The continuing adventures of InDesign's spellcheck

A few weeks ago at work, we had an updated version of InDesign installed on our computers. I briefly worried that the most fascinating aspect of our InDesign - the crazed, angry, prophetic, cruel, sympathetic, sophomoric, harsh, unforgiving, all-knowing spellcheck - would have been altered in the new version. Would it still offer up Satan as a correction for Ashton? Would psychobiology still be a suggested change for Scooby-Doo? Or would InDesign go legit and normalize, blending in with all the other boring spellchecks in the world?

No worries. Some more examples of InDesign spellcheck's peculiar outlook on the world:

Salma (as in Hayek): Slimy, salami
Katy (as in Perry): Kooky, kitty
Volkswagen: Folksinger - Surely many unkempt hippie folksingers drove Volkswagens back in the day. But how does InDesign know this?

Lorenzo (as in Lamas): Low-rent, reruns - A bit harsh. Then again, if I turned on Lifetime at 3 in the morning some time and discovered an old episode of Falcon Crest, those would probably be two of the first words out of my mouth.

Mischa: Mescal, miscue
Ziering: Swearing, syringe
Cibrian: Aspiring, Siberian
Danielle: Dunghill, dingle
Beyonce: Bouncy, bones - When the singing superstar invariably becomes scary-skinny at some point in her career, those two words will appear in a review of her concerts.

Lautner: Latent, Latino - I think this was one of the primary concerns of the controversial Arizona immigration law from a few months ago. Undocumented workers, anchor babies, illegal aliens, latent Latinos.

Disick: Disco, dashiki.
Fallon: Fallen, felon - Only if the late-night gig really goes bad.

Speaking of the late-night television wars, InDesign suggests horny, auburn, uterine, ovarian, and ob-gyn for O'Brien. InDesign is not shy when it comes to mattes of the human anatomy.

Baskett: Back-seat, basked, bisect - Not sure why InDesign hyphenates backseat, but it is the perfect way to describe Hank Baskett's spot in his marriage to former Playboy playmate and current disgruntled Minnesota resident Kendra Wilkinson.

InDesign expert David Blatner noted that he couldn't get his settings to duplicate our results. I'm a bit disappointed in that, since everyone should get to enjoy InDesign spellcheck's perversions and sly sense of humor. But I also like that we possess an apparently unique spellcheck, one that has seemingly gone rogue and no longer cares what writers and editors think. It will continue offering nonsensical suggestions for common words and proper nouns. Yes, our computers got an upgrade but InDesign spellcheck stayed the same.

Thank God.

The madness - and genius - of InDesign spellcheck

Publishing people always debate the merits of the page-design programs Quark and InDesign. It's the layout equivalent of Mays vs. Mantle or Magic vs. Bird, except about 98 percent dorkier. Different magazines and newspapers use different systems and editors and artists often have to adapt and learn both, as a publication might switch systems. I don't have the technical knowledge to really debate the strengths and weaknesses of either. I know how to use the basics of both but certainly don't know enough to be called an expert.

But I do know that InDesign has the best spellcheck system in publishing. Now, using spellcheck isn't the most exciting thing for many people, and rightfully so. It's a vital tool, but not one that usually brings joy, confusion and wonder. It's there to correct typos, not entertain. InDesign is the exception.

Shortly after we started using InDesign, everyone noticed bizarre suggestions popping up on spellcheck. Often the suggestions shared but a single letter with the offending word, as if InDesign simply threw out random words that had no connection to the highlighted choice. Other times InDesign seemed to have psychological insight into the highlighted word. InDesign could be petty, occasionally cruel. A few years ago I put together a list of some of our greatest hits from InDesign. That list has been lost, but I've been accumulating new ones. Here, some favorites.

Ashton (as in Kutcher): Satan - that's a bit harsh, though I briefly considered the possibility the first time I saw the adorable fetus strangle himself at the conclusion of the director's cut of Ashton's Butterfly Effect.

Snooki: Snake, snaky, sneaky - Have never watched an episode of Jersey Shore. But like 93 percent of Americans, I've absorbed the show through osmosis and feel comfortable that InDesign knows what it's talking about with these choices.

Armstrong: Harum-scarum - One of my favorite suggestions. Think of someone editing a story about the seven-time Tour de France champion. Spellcheck flags Armstrong. Great, thinks the writer. Maybe I used two g's or typed an extra m. Instead, InDesign asks if you didn't really mean to spell harum-scarum, which, for the record, means "acting in a reckless or rash way."

Pacino: Pacing, passion, pausing, posing, policing - InDesign nicely sums up Al Pacino's career in five words.

Rihanna: urinal - InDesign possesses a juvenile sense of humor.

Octomom - Ottoman, economy, actinium, outman, etymon

Suleman (Octomom's last name) - Yes-man, Somalian, seaming, sliming, semen

Showtime: Sheikhdom - One of InDesign's more confusing entries. How would anyone possibly spell sheikhdom as showtime? At Adobe, which engineer in charge of InDesign put that in as one of the suggestions for showtime? Okay, they share the first two letters. But the o and e are separated by five keys. The h and w are on different lines and different parts of each line. Just realize that if you ever see a paper talk about Magic Johnson's Sheikhdom Lakers, they most certainly use InDesign and not Quark.

Scooby-Doo: Psychobiology - ?

Wahlberg: liberal, whalebone

Stepkids: seedpods, setbacks, stupidities - The person in charge of InDesign's spellcheck must have had a difficult experience with the new wife's kids as he's obviously not a fan of children that didn't come from his seed.

Stepdad: styptic, skeptic, stupid, estopped, stoppled - InDesign teaches me new things every day. I like to think I have a decent vocabulary, but InDesign has words at its disposal that haven't been used since they were created hundreds of years ago. Ever hear a plumber use the word stopple? And, again, how does InDesign not recognize stepdad, but is perfectly fine with estopped, which is called "archaic" by the dictionary, a Middle English word, meaning it probably came before 1500.. InDesign...so confounding, yet learned.

Aniston: Einstein, nesting, moisten, ingesting, amnestying, nauseating - Einstein, nauseating...okay. But moisten? A girl I used to work with hated the word moist. Moist and probe, two words she refused to ever use when writing headlines.

Beatles: Ablates, oblates, boletus - The most famous group in music history. Perhaps the most influential group in music history. But not to InDesign. InDesign believes Beatles isn't a real word, that you need something that people are actually familiar with. Like ablates (to remove or destroy, especially by cutting), oblates (flattened or depressed at the poles), and boletus (any of a genus of boletes - as a porcini - some of which are poisonous and others edible). John Lennon said the Beatles were bigger than Jesus. But to InDesign they're not even bigger than a mushroom.

Jovi: Devil, Jehovah - InDesign can't decide if it likes the group or hates it.

Gingrich: Gonorrhea - No comment.

B-Cup: Built-up

Tac-toe: Oatcake - Huh?

Google: Gigolo

December: Dismember - A fairly memorable month. Most people are familiar with it. InDesign, though, tends to have more violent thoughts. It asks: In that Christmas story where you mention December 25, are you sure you didn't mean to spell dismember?

Hamptons: Moppets, impaction, impotent

Baldwin: Bulgarian
Beckham: Belching

Minibar: Namibian
Celine: Senile

Former Playboy Playmate Kendra Wilkinson (that's her full name, sort of like Rookie Phenom Stephen Strasburg or Radical Cleric Moktada al-Sadr) has been in the news recently for a leaked sex tape. InDesign was ahead of the game. It's suggestion for Kendra? Kinkier. And for Wilkinson: Leakiness, wildness.

Hunky: Andy, hunt, unyoke - Who's Andy? And what's the relation to hunky? Seems obvious that whoever inserted suggestions for "hunky" was busy daydreaming about a strapping youngster named Andrew, perhaps the guy in the adjoining cubicle. The worker couldn't express this love - workplace rules frown on such things - so he/she put a sly joke into the system, so that now, whenever someone using InDesign uses the word hunky in a sentence, they'll be asked if they want to change it to Andy, since Andrew - that handsome co-worker - is just so hot.

Drescher: Deerstalker
Boybander: Bobsledder
Beckinsale: Pekingese
Pitt: Pate, Pete, pita

Gosselin: Tussling, outselling, gassing, goosing
Whisperer: Horsewhipper - Exactly what it sounds like, to flog a horse with a whip. A bit disappointed InDesign didn't offer up Horse Whisperer as an alternate.

Bambi: Bimbo - InDesign has little respect for the classics, or it's been programmed to think of Bambi as a stripper instead of a cartoon. But the suggestion isn't that strange once you've seen that InDesign doesn't even recognize Disney. Suggestions for the most famous animation company in the world? Addison, dowsing.

Baywatch's: Brachiate's, brachial's - InDesign apparently didn't watch TV in the early 1990s. Or, maybe it did and simply didn't like the cast, as its suggestion for actress Yasmine Bleeth is "asinine."

