New Hampshire today, as well as the surrounding communities of Pelham, Windham and Atkinson. Actually, that's not true. I couldn't find Atkinson. Add a GPS device to the list of equipment a reporter needs to have handy at all times.

In any event, I attempted to meet Salem's police chief (unsuccessful) though I did meet the Salem town manager's secretary and found out that the meeting I had been planning on covering tonight had been cancelled.

Very much a town that faces south, towards Boston rather than Concord or Manchester, Salem is essentially a commuter community made up largely of expatriated Massachusetts residents. Methuen is only a stone's throw from the center of town and Haverhill isn't much further away. While I'm in a completely different state right now, I'm actually closer to my home in Bridgewater, MA than I was while at school in Amherst.