It’s not that there aren’t obvious differences: Westchester happens to be a suburb of New York City. Panola County is in the middle of East Texas nowhere. On East Texas radio, you hear mostly country music. In Westchester, it seems they really, really, really like Prince. Prince of the “Little Red Corvette” and “Raspberry Beret” era. One is suburb, the other rural.

But they both have cities (or in Westchester’s case, villages) that are small. I grew up in Carthage, which had a population of 6,660 at the time. Irvington, one of the villages I cover, has a population around 6,000 as well.

I’ve been trying to describe how this could be, but the only thing I seem to be able to put together is that Panola is much less dense than Westchester. Everything’s spaced out and wider.

That doesn’t really hit you until you look at Census numbers. So thanks to a really interesting infographic tool (Creately) and the fabulous Census Bureau (every journalist’s best friend), I made an infographic comparing population and area size. Yes, this does solidify my nerd status:

Next up: a look at municipalities and New York’s quad-municipality system.

There are some differences between working for a community news site as opposed to a metropolitan newspaper. For example, a new school playground wouldn’t make The Dallas Morning News or The New York Times front page. But it does where I work (and actually, that was a pretty fun story to write).

But data visualization can work for both small and large news outlets. There’s just a difference in the scope of data used. The Texas Tribune highlights public salaries across the state in its popular database.

How do I incorporate visualizations into my stories (when I can find an angle)?

Well, how about a story about a sex offender moving to an apartment building across the street from a local elementary school?

Or these stories looking into Revolutionary War history in the Tarrytowns area (I live in an area where they fought in the Revolutionary War now. Yes, I did get slightly weirded out when I realized that).

This past week, I created a map for the annual village-wide tag sale in Tarrytown.

Data visualizations can be used in a variety of stories. I only wish MSC’s CMS was able to embed the maps I made (I’ve asked and it doesn’t look good that it’ll happen in the future… don’t ask me why).

Matt Stiles introduced me to Google Fusion when he stopped by my Technology Reporting class last year. I used Google Fusion in the examples above. Seeing those little red dots on a map… it’s addictive.

You can too, because it’s super easy to get Google to plot your data. All you need is a spreadsheet with one column for “Location.” Put in a street address and you’re ready to go!

Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like you can put photos into a Google Fusion map. I tried with that sex offender story, but no luck. All I ended up with was a downloads photo full of creepy mugshots.

Plus, this is really funny:

I am a high school band legend.

That’s what I’ve gleamed from a conversation with Matthew, my cousin while we sit in my grandmother’s kitchen and watch the Thanksgiving lunch preparations.

“My band director told us about a girl whose pants fell down while she was marching,” he told me.

I’m not exactly sure how we came to discuss this, but I do remember sitting up straight in my chair and asking excitedly, “Did he say where she was from?” “No,” Matthew replied. He was somewhat perplexed. “That’s me,” I said. “That totally happened to me.”

Added for some visual interest. This is not my school; our uniforms were much more hideous. Via @rkleine on Flickr.

I was a freshman at Carthage High School, and I played the clarinet in our school’s band. We weren’t the kind of marching band that you might see on TV: the somewhat hip band, playing current songs and dancing around while we happened to be in formation. For us, it was all military, all the time. Precision ruled the day.

The pants incident happened at our first home football game. This being Carthage, where most everything closed at 9 p.m. and football was a revered sport, the stadium was packed with a couple thousand people. The band had been playing throughout the first half, but now we were on the field, preparing to do the familiar routine we’d been doing at practice and away games.

I noticed that the Velcro on my hideous band uniform wasn’t clinging to itself as it should. I tried smashing it back together, but that Velcro had pretty much given up. I was perhaps the 20^th person to have been assigned those pants because they hadn’t had new uniforms since the 70s. I decided it’d be ok. These pants had been doing just fine so far. So I got in formation with my clarinet and waited for the drum major’s shrill whistle, which would signal that we should begin.

I don’t recall the song we were playing or most of the steps of our routine. We started out at the back of the middle field and marched toward the home side of the stadium. We then took a turn and marched to the right, toward the field goal post. Once there, each row would do a 180-degree countermarch.

My pants started to slip just before I did the countermarch. By the time I did and had gone a few more steps, I was waddling around like a penguin.

Eventually I toppled over, because no matter how hard you try, you can’t march with your pants around your ankles.