I sometimes look at InDesign's spellcheck as being a living organism, capable of causing great harm, like the computer system that starts the war in Terminator. Or it's a cousin to HAL from 2001: A Space Odyssey. A year ago, the Brigham Young University student newspaper, The Daily Universe, recalled 18,500 copies of the paper after InDesign's spellcheck caused chaos on the campus.

Some poor copy editor ran spellcheck on a photo caption and clicked a change for the word apostle, making it apostate. So instead of talking about the "members of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles," it referred to the Twelve Apostates. But that's the evil genius of InDesign spellcheck. By putting apostate as a suggestion, there was a chance - a small chance - that some poor editor would accidentally click on it, changing apostle to apostate. InDesign spellcheck simply waited for the right moment to strike. And what better place to do it than at one of the most religious campuses in the country? Maybe the mistake gets laughed off at a secular school. At Brigham Young it caused a crisis.

One student, a media arts major named Hillary Miller, said, "I hope someone isn't just fooling around. It would be sad if someone was trying to do harm to our church."

No one was trying to harm the church. It was just the InDesign spellcheck, the most playful, arrogant, wise, confounding and mischievous spellcheck in the land.

Bizarre NBA videos six people will find interesting

If you don't have 10 or more minutes to waste, you might want to skip these two videos. If you're not a fan of the NBA, you can probably pass on them. If you're specifically not a fan of the NBA on CBS and their top-notch productions from the 1980s, move on. But if you like any of those things, and enjoy awkward silences, one-way conversations, groan-inducing double-entendres and the proclamations of a supposedly impartial Tommy Heinsohn, these gems are for you.

The videos come from the 1986 season. A February clash between the Celtics and Lakers, who always met in LA the Sunday after the All-Star game. The Celtics won the title in '86 and swept the Lakers during the regular season, cruising to victory in this game at The Forum. I can remember watching this game with my dad, who crowed that it proved the Celtics were impossible to beat that season. I knew it was true, too, but didn't want to believe it. I stormed out of the house to shoot hoops at the neighbor's garage, my head protected by a stocking cap and two pairs of gloves on my hands. If Byron Scott couldn't hit a jumper, at least I'd be able to make one.

But the video doesn't have any highlights. Instead it's Dick Stockton and Tommy Heinsohn preparing for the game, before the broadcast came on the air. It's a look behind the curtain, although there's no explanation about how the person who posted it acquired the material. Who saves this on videotape for 24 years, then finally decides to share it with the world? No idea. But I'm eternally grateful. I envy whoever possessed this tape, which was probably rotting away in a box down in the basement, lodged underneath the series finale of M.A.S.H. and some old St. Elsewhere episodes.

Some highlights:

* The teaser was blown off. I'm assuming this refers to the classic intros CBS always ran, narrated by Brent Musburger, which perfectly set the scene for each epic matchup between the teams. A second-rate golf tournament in Florida that Tom Kite won probably ran late before the game, forcing CBS to ditch the stirring introduction.

* At 3 minutes, the lovely - and talented - Laker girls make an appearance, as a cameraman zooms in while Tommy talks to a producer or some other member of the production crew. Tommy proceeds to talk about pumping people up and other oddities that could be interpreted a thousand different ways, none of them good. To top it off, Tommy draws an arrow on the telestrator, pointing at one Laker girl, while also writing what appears to be "OK," next to it.

* Key matchup, according to Tommy, which he wants to talk about at the start of the game: Rambis trying to stop Wedman. Huh? That'd be Kurt Rambis against Scott Wedman. Nice role players - one a banger, the other a gunner. But this featured Magic Johnson, Larry Bird, Robert Parish, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, James Worthy, and Dennis Johnson (Kevin McHale was injured and didn't play). Yet the key thing to watch was...Wedman against Rambis.

* The two engage in some insightful commentary at 4 minutes, as Tommy actually makes some decent points, a shock for anyone who's listened to him on NBA League Pass the last few years. They talk about tempo and how the Celtics can run, just not like the Lakers. And they talk some more about Wedman at 5 minutes. Wedman!

Here's the SI story about the game, which, like my dad, basically crowned the Celtics, four months before they made it official in the NBA Finals. It includes a great line from Kareem, when talking about a hard foul by the immortal Greg Kite, a man known for an unfortunate name and nonexistent post game.

"It didn't surprise me," Kareem said. "They're known as a cheap-shot team." That's the type of quote that made the rivalry so fun.

And the story also shows that maybe Heinsohn was right about Wedman. It wasn't his offense that killed the Lakers - though it damaged them - but his defense. He helped check Worthy late in the game as the Celtics pulled away in the fourth.

* On the second video, Stockton makes jokes at the expense of the floundering Washington Bullets, who were 17.5 games behind Boston in the standings. If they'd heard Stockton talking like this, dozens of Bullets fans would have written to CBS, outraged by the mocking comments. But it's not just a joke, Stockton's actually trying out material for the broadcast. Later he ridicules the equally sad Pacers.

* At the 6-minute mark, Stockton announces he'll "announce anything," including Bar Mitzvahs, and weddings. Seems like a joke, except he delivered it with a straight face. I'd hire him, as long as Heinsohn wasn't part of the package.

But we need some hoops after all that. Not from this game, but Boston's previous one, the performance Stockton mentioned early in the broadcast. Bird lit up Portland for 47 points in an overtime victory. He added 14 boards and 11 assists, the type of performance that had people wondering that year if he was the best to ever play the game. This was before Magic began really dominating during the 1987 season and obviously before Jordan became Jordan. The guy could play. The game included a famous stretch when he started shooting left-handed, just for the hell of it. He hits the winning shot with 3 seconds left. Speaking of announcers, Bill Russell says Bird's shot put a lot of pressure on the Blazers. Indeed. It put Boston up 1 with three seconds left, which is about as much pressure as a team can face. Bill Russell: one of the best players ever...not one of the game's finest analysts.

After watching these videos - in their entirety, twice - it's obvious that I'm way too fascinated with NBA action from the 1980s. And I need hobby.

When cagers meshed and thinclads ran wild

Phil Taylor has a column in the new Sports Illustrated about how sports terminology has worked its way into everyday conversations, whether it's politics or the law. Taylor writes, "We live in a world of knockout blows and three-strike laws. We think we're batting 1.000 at the office until the boss moves the goalposts on us by asking us to pinch-hit for a coworker, putting us behind the 8 ball."

There probably is sports overload in all aspects of life. But at least most of the phrases actually make sense today. My friend John worked with me in Worthington. He wasn't in the sports department but proofread our pages. He was a fan of the English language, but not sports. John loathed sports terms. Reading 75 inches of basketball roundups on a Thursday night tortured him. In particular, the word caroms tormented young John. You know, caroms. Rebounds. As in, "Ben Johnson scored 20 points and grabbed 10 caroms to lead Westville High to a 76-63 victory..." John would strike it out or put a question mark next to a carom and I'd ignore it, gently explaining that in the sports department, we use words that sometimes sound ridiculous. We use them because...well, just because we've always used them, dating back to when everyone smoked in the newsroom.

Countless words have fallen out of favor in sports departments over the past few decades but some still remain. I've used some of them and mocked others. Some favorites?

Harriers, cagers, gridders, thinclads, meshed, roundballers, aerial, keglers, stanzas, netters, second sackers. Add your own.

Anyone who's read a sports section - especially anytime before, say, 1980 - recognizes all of those terms. Some are still used today while others only make rare appearances. Thinclads remains a popular way to describe track and field athletes, who are often...thinly clad. That was always an odd one; it'd be like if basketball players had been described as short-shorts. Or calling football players tightpants. Cross country runners are harriers. Long ago, a hurdler could be labeled a timber topper. Most of these words fit in back when men wore suits and hats to baseball games and everything on television was broadcast in black and white.

Football players go by gridders, of course, because they play on the gridiron. Football fields used to look more like checkerboards, the patterns resembling a grid. A running back will "tote" the "pigskin" while his quarterback - or signal caller - directs the aerial attack.

Cagers is for basketball players. The game used to have a bit more violence. Teams played on tiny courts in small gymnasiums. A team in Trenton, N.J., started playing inside a wire cage to separate the action from the unruly crowds. This set up a scene that most people associate with a grudge match between Hulk Hogan and Macho Man Savage, a steel cage battle. This was back in the 1920s, yet the phrase cagers remained popular long after the wiring disappeared, the same way gridiron remained a viable word a century after it no longer accurately described the field. Thankfully David Stern did not bring this back after the brawl in the Palace.

It's from playing inside the cage that the word meshed probably made its way into the vocabulary of sportswriters, though it still seems like a strange way to describe scoring. I meshed 20 points at Old Man Basketball on Wednesday night, give or take.

