No PCs at camp, so this blog will be quiet for at least one week.

But 2008 isn’t 1980 (the year I graduated), and I expect to have some frank discussions with former journalism instructors and colleagues (and perhaps, some current students) about the current state of the profession. I haven’t walked into a newsroom in about a decade, but I suspect that many are subdued, because of the decline in print advertising and economic forces that are behind continuing staff reductions in many newspapers across the country. Some long-time professionals have had enough—as evidenced by this July 14 article regarding a resignation at the Chicago Tribune.

The workforce and business environment continue to change, not always for the better. Although my B.A. degree from Eastern Illinois University may not be as high as it once was, it remains indispensable to me. I’ve been committed for many years to the concept of being a “life-long learner.” That led me to earn accreditation through the International Association of Business Communicators, and to hone skills in newer communication methods and technologies, including blogging and podcasting.

My professional and personal life today doesn’t look anything like I would have imagined it turning out when I graduated from EIU. Challenges, disappointments, minor successes and major “growth opportunities” continue to be part of my work and life.

Tomorrow, however, will not be a day to dwell on what life isn’t…it will be a day to enjoy life as it is.

I’m very busy, however, currently involved in separate program planning and activities through my church youth group and the International Association of Business Communicators’ social responsibility initiative. This Friday, I will drive down to Charleston, Ill. to participate in a charity golf outing organized by the Journalism Department of my alma mater, Eastern Illinois University. I’m looking forward to seeing some former colleagues–even though I’m embarrassed that the slim, dark-haired journalism major they remember has morphed into a Lou Grant look-alike.

Thanks for stopping by.

If you haven’t visited sitepoint.com before, here are links to two recent columns that show the site’s benefits to non-web developers.

The first is an under-the-hood look at Twitter, and what may be causing the service outages that are frustrating Twitter users. I haven’t read this anywhere else. (I don’t subscribe to many other geek-oriented sites, so I might have missed some. A quick Technorati search didn’t come up with anything better than this article.)

The second article was a rant about the CAPTCHA utility that many website use to keep automated robots from accessing sites. But the CAPTCHA utility can be a pain for legitimate site vistors–especially when it insults those visitors.

Read Reddit’s Flawed CAPTCHA: Adding Insult To Injury for more information. I liked one commentor’s point that insults shouldn’t be part of the messaging in utilities meant to block automated robots. The robots won’t read or comprehend the insults. Only humans, most of whom are potential customers, would understand the insults–and they are not the ones who should be insulted.

Maybe SitePoint will become a new (to you) source for web-oriented information.

I’ve been taking photographs since I received my first camera at age 9 or 10. During a college course on photojournalism, I learned about exposures, ASA film “speed,” lighting, photo composition and how to develop and print black-and-white film.

Today I use an inexpensive Kodak digital camera that I won at a company charity golf outing. One beautiful advantage to digital photography is that I can quickly and easily delete any photographs that I don’t want to keep. On the downside, I struggle with proper lighting, because I rely on the small (and often insufficient) flash that is built into the camera.

But above-average subjects can trump average photographers, as these photos show. All were taken by me with the Kodak, during a recent family vacation to Maui, Hawaii.

“According to all of my training, and what I know, and what I’m seeing, you have about five minutes to live. If you feel inclined to make peace with your God, I’d suggest that you do it right now.” Bill decided that it would be a good idea to follow his doctor’s advice right then, and thought,
“God, thank you for the life you’ve given me. If this is my time to go, I’m ready.”

As soon as he had finished that “prayer,” the pain from the heart attack ended. “Doc, the pain is gone,” Bill exclaimed. “Are you B…s..ing me?” the doctor replied. Bill wasn’t kidding, and in the decade since that near-death experience in 1998, he has continued to live his life as though God has him here for a purpose.

If you were told that you only had five minutes left to live, would you be at peace? If you then learned that the Grim Reaper wasn’t making a house call that day after all, how would you want to spend the minutes, hours, days, weeks and months that could follow?

All of our days are numbered; let’s make them count.