My fellow marchers were either too shocked to say something or too unaware. Those few who could say something urged me to run off the field, but I knew that wasn’t an option. One, my embarrassment would increase triple fold, and two, all I could picture was my band director’s disapproving face as he cried out “Why did you leave the field?!”

So I did the only thing I could think of: I yanked off my pants (I did have on pants underneath my uniform, by the way), threw them over my shoulder, grabbed my clarinet, and raced toward the rest of the band at the other end of the field, hoping like hell that I’d have a clue as to where we were in our routine.

When I reached them, I found my empty hole and did two quick maneuvers back into my place. I can’t recall what the turns I did were called, but I remember it was the only time in my pitiful marching career that I did them perfectly. Luckily, we were at the end of our routine.

I got to relive the entire thing the following Monday, when we watched the video of our performance as usual. I’m sad to note that I didn’t get a copy of it. I kind of wanted to send it to America’s Funniest Home Video.

Instead, I’m the reason why my high school band made sure to require suspenders for everyone during the follow year, and I’m the reason why they made sure when they ordered new band uniforms that they came with the suspenders attached the year after that.

I blame my subscription to Mother Jones. It’s a kick-ass investigative journalism magazine, but let’s face it: the subscriber demographics skew liberal.

Therefore I occasionally get political mail. Sometimes it’s kind of hilarious. That’s the nature of political mail—it’s old fashioned propaganda designed to get you to donate money to a candidate. Much like the fake telephone surveys where political campaigns will ask you “How would you feel if Senator So-and-So was a serial rapist?” The Senator isn’t actually a serial rapist, but the questioning is designed to put that idea into your head.

The cynic in me loves the political scheming. Adores it. Wants to take it behind the elementary school and get it pregnant.

Cut to today’s mail: a letter from “James Carville” via the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. I’m not sure if Carville did indeed write this letter. Probably someone on his payroll.

The envelope reads: “It’s Sarah Palin’s Tea Party NOW … DETAILS INSIDE.” There’s also a picture of Palin growling in Mama Grizzly fashion.

This Mama Grizzly knows how to growl.

Some choice tidbits of the letter (will provide full text upon request, if you’re really that interested):

• “I’ve been in politics for a long time, and here’s what I know about 2010: Sarah Palin’s summer of lies road trip is in full swing.” [Ed. note: Bold is original to letter]
• “Sarah’s already campaigned for more than a dozen tea party lunatics…”
• “She’s [Sarah Palin] doing a bang-up job of stirring up the crazy.”
• “You can stop this radical threat…”

Also included is “Sarah Palin’s Tea Party Primer,” which includes five of her Democratic targets (Photos in the gallery).

The overall message: Crazy Sarah Palin wants to make all of Congress crazy. She’s out to get you sensible and intelligent Democrats! DONATE NOW OR WE ALL SHALL PERISH!

Ok, so perhaps it’s not that histrionic. There’s nothing related to Armageddon.

Although if you ask me, that would make for a much more effective mailer.

The first painting to get loaned to SMU from the Prado.

I used to round up links for my EIC blog (before I apparently forgot how to post to it). I figure this could be a good thing to do on this blog, since I’m still getting Google Alerts about SMU. I can’t wait for graduation and the day I can turn them off. So without further ado, here’s what you should know in recent SMU news:

Donald Andrew Bess is on trial for the murder of an SMU student in 1984:

• Dallas County death penalty trial delayed after defendant accused of killing SMU student has massive heart attack [Dallas Morning News]
• Defendant’s heart attack delays SMU murder trial [Associated Press]
• Rapist was also SMU student’s killer in ’84 slaying, two testify [Dallas Morning News]
• Dallas County prosecution rests in trial over killing of SMU student in ’84 [Dallas Morning News]

SMU Research is trying to help women practice assertiveness skills with virtual reality so that they can prevent rape (Editor’s note: But what we really need to be doing is teaching people to not rape other people. I mean, that’s the problem with our rape culture. But I digress.): Practicing assertiveness skills on virtual-reality “dates” may help women prevent sexual victimization [SMU Research]

The Meadows Museum announced a three-year partnership with the Prado Museum, which further cements the Meadows Museum’s association with Spanish Art:

• Meadows ties the knot with the Prado [Daily Campus]
• Prado and Meadows Museum announce three-year partnership [SMU Public Affairs]
• Prado and Meadows Museum Announce Three-Year Partnership [Dallas Art News]
• Prado has U.S. alliance [New York Times]

Summer Senate doled out approximately $5,400 to various organizations at their first Summer Senate meeting.