I can say with some pride that I never actually used the word keglers to describe a bowler when I wrote for newspapers (yes, we covered bowling). The only reason I know the term is because we had to take a quiz during the bowling unit of our phy ed classes in high school, and part of it involved being able to define kegler (we also had to accurately score games by adding up a mock card. This was the only math I was any good at after ninth grade). Kegler comes from a German word and has no relation to the amount of alcohol consumed by an average bowler on a Tuesday night at the alleys.

Writers have used stanzas to describe innings and occasionally a quarter in basketball. It was especially useful to break up the monotony of the word inning. The Twins scored a run in the extra stanza on Friday night to defeat the Chicago White Sox, or, as some call them, the Pale Hose. Baseball games used to be tilts, though not so much today.

Break out netters during tennis roundups or a volleyball recap. Basically, anyone playing a sport involving a net, including hoops, can be called a netter. Thankfully I never saw anyone type that a group of netters netted a victory. A cager could rip the nets and mesh 30 points.

An uncle of mine occasionally poked fun at the ways sportswriters had to constantly come up with new ways to describe the same action. How many different ways can you say one team beat another? How many ways can you say someone scored 20 points? It turns out, there are endless ways. You just have to go back to the early 20th century to find some of the terms.

Walking into the SI vault

I never need an excuse to look through old issues of Sports Illustrated. My dad has every issue dating back to the early 1970s. Before anyone accuses him of being a hoarder and organizes an intervention or calls a reality TV producer, it should be noted that even if he did ever want to get rid of them, I've made it clear since about, oh, 1984, that he is not allowed to throw them away. I still regret that in 1986 I removed the covers off of dozens of magazines and used them as bedroom wallpaper. As comforting as it was to sit underneath the cover that ran after the Lakers won the 1985 NBA title, I now regret that all of those magazines look like they were vandalized. All of the magazines - the ones with covers and without - sit in their little cardboard magazine holders, waiting for me to page through them once or twice a year. One day we'll move them east, whenever they officially become my magazines.

About two years ago, SI put its entire collection online. It's surely one of the great inventions of the Internet era, although it might give people the idea that it's okay to throw away the actual old issues of the magazine. And that is still not okay.

But it has made it easier to walk through the past. For the last week I've been reading old issues for a baseball project. One of the stories was "written" by longtime Yankees general manager George Weiss, after he left the team following the 1960 season. He recaps his career with the team. He also talks about the future of the game and potential trouble spots for the sport. He laments that "there just aren't the number of 154-game players around that there used to be."

That sounds like the long-heard cries from people who say the game wasn't what it used to be, complaints that have been heard pretty much every decade since 1900. What makes Weiss's comment a bit odder is that he had a reputation for being a racist, an executive who was extremely reluctant to sign black ballplayers. The point being, in 1960 there were hundreds more "154-game players" available than there were in 1945. But you had to look past skin color to find them.

But Weiss had another reason for this supposed talent shortage, and it's one of those lines that drives home just how different the sport was 50 years ago. Weiss wrote, "For one thing, baseball gets a lot of competition from industry for a young man's abilities, and when a kid is offered a business job at a good starting salary, he thinks twice about gambling on taking three or four years to develop himself for a major league baseball career that is apt to be over at 35 anyway. All of this makes it harder for a ball club to line up good young players."

Competition from "industry." All those young ballplayers turning their backs on the Yankees to pursue a life in the coal mine, or a career with an accounting firm. Better salary, more stability, kick-ass benefits. Modern GMs don't realize how lucky they have it, not having to worry about killer competition from the business world.

I could look through old SI's all day, and I have on many occasions. One of the most enjoyable things is seeing how the magazine itself changed, nearly as dramatically as the salary demands of players. Today, and for the last two or three decades, the magazine focuses on the major sports. But in its early years, it had a broad definition of "sports," and actually focused on leisure (maybe old issues of SI influenced the creators of Trivial Pursuit; what else would explain all of those maddening questions on backgammon and cribbage under the sports and leisure category?). The old covers were barren. A single picture often ran with just a handful of words providing decoration. For instance, this cover from March 20, 1961. More leisure? The May 13, 1963 cover. A drawing. A girl, a bikini, a boat, and...dolphins?

But they've always focused on baseball.

Here's the cover for the 1961 baseball preview issue. It's a cool little picture and not quite as dull as many of the covers from that era. A look inside the issue reveals how the magazine's changed. There's a story on the Florida Derby. There's a story on the International Automobile Show in New York. There's a swimming story. And for god's sake, there's a story on bridge. It's actually a delightfully eclectic group of stories, although it's also perfectly understandable why the magazine's focus has shifted in the past decades. In a mainstream magazine in 2010, there might not be room for this type of writing:

"I suppose the reason why so many lawyers are good bridge players is that logic is the basis of their practice and, also, they are in close contact with people and are good judges of what behavior to expect."

Damn lawyers, and their bridge skills.

Finally in that issue there are the team previews, thorough accounts of each squad's strengths and weaknesses, info on management and the stadiums. Minnesota welcomed the Twins, freshly arrived after a move from Washington.

"Minnesota farmers and businessmen await the first home run of Minnesota's Harmon Killebrew. Minnesota housewives and schoolboys are ready to ooh when Minnesota's Jim Lemon strikes out and aah when he hits one over the wall." There was more oohing than aahing that year, unfortunately, as the state's lonely housewives and rambunctious schoolboys saw Lemon hit a mere 14 homers, a year after he awed the Washington fans with 38.

Every baseball preview since the magazine's inception is online, in the vault. And if you're dying to see a hard copy version of those stories, call my folks. Just don't be angry if the issue you're looking for is missing its cover.

The comforts of KEYC Mankato

For people who didn't grow up in southern Minnesota or never lived there, it's hard to explain the allure of KEYC, Channel 12 News out of Mankato. The production values were average, wrong sports scores invariably popped up - leading to numerous conversations such as, "Well, it said on Channel 12 the Timberwolves beat the Bulls, but it's Channel 12, so who knows" - and there was the occasional film of a rodeo while the newscaster talked about a grisly triple murder in Iowa.

But we watched it religiously. Unlike the Twin Cities stations, it focused on the local news and gave area high school and college sports results - most of the time those scores were even accurate. A revolving door of people occupied the news desk for a few years. But much of the staff stayed for years, most notably longtime sports anchor Perry Dyke, a fixture and minor legend on the local media scene. A poor weatherman named Bob manned the meteorologist chair for a few years and became a celebrity himself. Wide-eyed Bob came off as the nicest guy in the world, but struggled on-camera, often using a halting, cracking voice while looking into the wrong camera, as if he missed class the day they taught TV presentation in meteorology school. He sounded like a 13-year-old boy asking a senior girl out on a date. Sometimes he donned a goofy hat on cold nights, the type of thing that would get snowballs thrown at him if he wore it in front of a group of unruly youngsters. On one unfortunate night, he squashed a bug that had landed on his head. People tuned in for the five-day forecast, but also to see Bob's antics.

Still we loved Channel 12. I often watched it over noon hour, both during the school year and in the summer. I'd catch up on the local news and watch "Mr. Food" in the final moments, segments that always ended with the catchphrase, "Ohh, it's so good." We trusted Mr. Food to tell us how to prepare a delightful cheese tray, even while docking him points for unoriginality.

Channel 12 was a CBS affiliate and always signed off late at night, usually around 1 in the morning. Before going dark, the station played a stirring rendition of the National Anthem, a version that included images of eagles, rivers, mountains, and a patriotic dwarf saluting the flag. Numerous times, I fell asleep on the couch, only to have the song wake me from my slumber. After watching that, I was always either ready to storm a beach or go to bed.

KEYC was also home to the incomparable polka dance festival Bandwagon, which started on the station in 1960 and has had the Bandwagon name since '61. According to Wikipedia - grain of salt, take it or leave it, read with raised eyebrow, be skeptical - it's "possibly the longest-running televised music program in the world." Or possibly not. On its own website, KEYC assumes a more humble stance, saying, "It may be the longest running locally produced entertainment program in the history of Minnesota television." That's a tight definition, and probably more accurate. Bandwagon's a dance show set in a ballroom in Mankato, where couples - most of whom qualify for discounts at restaurants and are in bed by 9 p.m. - dance while wearing red and white polka outfits. For the longest time, it seemed like no one with their original hips was allowed entry. The hosts give shoutouts to viewers and interviews the band. They read out happy birthday greetings to those at home. Then the band strikes up the music and the couples dance again. It's almost a caricature of Midwestern life, but people love it. In the 1980s, it always seemed to air at about 6 p.m. on a Saturday night. Before cable, we'd often end up tuning in. As a kid, watching Bandwagon was about a hundred times worse than having to go to church. If I see the show now on a trip home, it has its charms and I understand the appeal, which means I must be nearing the show's coveted demographic, because it's basically been the same show since before JFK beat Nixon. Local news legend Chuck Pasek hosted the show for more than 30 years, finally ending his reign in the mid-90s. Here's an audio documentary on the show.

