Written Pyramids

I'm not really a broadcast news kind of person; I read the newspaper--some on print and some online-- and I listen to NPR. But every once and a while I end up watching the 11 o'clock local news. One of those once-in-a-whiles was the night before the nuclear summit. 

I was watching a television show, and the teasers for  the news kept repeating "How will road closings for the nuclear summit affect your morning commute? Find out at 11."

"Excellent," I thought, as I listened to a stream of motorcades go past the window, "I would love to know if it will affect my morning commute."

So, I stayed by the television to find out. I didn't even get a map of road closures. I got man on the street interviews with person after person who got to tell the television audience how they thought the road closures would affect their own personal commutes.

 First of all, viewers were not informed of where these random people lived or worked so there was no way to draw connections from their experiences to my own. Second of all, these interviews were not live; they were filmed before the road closures began, so the men and women being interviewed were guessing. Hello random person I don't know why YES I want to know whether you think it's annoying that the roads are closed. Oh, wait. I don't. I certainly don't want your inexpert opinions on whether the road closures are necessary in place of actual information about what the road closures are and how they will affect my morning.

In the end, I logged onto WPost.com and found a map there.

Anyway, this is all old news. I had actually forgotten about this particular annoyance until I came across this xkcd comic:

News networks giving a greater voice to viewers because the social web is so popular are like a chef on the Titanic who,  seeing the looming iceberg and fleeing customers, figures ice is the future and starts making snow cones. 

Comparing any news source to the Titanic makes me gloomy, but I certainly agree with the sentiment.

Bonus: Here is an interview with  a guy who  basically makes it his job to get quoted as a man-on-the-street as often as possible.  Most recently, he was first in line to get the iPad, and all sorts of news outlets and blogs dutifully reported it, though many have caught on to his antics. Back in 2003, the AP warned reporters about quoting him.

Overheard on an airplane in D.C.:

Flight Attendant to boarding passenger: I like your dress.

Boarding Passenger (who appears to be in her 20s and is wearing a knee-legnth, pink, sleeveless dress with detailing around the hem): Thank you.

Flight Attendant: It's very Sex and The City.

Boarding Passenger: It's very TJ Maxx.

Flight Attendant: It's very Carrie Bradshaw.

Passenger continues walking. I wonder if she felt complimented by the somewhat strange exchange and how much she sees herself in Bradshaw (projecting my own life onto this stranger I would guess 'not at all'.)

A good friend of mine just graduated George Washington University. On the evening before the university-wide commencement, she decided she wanted to write something clever on her hat. She has four years of college-level Arabic,  and decided to advertise that by writing "Hire Me!" in English and Arabic.

"If you write that on your hat, you absolutely will get your photo taken," I said.

And lo and behold, the AP published five photos of  the commencement. One of them was a photo of her hat (the link to the photo I was using is now broken, so the photo itself is not currently available).

I'd like to think I have a highly attuned news sense, but I'm a little concerned that if the media is that predictable, I'm not the only one who is manipulating it.

This was outside a poster store that sells lots of things I can't afford and a lot of Obama posters. I do have some Obama pins at work, which are hanging next to McCain ones in a display of journalistic objectivity. Maybe I'll bring one home and go poster shopping.

When Republicans complained about President Obama's "empathy" standard, she [Sotomayor] agreed, and politely suggested that they ask the president what he means by it. "We apply law to facts, we don't apply feelings to facts," she said.

-- Republicans Unable to Pin Her Down: With Democrats' Help, Sotomayor Has Blunted GOP Senators' Best Efforts, Washington Post, July 16.

sym·pa·thy: the act or capacity of entering into or sharing the feelings or interests of another b: the feeling or mental state brought about by such sensitivity <sympathy for the poor>... synonyms see attraction, pity

em·pa·thy : the action of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experience of another of either the past or present without having the feelings, thoughts, and experience fully communicated in an objectively explicit manner ; also : the capacity for this

--www.merriam-webster.com

A few months ago, I turned down a request to teach journalism to third graders in a D.C. public school. It's a project I'm passionate about. Even if I don't think these kids will be able to become journalists in the way that the job is currently defined, if a couple of them want to become reporters, there will be a platform for their reporting.