Sports News:

Conference realignment could mean a big shakeup for SMU Athletics. Right now, all we’ve got is speculation.

• How does conference movement affect SMU?_updated with Orsini statement [Dallas Morning News]
• C-USA hires consultant to assist as conference realignment unfolds [Dallas Morning News]

The NCAA sanctioned USC for a host of violations, bringing up memories of the Death Penalty and the death of SMU Football. Naturally. Sometimes I think SMU is the Jennifer Anniston to the NCAA’s sanctions’ Brad Pitt. No matter what the story, we’re going to be brought up:

• NCAA Slaps U. of Southern California With Stiff Penalties in Closely Watched Case [Chronicle of Higher Education]
• USC Football: Sanctions Worst Since SMU Death Penalty? [Bleacher Report]
• USC Trojans: They’re Different From 1980s SMU How, Exactly? [Houston Press]

Former SMU Director of Athletics Jim Copeland dies at the age of 65 from cancer: [SMU Public Affairs]

That's an epic fail.

Just because you never run corrections doesn’t mean you’re never wrong.

I was talking to Craig Flournoy, one of my journalism professors, one day last April when he said something to that effect. The Daily Campus had just run a correction recently, and he was telling me that we, the paper, were doing the right thing by publishing corrections.

And you know what? He’s absolutely right.

By their very nature, humans make a lot of mistakes. We’ve got the sheepish apology and “I’m only human” line down. You’d think journalistic institutions would realize this and admit their erroneous ways. Some do. Others don’t.

In an old post (but worth the read), Scott Rosenberg of MediaBugs.org highlights one of the reasons why corrections are important, focusing on two New York Times corrections of Voxox (originally reported as “Vovox”) and the College of William & Mary (originally printed as “William and Mary College”):

the importance of correcting them lies not in some earth-shattering import to the facts themselves but rather in the bond of trust that is established when a publication is seen to care enough to correct them — and, inversely, the loss of trust that occurs when the publication doesn’t bother.

Remember that, for Joe at Voxox or Sue at William & Mary, the misspelled name isn’t just a tiny fact in a sea of information; it represents that person’s point of maximum contact with the publication. Each time these people think of that newspaper or magazine they’re going to remember, These are the folks who couldn’t even get my name right. Multiply that by all the careless errors that get made in the course of normal journalism and you can get some insight into why public trust in the media has been on a downhill curve for so many years.

Issuing a correction is painful and gives me a queasy stomach. I absolutely hate doing it. Because as a journalist, I’m supposed to get the facts straight. The paper is supposed to get the facts straight. We’re the first draft of history!

Running a correction is something of a Catch-22: Either we admit that we were wrong or we don’t. Admitting mistakes shows our readers that we make mistakes and aren’t fully accurate. Not admitting mistakes shows that a) we’re too stupid to know we made a mistake, b) we don’t care about making mistakes, or c) we don’t want to make ourselves look bad. The only way out of these situations is to admit wrongdoing. To do so otherwise is a disservice to journalism.

The 2009 State of the Media report by the Pew Project for Excellence in Journalism shows that fewer and fewer Americans trust the media because we’re less accurate. We can’t just pretend the mistake never happened. Why not? Because our readers know if we get something wrong. There’s always going to be at least one guy who reads a story and notices that something’s wrong. And that one guy will inevitably tell someone else about the error. It spreads like a virus. They know we got something wrong, so why should they trust us?

Then there’s the other side of errors: spreading misinformation. Just ask Mark Twain, who is probably one of the most quoted people who ever lived. Or Marie Antoinette, who never did actually say, “Let them eat cake.” If we don’t correct our wrongs, some people might not realize we were wrong. This, I believe, is the single most important reason why we should correct mistakes. Not everyone is a fact-checker. It’s why birthers believe that Obama is not an American citizen (that, and a healthy dose of conspiracy theory). News outlets are supposed to be credible (because we’re all about facts), which means a lot of people take our information and assume its true. Even sometimes when it’s not.

If we don’t correct the information when we know it’s wrong, we’re lying to our readers. We’re intentionally saying the facts don’t matter. And in journalism, that’s akin to blasphemy.

Having been raised in East Texas, I can tell you that there are some people whose accent is thick enough to make "owl" sound like "I'll."

It’s three o’ clock in the morning (approximately), and I’m staring at the glow of my laptop’s monitor. The only sounds I hear are the gently clacking of my keyboard and the humming of the window A/C unit. I can’t hear the usual chaos of the busy street below—mostly because it’s quite empty.