Someone on youtube has compiled a bunch of old KEYC videos. I'd use the word classic videos, but I don't want to abuse that word. I couldn't find any Bandwagon online and no Bob the weatherman.

Here's an intro to the Noon News in 1986. A highlight is the ad for a local Embers (coincidentally named the worst restaurant in the state by my cousin Matt), which features a gigantic breakfast for $1.99. There's an odd promo where every relative of staff members gather on the set, part of the "Home" message KEYC drilled into the heads of viewers. This broadcast features the aforementioned Pasek, who brought the news - and polka - to several generations of southern Minnesotans.



Channel 12 shares many characteristics with its home state and the area it represented: earnest, competent, a bit dorky. Its heart is always in the right place, even if the cameras aren't.

Returning to the frightening land of newspaper website comments

I think most people always feel a touch of sympathy for sewer workers. It's a vital job that many people would never do, no matter how much it paid. Wading through all that...stuff.

I feel the same sympathy for people who monitor newspaper website comments. It's, at least according to executives, a vital job that many newspaper employees would never do, no matter how much it paid. Wading through all that...stuff. Racist rants, personal attacks, religious biases, homophobic slurs. Bad spelling.

A different type of controversy has erupted in Cleveland, at the website for the Cleveland Plain Dealer. The newspaper revealed the real identity behind the person known on the site as "lawmiss." Lawmiss had posted a comment about the relative of a Plain Dealer reporter. Editors discovered that lawmiss - or is it Lawmiss, I never know with anonymous online tags - had the same email address as a prominent judge named Shirley Strickland Saffold. She has a reputation as being something of an eccentric, always a reassuring description for a judge. A decade ago she told a female defendant in a credit card fraud case to find a better man. She told her, "Men are easy. You can go sit at the bus stop, put on a short skirt, cross your legs and pick up 25. Ten of them will give you their money. It's the truth. If you don't pick up the first 10, then all you got to do is open your legs a little bit and cross them at the bottom and then they'll stop."

It sounds like she spoke from experience. But what does she tell male defendants in credit card fraud cases? Drop their pants and get a good woman?

Then, a few weeks ago she issued an arrest warrant for a Plain Dealer reporter who wrote about a psychiatric evaluation of a man suspected of being a serial killer. She wanted him to reveal his source. So now the newspaper discovers someone using her email address has been posting for awhile, including commenting on cases where Saffold served as the judge. The judge's daughter says she used the email address to post some comments and that it wasn't her mother,
The paper reports this, and a firestorm ensues.

Lots of the questions center around ethics: the newspaper's and the judge's. Privacy advocates express concern that the paper dug into the online files to find the email address and then the person behind it - or at least the family behind it. Many newspapers don't allow reporting staff any access to those records. And for the judge, the ethical questions are obvious, as it just seems...wrong, for a judge to comment about cases she's involved with. She - or the daughter - ripped defendants, juries and lawyers, all under the moniker of lawmiss. In a post ridiculing the defense attorney of a man convicted in a vehicular homicide case, lawmiss wrote, "If only he could shut his Amos and Andy style mouth. What makes him think that is [sic] he insults and acts like buffon [sic] that it will cause the judge to think and see it his way."

It is nice to see the judge living up to the spelling accomplishments of all the anonymous newspaper commenters who came before her.

I feel a bit queasy about the Plain Dealer searching for the information and writing about it. But the judge's actions seem much worse. That serial killer case where she wanted the reporter arrested? She's of course the judge on that and the man's defense attorney is the same lawyer who represented the vehicular homicide defendant, the one who was acting, according to Saffold or one of her spawn, like a "buffon." Is she going to treat that attorney fairly now, in a capital punishment case?

Of course all of this would have been avoided if the Plain Dealer and newspapers everywhere simply eliminated comments on their sites, which I've been advocating for since the first time I saw a high school basketball tournament loss blamed on "stuppid immgrants!" They're supposed to bring people to the website, which then theoretically leads to cash. Big money! If it really did this, maybe tens of thousands of journalists wouldn't have been laid off the last two years. Maybe the industry wouldn't be flailing, struggling to survive. Instead, all of those web visits do nothing for the bottom line, while also giving a forum to hateful or delusional people who ranked in the first percentile on the reading portion of the Iowa Basics.

I'm not pleading for a Utopian society where there are no hateful online comments. All I'm saying is that there are a million places to find that; why do newspapers provide another outlet? Maybe Saffold doesn't make those comments if she has to do it on a random message board. People will still read a newspaper's stories and they can still comment on them and make fun of anyone they want to and ridicule reporters and editors and the liberal media. There will be no shortage of forums and blogs. But why must papers host those comments?

It's a losing battle, of course. Though some papers have removed comments - and many others moderate them - I doubt the entire industry will alter its thinking about online comments. Just think, some of those anonymous people who hate blacks might buy a car from a dealership whose ad they saw on the web site!

Predictably, the comments below the stories about the judge and the newspaper's action are not exactly Algonquin Round Table material. They go back and forth between belittling the newspaper and the judge. Some of the comments are strange, a few make some good points that get lost in the sea of sludge, others are indecipherable, a handful hateful. Predictable stuff. And just another day of comments on newspaper websites.

Whatever happened to that World Wide Web thing?

Someone on a message board for journalists recently posted this old Newsweek column that a blogger unearthed last week. Written in 1995 by astronomer Clifford Stoll, the column decried the hype surrounding the Internet, which was beginning to become a force throughout the world and not just in military circles. Stoll's been slightly ridiculed for some of the predictions in the piece and the overall sentiment.

Journalists were specifically discussing this line:
"Yet Nicholas Negroponte, director of the MIT Media Lab, predicts that we'll soon buy books and newspapers straight over the Internet. Uh, sure... The truth is no online database will replace your daily newspaper."

Oh, if only. As predictions go, it's always fun to look back at people's wayward prophecies, though anyone who's ever made one surely has some groaners in the closet. But most people from the early 1990s don't have to worry about them being saved in online archives, just waiting for a digital archaeologist to dig it up. In a 1994 NBA preview for my community college newspaper - circulation: I don't know, me, my parents and my professor who doubled as the editor - I argued that Derrick Coleman had surpassed Karl Malone as the premier power forward in the NBA. He'd go down as one of the best to ever play that position, I wrote. I thought it was a well-written piece, the type I might someday pitch to Sports Illustrated when they asked for a resume and five clips. About 15 months later, Coleman graced Sports Illustrated's cover, next to the words: Petulant Prima Donnas Like New Jersey's Derrick Coleman Are Bad News For The NBA. Malone, meanwhile, became the second-leading scorer in NBA history.



I actually agree with many of Stoll's lines, even if he was off about what the ultimate impact of the Internet would be. He talks about how when everyone shouts, no one listens. Still applicable to today's online world. He writes about the dangers of relying too much on technology in the classroom, and this was years before every student carried a laptop into history class.

But best of all, he liberally uses the word bah. It's a great word for a crank, though it's rarely used today because people automatically expect it to be followed by the word humbug. Here it's used in the headline - "The Internet? Bah!" - and in the text: "Who needs teachers when you've got computer-aided education? Bah." The only thing missing was a request for nerds to get off his lawn and take their CompuServe subscriptions with them.

Stoll mocked the idea of people buying their books online. Amazon launched in 1995.

But back to those newspaper predictions. In a way, Stoll was right. It was ludicrous to think people would actually buy newspapers on the Internet. If people did do that, the industry wouldn't be drowning in a sea of layoffs and low morale. Newspapers could still charge for their product without being called out of touch and naive, which is what happens today when any paper floats a plan to make subscribers pay for an online version.

"The truth is no online database will replace your daily newspaper."

I'm not sure an "online database" is quite the way to describe Google. The online...behemoth has, in many cases, replaced the daily newspaper, often while using the content from the very papers they end up killing.

Newspapers have gotten dinged over the years for not adapting earlier to the Internet. People say they should have seen the online revolution coming and acted accordingly. But newspapers had web sites fairly early in the game, long before blogs ever came into creation. Newspapers began giving their stories away for free long before anyone realized that could potentially be a problem for the print edition. But what the papers couldn't figure out then and haven't to this day is how to make as much money online as they once did with the paper product. There might not be a solution to that problem.

Look how far computers and the online world have come since Stoll submitted his article to Newsweek, a magazine that is also struggling to survive. In September 1995, I used email for the first time. Each time, I wore the same stunned, sort-of-stupid expression that graced the faces of the first people to pick up a telephone and talk to someone on the other end. My cousin Matt received my first emails, only he didn't get the whole messages, as they'd just trickle off the side of the screen, out of view, apparently because I didn't hit the Enter key or I hit it too often. Finally after a week I was able to write an email that he read from start to finish. I can see why Stoll had doubts that same year about the effectiveness of online communication.