But even more importantly than training new reporters for a new age (because let's face it kids will change their minds a million more times between third grade and twelfth, let alone after college) I still believe that journalism, in its classic sense, presents a ton of incredible life skills that can be absorbed at any age.

As a friend put it in her farewell column at our college newspaper:

" Reporting kills tentativeness, though, and then kicks it for good measure. Last summer during a scavenger hunt, I was cajoling two greasy-haired men in a Duane Reade into posing for photos in ugly plastic hats when an editor-friend who taught me loads about reporting took gleeful credit for my current lack of shame."

And a lot of people never do learn to read well: Approximately 40 percent of fourth-grade children in the United States lack basic reading skills; 20 percent of all graduating high-school seniors are classified as functionally illiterate (meaning that their reading and writing skills are insufficient for ordinary practical needs); and about 42 million adults in the United States cannot read.

Every Monday, people -- the devoted fans, and the ones who do not feel like heading to the bigger, more crowded show on the Mall-- come to watch James Bond movies.

Tourist child stepping out of her family's mini van into the DC twilight air: It feels like I just opened the dishwasher.
Sister: She's right. It's like opening the dishwasher.

I can see how the humidity is aptly compared with the sudden blast of steam that comes with the clean dishes. Well said, girls.

He looks --oddly--like a movie depiction of himself. A second-rate adventure or spy movie, he has the tan of the hero who has just returned from somewhere hot and volatile, Africa or the Middle East. His light brown hair idealized as dirty with desert's dust but bleached with its sun. Like a man who dropped weight from his sinewy arms, covered legs, from beneath his now-boxy too blue, too clean button up: sleeves rolled to his elbows in a too careful imitation of spontaneity. He wears the overlarge sun glasses of a man poised to capture the bad guys, deliver state secrets, the latter helped by the memory stick bouncing on his chest.

But there are too many dissonances to maintain the illusion.

I first notice him at the water fountain, taking a long drink, his arm curled around the top of the round fountain just below the basin and spout, as if he needs the extra support or needs to feel the cool metal against his skin. As he walks to the bench next to mine --at dusk, I am perhaps the only one sitting in the sparsely populated circle who does not intend to stay the night-- he is slowed by the bags he drags behind him. struggling to contain their own contents they are large enough to contain a man's life, lashed together with rope that looks strong enough for now.

His cargo pants--the obvious costume for her fictional alter ego--are pulled down by the over-full pockets, hints of paper showing through the buttoned flaps.

He sits, and we play a game of not staring, each looking away when the other turns. I am entranced by the deep-blueness of his shirt, the lack of obvious stains, his seeming calmness. He wins the game; I cannot see his eyes behind those glasses.

But he gets up again, after only a few minutes, back to the water fountain, leaving his bags at the bench. Again he curls his arm around the fountain. Again he takes his time. As he walks, the seat of his pants is revealed, whitened with dirt and frayed material. The traction on his shoes--soft black ankle boots--is entirely worn off. His left shoelace is frayed, a spray of thread.

Again he sits, again we don't stare. I focus on the lines of my book noticing the words, not comprehending their meaning. I close it quickly, smooth my skirt, and get up, walking around the inside of the circle, heading home. I glance behind me. I think he glances back, again, the glasses. He bends his elbows, reaching behind his head, pushing his head onto his palm, extending his feet, crossing his ankles, his heels just touching the ground. As if he is trying to catch the rest of the sun, as if he is in no rush with no concern, as if he is following instructions to wait for the man who needs the memory stick hanging around his neck.

On the other side of the circle, a woman in a hooded, thin sweatshirt despite the heat, hair pulled tightly back, glasses slightly tinted, sits on a bench next to her bulged bag. Her foot bounces rapidly, only the ball of her foot on the ground, her leg vibrating her body. Nervous, and impatient, she waits.