I do this a lot.

The Big Guy Upstairs Does Not Apparently Want to Grant My Wishes

If I could change one thing about myself, it would probably be my night-owl tendencies. I’ve always wanted to be one of those morning people who can wake up at the crack of dawn, sit at the breakfast table and read the morning paper. Morning people always seem to be more productive than normal. Perhaps it’s because when I wake up, I spend the first five minutes trying to figure out how much longer I can sleep without being late to whatever I’m waking up for. I seem to always be staying up later than I probably should, doing mindless activities to forestall going to sleep. My brain acts like a stubborn six-year-old. And the worst part of it all is the fact that I actually love sleeping. Sleeping is God’s gift to mankind, rivaled only by sliced bread and a Christopher Buckley novel.

BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP… (Or, a Typical Day)

6 a.m.: The alarm goes off three hours before whatever it is I’m waking up for (class, meeting, work, etc.). The alarm clock is designed after the old wind-up alarm clocks that reigned before the advent of the clock radio. The ringing is loud enough to roust a corpse from its eternal slumber.

6:01 a.m.: The ding-donger between the two bells must be stopped before the alarm is turned off because otherwise it will keep ringing as I fumble around for the off switch. The small hammer is contained. The switch is flipped.

6:02 a.m.: It’s 6. That means… I can sleep for another hour at least. Wait—I showered last night. That means another thirty minutes. Right? Right.

6:02 and 1/2 a.m.: Reset alarm for 7:30 a.m. Go back to sleep.

7:30 a.m.: Alarm jolts to life. Hammer must be stopped. Alarm switched off.

7:31 a.m.: I really don’t have to leave until 8:30. And it’ll take less than half-an-hour to get ready. I can sleep some more. Huzzah!

7:31 a.m.: Reset alarm for 8 a.m. Go back to sleep.

8 a.m.: Alarm. Off. Up. Day Begins. Unless, of course, I don’t set my alarm at 7:31, figuring I’ll rest my eyes for 10 minutes or so. Murphy’s Law states that I’ll then accidentally fall asleep and wake up with the minimum time needed to get going or worse.

Meanwhile, across town some girl named Margaret did indeed wake up at 6 when her alarm first went off (in fact, she woke up before it went off and waited to get out of bed until she heard it ringing). Margaret managed to scrounge up a delicious breakfast meal while I was busy sleeping in. She caught up on news and did some laundry in the process. She’s a pretty productive person who keeps a garden out back and a Julia Child cookbook on the kitchen counter.

Sometimes I hate Margaret. Then I feel bad about hating her. It’s not her fault I’m not a morning person.

The reason I’m not Margaret is because my night-owl tendencies are exaggerated by a) my job and b) my being a college student. Invariably I would always end up staying up late to put the print product to bed. All the while stupidly signing up for morning classes (but then again, why is it that the one class you need is always at the one time you don’t want it to be?).

My schedule is completely out of whack. If I could normalize my sleeping patterns, my inner Margaret could come out. But it only takes one night to throw everything off-kilter again. Inner Margaret sure is a petulant kid.

Any advice? I’d love to hear it. How do all of you night owls deal with morning? And morning people, what’s the deal? How can I join your super-awesome club?

This is somewhat depressing because unless I either a) become a famous author (my journalism career having gone to pot and all) who doesn’t have a set work schedule or b) marry an uber-rich European monarch (or equally-rich software/computer tycoon) and officially start using the word “summer” as a verb, this is the last time before retirement that I’ll ever be able to laze about.

The worst part is that I’m not lazing about at all for most of it. I’ll be taking a few summer classes and probably getting a job to earn a little extra money. That epic roadtrip across America will have to wait until I’m 89 and can finally afford that Winnebago (I’ll nickname it “Ralph”).

But I’m also a little excited, because this means soon I won’t be in school anymore. Sure, there’s going to be a lot more responsibility… and loans that need paying. But I like the idea of a world where I don’t have to constantly take tests and keep up with grades. That gets tiring.

Said bookmark. On a side note, isn't the new theme just exquisitely designed?

Five days ago, you could say I committed the gravest of social media sins by deleting my Facebook account.

I have yet to fully acclimate to my new, non-Facebook life.

For instance, if my Google Reader should run dry and my Twitter feed update slowly, I’m tempted to click on that Facebook bookmark. I want to click on it. The mouse goes to it, like a ship’s crew to the sound of a siren’s song.