Just two years earlier, my work-study job involved working in the computer lab at Worthington. The man who ran the computer lab was one of the nicest people in the world and probably its most disorganized. His office looked like the inside of a mom & pop computer repair store damaged by a pipe bomb. Books and manuals littered the floor, along with broken monitors, dusty keyboards and dismantled hard drives. In theory, I was supposed to help him maintain the lab - sign students in, show them how to use the machines. The lab leader knew he had a problem with his student worker when I stared at the mouse, unable to comprehend what it was or how it worked. In high school we used computers, but everything was done on the keyboard.

He rolled the mouse around. I watched enthralled as the thing - later identified as a cursor - moved around the screen, as if guided by an invisible hand.

My time in the computer lab didn't last long, to the relief of my boss and fellow students. Instead of work study, I began working part-time at the daily newspaper. That's where I wanted to be, then and out of college. Newspapers would be around forever, I figured, and I'd be working for them for the next five decades.

They had a bright future. An online database? Didn't even know what it was. The chance such a thing would eventually deliver mortal wounds to the industry? Unthinkable.

I was better in the computer lab than I was at prophecies.

McSweeney's Panorama: The future of newspapers, a relic, or just a really cool novelty?

Two months ago, McSweeney's published the San Francisco Panorama, a 300-plus-page newspaper that was designed to "demonstrate the unique possibilities of the American newspaper." It had more than 200 contributors, contained 10 sections, a separate 112-page magazine, a book review section, comics and was printed on a broadsheet. In short, it was meant to be a celebration of the newspaper, something to excite people while others eagerly race to write the latest obituary on the industry.

I finally got one this weekend, buying it at a Barnes & Noble for $16. The papers were located behind the checkout counter, encased in a large plastic bag. In the past this might have meant the contents inside featured pictures of topless women or pantsless men. The store placed it behind the counter because they were apparently afraid people might want to steal the newspaper's content. That'd be a crime, of course, even though Google News refers to that as a solid business plan.

Its sheer size stands out, and not just the 300 pages. It was printed on 15X22 broadsheet, the type of size rarely seen these days. Holding it takes a reader back in time, to the days before tighter budgets led to shrinking newsprint. It's definitely a throwback, like one of those giant cellular phones that pop up in movies from the early 1990s, which were often as large as a character's head. But that size is part of the appeal of the Panorama. McSweeney's argues newspapers should embrace its paper format, since it offers possibilities that simply aren't available online or even in tabloid format. In the same way that people still love going to the movies because there's nothing quite like seeing a film on the big-screen, reading a paper that actually looks and feels and smells like a newspaper can offer an experience unavailable in any other form of media.

Newspapers seem embarrassed by their size these days, like a 6-foot seventh-grader who hunches over because he feels out of place and awkward around his classmates. Papers still make money off the paper product but not nearly as much as they used to, and companies often seem to be simply biding their time until everything's online or simply gone for good. The Panorama offers outstanding design. Superb full-page graphics perfectly utilize the format. Of course, countless newspapers still do this seven days a week, but designers seem to be an even more endangered species than writers and copy editors. When the cuts come they're often the first to be sacrificed. The Panorama shows that it'd be a mistake to forget about the look of a newspaper. If they ever do go all online, newspapers will simply be another site that offers nothing but words. It wouldn't just be an aesthetic loss. Readers would also be losing out on the type of information that can't just be summarized in a 50-word paragraph.

But the Panorama does deliver with its words as well, in countless stories, both long and short. My favorite story was by noted author Nicholson Baker, which carried the headline "Can a paper mill save a forest?" The theme of the story - which explores the plight of paper mills in Jay, Maine - is that the digital age might be more damaging to the environment than the newspaper industry. People love to say that if papers die, "At least a lot fewer trees will be killed." They often say this with a certain amount of glee and unjustified pride, as if they're the first person to ever think of this astoundingly uncreative quip. Baker's story shows that, well, that might be alarmingly untrue.

He quotes a man named Don Carli, who works at the Institue for Sustainable Communication.

Carli told Baker, "If the marketplace for timber, harvested sustainably from Maine's forests, collapses because of the propagation of a myth - which some might say is a fraud - that says that using the newspaper is killing trees, then what happens is the landholder can no longer generate the revenue to pay a master logger for sustainable timber harvesting, and can't pay taxes. Then a developer offers to buy the land at a steep premium over what it was worth as a forest, and the developer clear-cuts the land and turns it into a low-density development."

Basically, Carli's saying that - as most 5-year-olds know but some newspaper critics apparently don't - trees grow back. Trees that are used to make newspapers grow back. Trees eliminated to put in apartments or restaurants...those don't grow back. Carli then throws a shot at the data centers and server farms that are taking over the countryside while paper mills die out faster than the newspapers that ultimately emerge thanks to them. Baker writes, "There is now a roughly comparable carbon footprint between server farms and paper mills, but the rate of growth in server and data-center energy consumption is 'metastasizing,' [Carli] said." Carli finishes by saying, "You can't go to ConEd and get another ten megawatts of power. You can buy the computers, you can buy the servers. You just can't get juice for them, because the grid is tapped out. So when we start thinking about transforming more and more of our communication to digital media, we really do have to be asking, 'where will the electrons come from?"

Some of the other top stories:
* A story by J. Malcolm Garcia on the travesty of elections in Afghanistan.
* An incredibly in-depth report on the Bay Bridge, a project will cost tax-payers more than $12 billion.
* A disturbing analysis by Aidan Gardiner about an increase in familicides, when a family member - usually a male - kills a spouse and at least one of the children. There are numerous theories about why they occur more now - the economy is the main reason - but the sobering fact is they do happen more often. When the Panorama published in December, there had already been 20 familicides. In a normal year, there are four to six.
* A chef walks through the 58 steps needed to take a lamb from slaughter to the plate. Complete with pictures (not for the squeamish or vegetarian-inclined).
* In the book section, an amusing, extensive feature by Joshuah Bearman on the search for the next Mr. Romance, the title given to the long-haired warrior types who are Fabio's literary spawn and appear on the covers of romance books.

You'll have to take my word about these stories or go out and get a paper. None of the stories are on McSweeney's website, which was sort of the point of the whole enterprise. They wanted to show the possibilities of print. But that obviously limits the reach of the stories. Thousands - maybe millions - of people who might have read some of these stories never will, simply because they're in the paper version but nowhere else. The reality is that papers continue to struggle with finding the balance between the paper product and their Internet offerings. What should they offer in the hard copy and what should they put on the web? No one's come up with a definitive answer, meaning no one's come up with a definitive answer that brings in money and doesn't simply give away everything for free. The Panorama doesn't offer any insight into that question. And no matter how much I and others love print, it's naive to think there would ever again be a day where a newspaper could completely ignore the Internet, as the Panorama did.

Papers are still working hard to find the solution. The scary thing is that there might not be one.

There is one big benefit to not having the stories on the web: no reader comments. Stories are much more pleasant to read when they don't include racist, poorly spelled rants that blame immigrants and Obama for everything from snowstorms to the lackluster slam dunk contest at the NBA All-Star game.

Many of the pieces are quite ambitious. They are long, spreading out over six, seven, eight pages. They require an investment. Readers have to devote time to the stories. But again, that's something newspapers can provide that other forms of media still can't come close to matching. Everyone can offer 100-word recaps or 500-word analysis. But newspapers can provide the 2,500-word stories that are worth reading, not because they're long, but because they provide information unavailable anywhere else.

There really isn't any breaking news in the Panorama, the area where people still count on newspapers, although the original breaking news then explodes on the web in a million different directions. If print does make a comeback, newspapers will still be charged with providing breaking news, whether it's in crime, politics, or sports. Original reporting providing in-depth looks at news and features will separate newspapers from those who simply pontificate and opine online. Still, papers can't forfeit their position as the provider of breaking news, even if those stories are seemingly on the web eleven seconds after an event happens.

Numerous big-name writers contributed to the issue. They add a buzz to the product, even if I would have preferred to seen those slots taken by some of the thousands of newspaper reporters laid off the past few years. Stephen King wrote a story on the Yankees victory in the World Series. It's entertaining, but King's hardly hurting for work or outlets for his writing, and as someone who's read quite a bit of his baseball writing, I remain a much bigger fan of his horror work.

The paper took nearly a year to put together, from conception to execution. Others have pointed out that a schedule like that hardly qualifies as anything that resembles a newspaper's publishing schedule. And they're right. There's a reason newspaper people still like to call their product the Daily Miracle. A paper like the New York Times publishes a Sunday paper that contains dozens of must-read stories, outstanding graphics, great analysis and unmatched investigations. People take it for granted. Maybe the Panorama will help readers regain an appreciation for what their local paper produces 365 times a year.