He looks wide-eyed and lost, sitting on the bench in Virginia waiting for something or someone who doesn't show. A man in a suit approaches us--the lost man and me--and asks him if he knows the way to Crystal Drive. He doesn't, he says, he just arrives in Washington today, and I point in the wrong direction.
I go back to my newspaper and look up surprised and abashed. I turn to the lost man now fingering his shopping bags.
"I told him the wrong way," I say, and we start to laugh.
He is visiting from Nigeria, about to be a student in Texas but first he needs a visa, so he can be a tourist in London. It took him three hours to get to the embassy, lost as he was on the Metro.
I asked him if--in the 24 hours he has left -- he is planning on doing touring.
"Where would I go?"
I stumble. "Go see all the great buildings... and monuments. Go to the White House."
"Why?"
It suddenly strikes me as an incredibly on point question. Why would he want to see the White House from behind the tall fence? I try again. "It's the seat of our democracy..." I stop again. "The Smithsonian museums are great. Go see them."
I turn back to my newspaper, suddenly and stingingly inarticulate in my native language.
"Are you waiting for someone?"
I look up again.
"No, just waiting. I need to finish my M&M's before I go, because you can't eat on the metro."
He laughs. He's right. It is absurd.
"Are you married?"
"Um no. ... Not yet."
Silence again. I wonder if I should make up a fake boyfriend.
"Would you marry an African man."
I try silence for a moment, and then say "I'm not ready to get married."
"Would you walk with me?"
"I can't," I say popping the last M&M into my mouth and moving to the garbage can. "I have to go," feeling guilty at abandoning my newspaper mid-article, at manufacturing an excuse, at leaving him, a foreigner, in the Virginia town that feels foreign to me only a few metro stops outside of D.C.

From last week's paper version of the environment issue of The Onion: EPA Didn't Know Anybody Was Still Drinking Water

From the EPA's newsroom, a July 7 press release: Blog Question of the Week: Why do you drink bottled water or tap water?

Isn't there someone who is supposed to check these things?

A mother tries to shepherd her two children across the street. The girl moves slowly as she tries to pull the small braids into a single ponytail on the top of her head.

Her slightly younger brother hurries to the middle of the street, sticks out his palm to stop the absent traffic on the street that is only busy in the morning, and waves his sister across, barely avoiding touching her back as he urges her to keep walking. He drops his hands at his mother's second urging, and exclaims, "I've always wanted to be a crossing guard!"

Walking home, I am at first struck by the smallness of his dreams.

And then, for a moment, I imagine being that small. In elementary school, when all the cars are so much larger than you are and when you are told over and over again, being able to stop traffic, must seem like a super power. And, at his age, he probably still thinks the reflective vests are cool.

His dreams are--in many ways--as big as they come.

A man in a large, deep-blue shirt with a faded picture, and jeans stands over the water fountain at the circle, he squints into a compact mirror--the kind I bought for 99 cents in CVS and then threw away because the mirror was too small and the latch too hard to open--as he rinses shaving cream off of his face and runs his razor across the few remaining places.

Across the path which lets pedestrians enter the circle, there is a bench covered in blankets. The benches are unusually empty this morning, so I guess the blankets belong to him.

A father hurries his family through the cross-walk into the circle. They notice the man shaving.
"Personal hygiene. That's more than I can say for myself," he muses, running his hand over his chin.

On the other side of the circle, another family hurries through the opposite crosswalk.

As they walk into the circle, the mother, presumably in answer to a question, says, "it's a guy on a horse."

"George Washington," I mutter to myself. "It's George Washington. Can't you tell? Besides, you are in Washington Circle." I resist the urge to yell.