Then I remember I deleted my account, and it all comes back to me.

Even though my use had decreased considerably, Facebook was a great way to pass the time. Facebook’s Statistics provide a staggering glimpse of the truly horrendous time suck that it actually is: “People spend over 500 billion minutes per month on Facebook.” I believe that’s all 400 million users. Divide out that number and you get a lot of time spent on one website.

Bored and nothing to read? Go read random Facebook status updates. Of course, most of the updates were mundane items that really didn’t add anything to my life. Instead of catching up on world affairs, I was reading passive-aggressive song lyrics and “Johnny likes rubber duckies, Madonna and Sports Illustrated.” This is one of the reasons I enjoy Twitter—many of the people I follow tweet interesting links to news and random tidbits of information that I would otherwise not find.

So far, I have received one email asking me what happened to my Facebook. The sender is not on Twitter, so they wouldn’t have known. Otherwise, not much activity on that front.

Not having an account has also made it difficult to look at specific pages on Facebook. This is what I fear will draw me to create a dummy account to view these pages. It’s why I haven’t deleted that bookmark. And it’s precisely because I haven’t deleted that bookmark that I keep gravitating to click on the link. In terms of my eye movements, it always goes first to my SMU email and then to Facebook. It’s a habit.

I need to rearrange my bookmarks. Or just delete the one in question. Because I know I made the right decision in deleting my Facebook.

Although perhaps going cold turkey wasn’t the best idea.

Facebook was the new social media wunderkind on the Internet playground. I wasn’t that impressed.

What am I supposed to do with this thing, anyways?

Facebook was similar to MySpace, but truthfully, I didn’t really see a point in joining either. Eventually, I would have both (And I can’t remember which I joined first because I once joined Facebook then promptly left and then later joined again). But things were different back then, sometime between 2006 and 2007: The biggest change was that it was a closed network that required a college or high school email. I clearly remember this fact because I had to use my newly acquired Carthage HS email account (Thank you, Mr. Worley) the first time I registered.

Facebook didn’t really take off until I came to college. After all, college was where it had been birthed. In college, I learned to love Facebook and it’s spying capabilities. I mean friend-keeping-up-with. That’s what I used it for (*cough, cough*) In fact, I was the one trying to actively recruit my friends from high school onto the network. They were stuck in MySpace, languishing amid the personalized-to-the-point-that-made-you-want-to-gag profiles.

But yesterday I deleted my account.

I had been considering doing so for a couple of months. I wasn’t really using it all that much. Besides which, Facebook’s many privacy snafus (although great for spying) irked my sensibilities. I didn’t sign up for Facebook when everything was public. I signed up when it was a closed network. Now it has the gall to decide for me what I should make public? That’s just not kosher.

The catalyst was a Wired article (which you should go read now). Basically, it listed everything that Facebook had changed:

• Taking private information and setting it to public by default: city, name, photo, friend list, fan pages
• Fill-in-the-blank likes on your Info page? Now public and linked to profile pages OTHERWISE you don’t get anything—”though Facebook nicely hangs onto them in its database in order to let advertisers target you.”
• Sending my profile information to other sites such as Pandora, Microsoft and Yelp.
• Making all status updates public and search-engine-findable
• Making all status updates appear on relevant fan pages
• The Facebook “Like” button (and mandatory public setting)
• Going after third-party sites
• Censoring emails
• Giving my information to third-party applications because someone else took a “What Gilligan’s Island Character Are You?” quiz (and letting applications store your information indefinitely)

Other irritations that the article left out: Beacon, the many, many site changes (why does Facebook feel like it has to become Twitter?!) and FarmVille. Oh, how I hate FarmVille.

After considering all that has transpired and all that I’ve put up with over the past few years, I decided to leave.

The most annoying part of all? To actually delete your account, you’ve got to search for “delete my facebook” to find the link that will actually erase your profile from the site forever (within 14 days, mind you). “Deactivating” your account simply renders it invisible. That way, should you feel the need to come back, you’ll have an easy time (simply log-in!). Facebook still stores all of your information.

Of course, they make sure to pile on the guilt when you deactivate, showing you pictures of your friends and captions that read “So-and-so will miss you!”

Deletion? Just a simple message saying Are you sure you want to delete/It will take up to 14 days. But I suspect that’s only because they don’t expect you to ever find it in the first place. No sense going all out if no one can find it.

It’s been a day since deletion. I feel just fine.