Then again, probably not.

In some of my Walter Mitty moments, when I'm not imagining being a shooting guard for the Lakers or a reclusive author who ignores a legion of fawning fans while I collect royalties, I sometimes picture being a media mogul. A mogul. Someone with Bruce Wayne-type money. I acquired the riches in a noble fashion, perhaps by curing a deadly disease, and not through an inheritance or a shady land deal. I buy a struggling paper. The Minneapolis Star-Tribune, for example. My first order of business is to pen a Jerry Maguire-like memo that invigorates the troops. Layoffs have ended, I announce. The paper's hiring 500 new staffers, putting bureaus in Washington and LA and Duluth and Rochester. We'll have a dozen reporters covering the state government. Photographers and copy editors and designers are cherished. Sportswriters will again travel to every major event, on this continent and overseas. We'll start a Sunday magazine. And a book review. Travel budget is now unlimited. We'll send reporters to Iraq and Afghanistan and South America. Free health insurance for all employees, and their families. Free cookies on Fridays. Staff members weep when they read the memo, then forward it to everyone they know.

The paper becomes the envy of the business, and of all media, whether online or in print. 60 Minutes profiles us; maybe Lesley Stahl interviews me. Reporters and editors from throughout the country flock to Minneapolis to work for the paper, attracted by the newspaper's dedication to reporting and my benevolent leadership (I let my underlings do their jobs and I rarely visit the office; perhaps on the major holidays, when I bring in champagne and five-figure bonus checks).

My dream paper would actually look a lot like the Panorama, and would have many of the same ambitions for its stories, although there would probably be fewer celebrities writing them. The Panorama's a superb one-issue collector's piece. No, it doesn't offer a new business plan to save the industry. It looks, feels and smells like a newspaper, even if it isn't necessarily published like one. But it entertains. And informs. Read it and you'll learn a few things you didn't know yesterday. Because of those things, the Panorama's a success.

Whether the dozens of newspapers that produce similar results 365 days a year have a viable future remains unknown. In the end, the Panorama's a love letter to the industry. Hopefully, it's not a goodbye letter to a dying one.

It's 10 p.m. Do you know where your fear mongers are?

Even with a blog I remain a traditionalist when it comes to media. I read three hard-copy newspapers a day, and sometimes a fourth if I can find a Newsday. I'm up to about a dozen magazine subscriptions now. I read books that remain in their proper form, not on a Kindle or any other E-reader. And I buy those books at a bookstore, avoiding Amazon except for perhaps one purchase a year. Someday all of those things might go away, but if that day does ever arrive I hope I'm long gone as well.

And, finally, I still like capping off the night with local newscasts, those 30-minute recaps of the day's news, weather and sports, with some cuddly features about abandoned three-legged cats thrown in to break the monotony and some hearts. All of it brought to the world by folks sporting impeccable hair and marvelous teeth. In today's world, where the idea of a traditional news cycle is seemingly as outdated as an afternoon newspaper and where stories come and go as quickly as a page refreshes, the late local newscast has suffered in ratings and relevance, just like its old-school media brethren. But I still tune in nearly every night. Get the big news right at the top. The anchors greet us with smiles, before turning serious and saying, "Those stories coming up. But first on 4 at 11..."

Whether it's a national story or a local tragedy, the top story is recapped in about three minutes, usually with a reporter on-site somberly pointing to a building where a fire or grisly slaying took place. Sometimes we get team coverage, where each reporter gives one minute of information that still leaves huge gaps in a story. They give me the basics, and that's what I need, not three hours of arguing between a pair of think-tank nitwits on the cable news channels.

About 15 minutes in our favorite weather personality appears, moments after that same meteorologist teased us with a 15-second forecast that ends with, "But I'll have all the details on that killer storm in 15 minutes." The weather guy gives us the story of what happened and what the next five days hold. I love the competing Doppler technology on each channel. I savor the cheesy banter between news and weather, especially when the anchors inexplicably blame the weatherman for rain or snow, as if the well-manicured, smartly dressed hairpiece summons storms with the fury of an ancient god. And the meteorologists sometimes apologize! Yes, they say they're sorry if they mess up a forecast and someone gets stuck without an umbrella. But they often apologize for the actual weather. The rain. Or snow. Or hail. Or lack of sun. In the end, as ridiculous as it is, at least someone's held accountable.

Then it's off to sports, where we get the news and scores in a couple of minutes. Perhaps with some interviews in the locker room. The sports guy is usually brought in by the anchor who seems to be pleading for some good news.

"Len, the Yankees, tough one tonight, huh?"

Highlights of the home team, maybe some out-state scores of local interest. Again, the basics and all I need at that time of night. The late-night SportsCenter will provide the other highlights and cringe-worthy catchphrases.

At the end of the broadcast they'll wrap it up with a touching tale about a crippled child up for adoption or a wacky story about a pet python, followed by a reminder to watch Letterman or Conan or...Leno.

Print people like to poke fun at TV folk, deriding them as nothing more than solid teleprompter readers with oversize egos whose knowledge of makeup exceeds their knowledge of basic reporting skills. In some cases it's certainly true, real-life Kent Brockmans and Ron Burgundys brought into our lives by HD technology. But I've seen enough print people appear with wide eyes and cracking voices that sound like a 13-year-old boy to know that it's a fairly tough job that the best make look easy.

Are there negatives about the local newscasts? Yes. The worst things, without question, are the over-the-top fright stories that anchors present as some type of breaking news, reports designed simply to alarm, never really inform. And much to the chagrin of the stations, I can honestly say I've never learned a single thing from the terrifying features, nor been frightened. Although I'm admittedly probably not the target audience, which would seem to be hypochondriacs suffering from agoraphobia who also have kids at public schools.

"Could your corn on the cob holders kill you?"
"Is your taxi driver a terrorist in a sleeper cell? What his accent can reveal, next at 11."
"What's lurking inside your toilet? You'll be surprised what our I-team investigation discovered."
"The Eight-Fingered Killer wreaked havoc on CSI: New York tonight. Could one of your neighbors be raising a potential serial killer? That and more, but first, how about that stormy weather? Bill?"
"Erasers. The hidden danger your child's school isn't telling you about."
"Tonight, the first in a three-part story. Is your toenail clipper slowly poisoning you?"

These types of stories usually appear even more often during sweeps week, when the stations are selling what souls they have left for ratings.

But nothing can top the frightening opening to the New York Fox 5 10 p.m. telecast.



It's 10 p.m., do you know where your children are? The phrase has been a part of newscast lore for decades. What an odd question. Actually it's more of a challenge than an inquiry. Hey, fat-ass lazy parent stuffing your face with beer and Ring Dings: Do you know where your children are? Do ya?

It even has a creepy stream of faces belonging to ghost children floating at the top of the screen, the souls of kids whose parents apparently didn't have an adequate answer to the pressing question of the night.

Who is this intro targeting? And what age are these theoretically endangered children? 5? Teenagers? Say you're a parent of a 14-year-old. You've raised a kid with a B average who's respected by adults and has lots of friends. He aspires to getting into college and getting a girlfriend, though not in that order. This parent would most likely know where Johhny is at 10 p.m. They don't need the deep-voiced reminder. Or say you're a bad parent. You let your 12-year-old drink beer and don't care when he skips school. Is this ad causing that parent to rethink their decisions? Will they drop the joint and think, "My god. Where is my child? They said they were going to TP old man Wilson's house, but do I really know if he was telling the truth? What if they were breaking into the school to vandalize it?"

Who is this ad helping? Who? Someone with a 6-year-old, who has perhaps lost track of the youngster? Did that person forget that little Jenny fell down a well and now needs help, aid that will come once Channel 5 presents the heartbreaking story?

That's why I think the ad is actually a subtle way to guilt parents. The ad is actually saying, "It's 10 p.m. You know where your children are. But so do we. And do you think you're doing a good job with this kid by letting them go to a PG-13 movie? On a school night? How do you know they're not sneaking into that R-rated movie that shows tits? Remember when you promised to be a better parent to your kid than your mom was to you? It's not working. It's now 10:01 p.m. You know where your children are. Are you going to track them down?"

And what about people without kids? Is Channel 5 simply saying goodbye to that demographic? Or again is it a type of subliminal message, suggesting that if you don't have your children, you're really not worthy to watch this broadcast and maybe you should just settle for the 11 p.m. news on Channel 7?

I want to be moderately informed by my newscast, not tormented or terrorized. Give me the news, forecast and sports. Keep some of the fluff, but leave the fear behind.

Here, finally, is a rather disturbing collection of celebrities asking the question. From role model Darryl Strawberry to Medicine Woman.

Another stroll through the depressing freelance writing landscape

This LA Times article describes the bleak present and darker future facing freelance writers.