There is sometimes a moment on the metro home from work when I notice that the light has changed. It falls sharper and brighter on the page of my book or on my half-closed eyelids. I look in, and take a quick breath. The train has moved out of the tunnel, and suddenly there is water. Even with the guard rails and the set of the tracks, the view of the river and the flashing-by tour of the monuments--Washington, the top of Lincoln, and then Jefferson--always makes me smile a bit and gives me a moment of wonder at this squat skyline I am trying to embrace as I become comfortable with living in this city.
I see him when I am on the other side of the circle, he is rounding towards me, tall and somewhat lanky except for his biceps which are large enough to raise Mitchell's eyebrows. But it is the t-shirt I recognize first, the Columbia crown in white stretching across the front of his blue shirt I think of saying something to him, but let him run past me. We are on the inside of the circle, and a homeless man who has laid his blanket out on a bench on the outer path near the entrance, beckons to the Columbia runner.
"Cool shirt man!"
He hesitates and then jogs over.
"Thanks."
"What's it from."
"Columbia."
I linger to hear more, but, tired and hungry and on my way home, I do not move close enough to hear more.
"I am a proud and loyal graduate."
There is gesturing and gesticulating, he fingers his own sleeve as if to demonstrate the quality of his own t-shirt.

I notice, that people are moving home slowly despite the gray skies that threaten to release the rain that has flooded parts of the region earlier in the week, but I too join those who walk home slowly as if daring the sky to soak them before they make it home.

When I called the Newseum to ask about buying tickets before it opened, I asked how long it would take to go through the museum, which has five floors and over 24 hours of movies.
"We expect visitors to spend two to three hours going through the Museum," the woman on the other end of the phone said.
"What does the length depend on?" I asked.
"The size of the group."
"The size of the group, not the dorkiness of the group?"
[A slight confused pause.] "No. The size of the group."

Let it be known that the dorkiness of the group matters. (And makes for a much more critical and demanding group of visitors).

My group included four reporters and a copy editor. We entered the museum at 1 p.m. At 4:30 we had two floors to go. We decided to skip the exhibit on the Internet and see how long we could push the 5 p.m. closing time before getting kicked out. (About half an hour).

In the week since I have visited the Newseum, I've found myself increasingly describing it as "a history museum through the news". The room that ate up an hour and a half of our time and could have warranted a full day has tons of pull out drawers that are meant to show both the progression of newspapers from booklets to today's papers and to highlight the history that newspapers have recorded.

The letter John Peter Zenger dictated to his wife to have published in the next week's journal, apologizing for the decline in quality because he was arrested.
The newspaper with the gigantic J'ACCUSE headline about the Dreyfus affair
A copy of the LA Times declaring that everyone survived the Titanic crash.
Dewey Defeats Truman.
Nixon resigns.

They have many of the greatest hits and greatest embarrassments. (Though Ford To City: Drop Dead is noticeably absent). And, though Wonkette's slippers, the Watergate door, Anne Lander's letter opener, and Helen Thomas' clothes seem bizarre, some of the other paraphernalia --a reporter's kit from the civil war that includes a flask, a notebook page from a Newsweek reporter with the words "Monica Lewinsky" underlined at the top, and a page of Bob Woodward's Watergate notes, to name a few--were enough to evoke awe from the and opened mouths from me and my journalists friends.

But while the museum conveys a lot of respect for newspapers, media, and the journalists that put their lives on the line (a video tribute to a photographer killed when the Twin Towers fell is particularly moving) a visitor could come out of the museum still believing that newsrooms are smoke filled and that journalists use typewriters.

Short of a virtual "be a reporter" computer game there is nothing that actually conveys the day to day work of a reporter. No explanation of the editing process, no modern printing presses (or photos of them for that matter).

And, as one of the reporters I was with pointed out, while there is an excellent exhibit of Pulitzer Prize winning photographs, there is no where where you can read amazing articles from beginning to end. (The front pages don't jump and the set up is not conducive to reading the whole thing. Instead they effectively send a tingle of respect and history through the spines of interested visitors). The museum could benefit from a reading room and a place to listen to broadcasts.

One element of a journalists life was inadvertently conveyed -- the jolt of moving from one news story to another, from tragedy to triumph. While the Sept. 11 exhibit is moving and opens onto a walk way so there is time for contemplation, the memorial to journalists who were killed while reporting is next to the broadcast exhibit, and can feel like a walk-through. It is not conducive for quiet contemplation. In the excellent Pulitzer winning photos exhibit, there is a movie plays in which an interview with the photographer who took the photo of the Vietnamese man about to be shot is followed by an interview with the photographers who took the photos at the Atlanta Olympics. For a museum that had enough attention to detail to cleverly puts corrections and misleading headlines in all of the bathrooms, the lack of time for reflection in places where it was needed seems like a glaring oversight.

The First Amendment exhibit should have delved deeper into some of the cases so that even people who had taken Con. Law 101 could have learned something, the map of where free press exists was appropriately anger evoking and the mini-profiles of the men and women who wrote despite restrictions felt like teasers to longer stories but duly evoked deep respect for the journalists. I loved that both the Pentagon papers and the arm band that spurred Tinker V. Des Moines were on display .

Despite my criticisms, I would go back for many more visits. I didn't get a chance to watch the movies that look at individual parts of journalism history--such as coverage (or lack thereof) of the civil right movement-- or elements of putting out a newspaper--such as questions of bias. And I would love to spend a whole day in the News History Gallery.

I just hope that the Newseum uses its promised temporarily exhibits to fill in some of the holes.

Oh and while they're at it, a discount for working journalists wouldn't hurt.

Photo from a Facebook ad for the Newseum. The ad is also in the Metro. Does anyone else think it's weird that it seems to imply that the White House is in East Germany?

The conference center, owned by a policy group, is full of white men in suits, making me very aware that I still cover an old boys' club.

In the bathroom of the policy group, a confident looking woman dressed in black jeans and a black E line NYC subway t-shirt stands over the sink as she carefully shaves her head with a pink razor taken from a UPS box that looks like it contained a care package.

As people rush in and out of the bathroom -- the conference has just resumed--she does not break her deliberate pace and does not make eye contact.

There is surprisingly little hair on the floor.

Sure, the Times made me sad, but today I miss New York.

Tomorrow morning, I need to have a costume for Hebrew school. I am going as a cat. There is no way I will have time in the morning, so I have made ears out of paper, markers and a headband, and I have made a tail by pinning black stockings to my skirt.

I will have to travel to school with the stockings attached to my skirt. In New York, no one would blink twice. I would even be able to wear the ears without attracting many stares.

Here, people will notice. That rule about not making eye contact doesn't exist. And there are fewer characters on the subway: no preachers, Mariachi bands, homeless women fighting with passengers, no artists sketching the passengers. Just people prominently displaying their government ID's, and tourists looking very confused and very pleased with themselves for having made it to the Nation's capital.

There is no one wearing tails made of stockings.

Maybe I'll eat on the Metro to distract people from my tail.

The title is from a Washington D.C. metro ad about taking your newspapers with you when you leave the metro

Here are a few things I have read and overheard in my blogging hiatus. Don't hold me to the exact wording.

Washington D.C. reporter repeating what was said at a press conference by a government official: "We all know that getting into a fight with a newspaper reporter is like getting into a fight with a skunk. The question is, is the stink coming from the [Name of Newspaper in question] based on facts?"


Helen Thomas: Are there prisons in America?
Deputy White House Press Secretary: Are there prisons? Was that the question?
Helen Thomas: Yes.
DWHPS: Yes.
Helen Thomas: Why don't you use them to hold Guantanamo Bay prisoners?...We have non-citizens in our jails...You don't want to hold them there because you don't want to give them due process.
DWHPS: It doesn't sound like you want me to answer your question.


Reporter: The meeting that was canceled, where was it held?
DWHPS: Where did the meeting that didn't happen take place?
Reporter: If the meeting had happened where would it have taken place?
DWHPS:On the 18 acres...in the White House or the OEOB [Old Executive Office Building]
Reporter: If the meeting had happened, who would have been there.
DWHPS: ...I can assure you that the guest list of the meeting that didn't happen is not news.
Reporter: I think we make that determination
DWHPS: O.K.
Reporter: and we decided it was news.
DWHPS (annoyed): Clearly.