"What's sailing away, a decade into the 21st century, is the common conception that writing is a profession - or at least a skilled craft that should come not only with psychic rewards, but with something resembling a living wage."

So it's time for another tour of some of the opportunities out there for writers. Not sure if any of these are as soul-crushing as writing about napkins, but they're close.

EXPERT WIKIPEDIA ARTICLE WRITER WANTED GREAT PAY

In today's media world, where speed rules above all else, punctuation is a casualty. Periods, commas, semicolons, parentheses - superfluous, pointless. Not even the Internet's favorite piece of punctuation - the lovable, enduring exclamation point - can find a place in today's sentences.

The job description:

Okay look at simple I have plenty of clients who will pay top dollar to have a Wikipedia article about themselves or their business on the Wikipedia website however it must be approved before they pay which means you must be an expert at getting articles approved because if it's not I don't get paid which means you don't get paid you will be paid between 200 to 500 per approved article but again they don't pay a dime until article is approved and viewable on the Wikipedia website. I had a guy before but now my computer crashed a month ago and I lost all my contacts including the guy who I used to use we make thousands of dollars together so I hope we can have the same thing happen

Makes me wonder why the employer even bothered with that lone period near the end of the longest run-on sentence this side of an early Tom Wolfe feature in Esquire. What made him put that one there, but nowhere else? The fourth finger on his right hand apparently accidentally moved south from the home keys. It begins with the in-your-face "Okay look" but ends in almost an endearing fashion, as he really hopes to be able to make thousands of dollars together, just like happened with the previous desperate person who won the right to be a Wikipedia ghostwriter.

I applaud anyone who takes this job, and it actually seems like a decent business idea, although it sounds like the type of writing that might be called propaganda in another time. But think of the poor writer who has to work for this person. Years of schooling and experience put to use composing a Wikipedia profile detailing the exaggerated accomplishments of a CEO in charge of a small candy company nestled in southern Alabama. The writer submits the piece and waits. Someone who writes 132 words with a single period judges the work.

A writer's self-esteem can be shattered as fast as it takes a spouse to say, "I like it, but I'm not sure that part works." Now they might hear from this employer, "Listen, love the profile, but the writing style needs some work. My apologies." Strike that. The rejection letter would read, "Listen love the profile but the writing style needs some work my apologies"

Receiving a rejection from The New Yorker's Shouts & Murmurs section is one thing. Being rejected by James Joyce's bastard grandchild is altogether different. For those freelance writers still debating whether alcoholism is the best way to deal with the current job climate, this should let them know that, yes, it is.

HIRING CONSISTENT ARTICLE WRITER

They're looking for writers who "can consistently produce articles. We would like to have a minimum of 3 articles a day. The articles will be 400-450 words. Each article will pay $1.40 with occasional bonuses for good work and consistency."

Pay is on a per-article basis. A buck forty. A standard rate for articles is a dollar per word. Bigger places pay more, 2, 3 dollars per word. An offer of fifty cents a word used to be seen as a lowball offer. Now you're getting $1.40 for a 450-word piece, writing about a vague subject that's basically inconsequential, as long as the text is "consistent." Consistent to what?

Ads like this and countless others ask for and demand professionalism from writers or journalists while rubbing their faces in wages that are more disgraceful than disrespectful. It's always been like that, of course, even though it's more noticeable in today's media environment. Writers hone their skills through years of dedication and experience, but they're often paid a salary a panhandler would find insulting. Bobby Knight once said, "All of us learn to write in the second grade. Most of us go on to greater things." It's a view that should be expected from a man who hated the media nearly every day of his adult life, right up until the point he became a part of it. But it's now apparent that many others - especially those offering jobs to writers - have a similar view of a writer's worth and knowledge.

I'd say these employers will get what they pay for, but that's probably not true. They'll get work that is much more professional than they deserve, simply because for too many writers today, $1.40 is somehow still better than nothing.

Hey, would you lay off newspapers when they maik mistakess?

My former paper in Fargo was a popular topic on the web yesterday for an unfortunate reason. The Forum published a picture of two guys shoveling, with a straightforward caption describing the action. It identified Gene Masseth and Haywood Jablome in the pic. Good ol' Haywood.

Here's one of the examples.

It's the plight of papers. A reporter can write an exposé about the local mayor's corrupt behavior and everyone yawns. A columnist pens an emotional tribute to a little-known teacher who died and everyone turns the page, seeking the comics. But a mistake makes it in and everyone's in on the fun. God, how could the paper be so dumb! Stupid mainstream media!

During my time at newspapers I had my own share of cringe-inducing moments. North Dakota State hired a new football coach following the 2002 season, a former Nebraska assistant named Craig Bohl. Shortly after the hiring we ran a mug shot of Bohl for a story (mug shot in this case meaning the small pics papers run, not the frowning portraits police use).

Unfortunately, the picture we published was of a different guy named Bohl, a small-town business owner or local politician, I forget. Probably a nice guy. Middle-aged. But he definitely wasn't the newest football coach at NDSU. The next day at work, I opened my email to see a note from the sports editor, with the simple, yet jarring subject line: Wrong Bohl.

Six years later, those two words - Wrong Bohl - remain a punch line for me and my former co-workers who worked at the paper that night. We were eventually able to laugh about it, but at the time we were mortified and embarrassed.

It wasn't just big mistakes that had readers picking up their phones to complain. A paper can print tens of thousands of words each day, with nary an error. But it's almost a guarantee that if a grammatical mistake appears somewhere in that mass of words, a retired English teacher who's lonely and still bitter about being forced out of her job will take pen to paper. She'll helpfully write, in perfectly maddening handwriting, "In your paper's story about the local baseball team's trip to Cleveland, your reporter wrote, 'their going to be in the city for 10 days. Please note the incorrect use of their. It should have been they're. As an English teacher who taught for 45 years in our underfunded public schools, it troubles me that the local newspaper - which I assume is populated with college graduates and people who care about the English language - would allow such a mistake to be published. It's a disgrace. I'm making a copy of this letter and sending it to each editor and the publisher, in the hopes that this mistake will not occur again."

We accept the written lashing like a chastened student, promising to do better.

For a short time I worked as a night editor at the paper in Worthington. Part of the job involved checking the page negatives that came off the printer at the end of the night, specifically the front page. It was a last chance to catch a typo, and I was also supposed to check to make sure all of the color separations came through correctly.

One afternoon, as I settled into my desk, optimistic about the day ahead of me, my editor approached, a tight smile adorning his face.

"Have you seen the paper?"

"No, why?"

He held up the front page. The main picture on the page, which was a large, four-column color picture, was...no longer large. And wasn't four columns. And no longer in color. It was black and white. Tiny. And it now sat at an angle on the page, as if a third-grader had glued it there the night before as part of a project called "My first newspaper." I'd apparently failed to properly check the color corrections, leading to the printed fiasco that my editor forced me to look at while shame crippled my body. I apologized. What else could I do, except hope it wouldn't lead to a firing.

Everyone in publishing has similar stories. Sometimes it's the fault of an editor, sometimes a production person or faulty printing press is to blame. The hope is that no one loses their job or receives an angry, taunting email from a reader.

Mistakes can be innocent, like the ones above, or the result of a joke gone horribly wrong. Often, when waiting for a story or information to come in, editors and reporters will put dummy text in until the real stuff arrives. Unfortunately, sometimes the dummy copy runs. The most famous example of this, a legendary incident that's sort of like Babe Ruth's called shot in that everyone's heard about but hardly anyone's ever seen it, is the paper that ran a caption that went with a picture of a junior high basketball team. The smiling youngsters, beaming with such pride, included the normal Joe Johnson, Ben Smith, and Some Fucker.

That story's told around campfires to frighten new copy editors, a harsh warning about the dangers of frivolity and typing while bored. It's not the type of lesson they teach in college. I guess instructors assume students will know that Some Fucker should never run in the paper. That's easy. But maybe they should start teaching the dangers of Haywood Jablome.

Newspaper website comments: Worst writing in the world

As a rule, I try to avoid any and all comments on newspaper websites.

Even after years of reading them, I'm still somewhat shocked whenever a sterling feature story on, say, a woman who lost her husband to cancer but returned to school to get her teaching degree, will bring out people who feel the need to comment on what a horrible man that dead husband was, rant about overpaid teachers, or ridicule the woman's looks.

Or a straight, boring, bland, 25o-word wrapup on a city council meeting somehow devolves in the comments section into an opportunity for someone to blame the city's failure to pave a road on Obama or Reagan or Truman. Or it's the fault of "Mexicans."

A story about students killed in a drunk driving accident will bring out people wisecracking on the deaths, belittling the kids, chastising the families. All of it nauseating, none of it necessary.

A story about a soldier killed in Fort Hood brings out the dregs of society. The horrible comments are surrounded by thoughtful condolences. To me, that hardly makes up for the horrifying ones.

Newspaper comments bring out the worst writing - random all caps, misspellings (libruls, stoopid), missing punctuation - and even worse people.

So I usually just don't click on that tempting little button that says "Read comments." But sometimes I can't help myself, occasionally I want to see just how ridiculous people can be.

The big story in southwestern Minnesota this week was the elimination of 175 jobs from Farley's & Sathers Candy Co. in tiny Round Lake. It's a devastating blow to the entire region, but especially to the small town.

Here's the story from the Worthington Daily Globe. As a news story, it's straightforward, presents all the relevant information, conveys the emotion of the moment, relates the struggles of affected workers and what the possible impact will be on the community. Then you read the comments. A small sampling.

Janelle G. Des Moines, IA 11/06/2009 7:32 AM This is going to continue to happen as long as we allow the Mexicans to INVADE our country. Yes, it is TRUE that they work for little to nothing, BUT AGAIN they should NOT be allowed to liver here unless they are legal citizens!!! DEPORT THEM ALL, get them the hell out of here. What have we had since their arrival in our country, we have LOWERED the hourly wage so the average AMERICAN can't live off of it, we have had our CRIME increased... pat e. Worthington, MN 11/06/2009 6:00 AM This is exactly what obama PROMISED would NOT happen if he was elected! Libs can say this is a stretch but truth is truth.

Horrible comments appear in papers of all sizes, from the smallest weekly to the New York Times. They appear on all stories - sports, news, business and features. No section is immune.

Which always makes me wonder, why do newspapers still allow them? There are those who argue that comments bring people to the website. In today's newspaper world, where papers are going under and thousands have lost their jobs, they need as many people as possible to read the product. And if they comment, that will keep them coming, and maybe advertising will return. Or something. My response would be, how well has that worked as an economic plan so far?

Would papers somehow be in worse shape if they had never allowed comments the last 10 years? Of course not. Not saying they'd be in any better condition, but it's nearly impossible to believe the financial situation and future of the industry would look bleaker. But at least people wouldn't have to feel like they need to shower after looking at the website. At least the papers would maintain some level of self-respect.

Countless stories bring out people who use the comments section to simply ridicule the paper itself, to say, "I'm glad this paper's going under. Looosers. Commie rag." What other industry lets people post on their own websites their feelings about how terrible the product is?

Comments get discussion going, advocates say. So what? If someone wants to discuss the story, they can copy and paste a link or part of the text on whatever message board, personal web site or blog they like to visit. It happens thousands of times a day and good discussions do take place. And the bad discussions? Let the comment sewage find a home on another site.

I can count on my right hand how many rational, thoughtful, inspiring, wise comment threads I've read on a paper's website. And I'm only using the count-on-one-hand cliche because I'm assuming at some point I have seen a worthwhile discussion but simply forgot about it, although the truth is I probably haven't read any.

Many papers now moderate the comments, deleting offensive posts or at least trying to play referee. Meaning already understaffed papers devote crucial employees to a task that a judge wouldn't even make prisoners do, for fear the Supreme Court would strike the sentence down as cruel and unusual.

Some papers - like the Minneapolis Star Tribune - only allow comments on certain stories. So the paper knows that certain stories about politics or a death bring out the absolute worst spellers and humans, yet is fine with allowing those same people to simply migrate to other stories, that in theory won't spark as many emotions, but still always do.

Others make people register, but all that means is they can use a fake email address instead of just logging in as "anonymous."

Papers allow online comments that would never appear in the traditional letters to the editor section. Why? Because...no one knows yet how to deal with this whole Internet thing, because...more eyeballs looking at the web site is a good thing, no matter how evil those eyes are, because...we want the community to have good discussions. Each explanation makes less sense than the previous one.

Forget the ick factor. Or the fact these bottom-of-the-barrel comments really do nothing for the bottom line. They can also have a negative effect on reporters just trying to do their jobs. A few months ago, Star Tribune writer Jon Tevlin told David Brauer that some of his sources are actually fearful of speaking on the record, because they don't want to expose themselves to the vitriol that accompanies the stories online. Tevlin wrote to Brauer after a commenter called a source in one of his stories a pedophile, despite the fact the person was, uh, not a pedophile.

Reporters struggle to get people to talk because that's the nature of the job. The last thing they need is people having to fear being taken apart for no reason on a site that's read by thousands or even millions of people.

So to conclude: Comments have done nothing to help papers financially. If papers were thriving and hiring thousands instead of dumping thousands - and the money brought in from people reading the site and commenting had a major part in it - I could see there being a vigorous debate about what to do with comments. But they haven't.

And they make people not want to talk to reporters. And they make many people not want to even look at stories for fear of what the comments might say. And when people do read them, they make people sad or upset or inspire them to write their own hateful rant.

No one knows what the future holds for newspapers, or even if there is one. But even if they survive and eventually thrive again, the entire industry will suffer in some form as long as the delusional and hateful have a home on their websites.

How I learned to fear the radio

My friend Jim loves to listen to sports on the radio more than anyone I know. He's also a huge Yankees fan, although I don't think he's budged from his declaration early in the season that this Yankees team was utterly unlovable. He spends most of his work day sitting a foot from a TV that's always on. And if the Yanks are playing, he's tuning in.

Yet at home, he says he almost never watches them on television. Instead he tunes in to the radio, where he's treated to the wonder that is John Sterling, better known to non-Yankee fans as the overbearing voice they hear on highlights announcing, "Ball game over! Yankees win. Theeeeee Yankees win!" Jim listens to the Yankees, an occasional basketball game and, if they're ever on, the New Jersey Devils.

He says he listens to the radio because it gives him the chance to multitask. He can't just sit in front of the TV and do nothing but watch A-Rod hit homers and Joe Girardi make pitching changes. So he'll cook and surf the web while listening to a ballgame. He's like a relic from the 1940s.

Unlike Jim, I'm no longer enamored with listening to sports on the radio. Actually, to be more accurate, I no longer enjoy listening to the radio when I have a rooting interest. If I'm in the car and it's an early summer game between two random teams, it's hard to beat baseball on the radio. And it certainly beats talk radio.

But if I do care about the outcome? That's different.

It makes me anxious listening to a big game. Being unable to watch what's happening means I have to rely on someone else to tell me what's taking place, and I don't necessarily like the idea that they know something before I do. You're at their mercy, prisoner to their eyes and competency. "First down catch at the 20! No, he dropped it." What? What happened?

If I'm watching on television and my favorite team loses, I'll almost always hit the mute button, the better to drown out the talking hairpieces who are droning on about what went wrong on the court. It's the adult equivalent of a child putting his hands over his ears and closing his eyes, as if everything is all right as long as he can't see or hear anything.

The radio robs me of that opportunity. It forces you to listen to every strike, every missed shot, every dropped pass. If it's the opposing team's announcing crew, the misery is compounded by their over-the-top glee, annoying catchphrases and a level of homerism so obscene it makes Baghdad Bob look impartial. These guys are the heirs to Johnny Most, the famed Celtics broadcaster famous for, among other things, saying that Kurt Rambis looked "like something that had crawled out of a sewer."



But as a kid I tuned in often, usually searching for out-of-the-way radio stations that broadcast Lakers games. For some reason, in little Janesville in southern Minnesota, we could pick up stations from Denver, San Antonio and Dallas. So every time the Lakers played those three teams, I hustled upstairs to do battle with the radio. The stations often went in and out, meaning I had to situate the radio...just...so. Move it an inch and I lost the signal. Slapping the radio on the right side brought the signal back, jostling the antennae sometimes lost it. Occasionally I'd have to change bedrooms, as, improbably, the frequency often varied if I moved 10 feet, even if it was for a radio station a thousand miles away. Laker games were on TV maybe once a week, so the radio provided more exposure than even television. Back then, hearing about their victories really was as satisfying as watching them.

It was also during those years that my number one dream in life was to be a play-by-play announcer. Forget being a fireman, or a cop or a wide receiver in the NFL. I wanted to call games every week. It seemed like such a glamorous life. In 1986, when I was 11, I even "broadcast" the first half of a Monday Night game, setting up a desk in the basement. I had stats, charts, magazine stories, all used for research on the teams. I was a kid in desperate need of a hobby.

I set up my tape recorder and called the first two quarters, later playing it for my parents. They praised my skills. That tape is lost to history and I never listened to it after that night, but I'm going to assume mom and dad's critique had more to do with our relation than my broadcasting excellence.

The radio dream didn't last long and was probably for the best. I'd be too self-conscious of my voice and even as I'd say my catchphrases, I'd be thinking, "This sounds ridiculous."

I admire those who can paint pictures with their spoken words, even the screamers who seem to hold most of the jobs in college and pro sports. I can appreciate how skilled they are, even if I usually have no desire to listen to them.