Most of the well-known 12-Step Programs (e.g., Alcoholics Anonymous, Narcotics Anonymous) operate under a set of principles known as the Twelve Traditions. Number 11 states, “Our public relations policy is based on attraction rather than promotion; we need always maintain personal anonymity at the level of press, radio, and films.” Number 12 states, “Anonymity is the spiritual foundation of all our traditions, ever reminding us to place principles before personalities.”

My friends who taught me about 12-Step Programs said Traditions 11 and 12 protect both the individual and the 12-Step Program as a whole. They protect the individual because they discourage a member of the program from being “put on a pedestal” and becoming known as an “expert” on addictions or compulsive behavior in the media. That media spotlight could bring pressure that might, in combination with a failure to “work the program,” prove detrimental to the member. The traditions protect the 12-Step Program because it won’t be linked in the public’s mind with the failure of any individual member.

Take an example of a celebrity who goes on a media tour, stating that he or she is an alcoholic, but has stopped drinking thanks to Alcoholics Anonymous. If that celebrity later drinks, and that is reported in the media, some other active alcoholic might say, “I guess that A.A. Program doesn’t work.” Regardless of the fact that millions of people have successfully found and maintained sobriety through the A.A. Program, this person sees the failure of one famous person as representing the effectiveness of an entire program.

When 15-year-old Miley professes her Christianity–then agrees to be photographed in a sexually-tinged pose, she falls off the pedestal. When Rev. Wright engages in a clash of religion, politics and race, he stumbles from his soap box. When Tom Cruise appears irrational, then attacks someone for trying to retain rationality, he slides off of the pedestal and upsets the soap box.

No one is perfect, of course. None of us on a bad day would want to be held up to the media spotlight. When circumstances or good fortune, or old-fashioned hard work culminate in media attention, those 12-Step Traditions can be helpful in maintaining our perspective, and the reputation of the organizations or movements we hold dear.

According to the article,

Top bloggers can make six figures, and a handful are said to make millions.

Darn it! Now that everyone knows about the millions we’re making on this, the field is going to get even more crowded.

Time to find the “next big thing.”

But today I got a wonderful reminder about another side of blogging. It helps reconnect people separated by time and distance.

I received an email at work that contained the following exchanges:

Former college friend:

janey lou passed this along… keefe has a blog! and gray hair! and he’s suddenly morphed from a hip college dude into a suburban dad interested in family fun and spirituality. who knew?

Former college Journalism advisor:

YIKES!! Live in the present? And here I thought Keefe lived in the FAR OUT!

My reply to both:

Okay, the gray hair is true (better than NO hair), but the “suburban dad interested in family fun and spirituality” is only part of the puzzle. I still keep an eye on the dark side! [I threw in a link to the Big Dominatrix post from yesterday, just to show them how edgy I am these days.] I am thrilled to hear from you both! Please write back or call my cell so that we can catch up. I’m starting to crank up my podcasting as well as blogging, and maybe we can think of something to record together.

I would really enjoy reconnecting with the many great people I met at Eastern Illinois University, especially the daily student newspaper where we learned a lot about communications and life—both good and bad. Thanks to my blog, it looks like that will happen very easily!

eiu journalism blog

Another case study recently whipped across my desk—but I don’t think I can share it with my kids yet. Maybe in a few years. Here’s the background. Tell me what you think.

I was reading an issue of Automotive News, a trade magazine geared toward the automotive industry. I was beginning to get a little punch-drunk from the usual collection of bland articles, when an article on page 46 hit me right between the eyes.

“Racy scandal for race exec” was the headline on an article that reported that Max Mosley, president of Federation Internationale de l’Automobile, the sanctioning body for Formula One and other international racing circuits, was caught on video recently with his pants down. Actually, with his pants, and every other stitch of clothing, removed from his 67-year-old body.

The video, which was posted on the British News of the World website, started a sort of media flogging of Mosley. According to the Automotive News story, in the video, the naked Mosley administered lashes to one of five prostitutes, counting the strokes in “vigorous German” and adding, in German-accented English, “She needs more of ze punishment!” Later, he gets punished by a dominatrix for being a bad boy.

Mosley is fighting off calls that he resign, lashing out at his critics, saying that the video was of a private matter that was “harmless and completely legal.” (I checked…prostitution among consenting adults is legal in London, where the video was made. Side-note: prostitution is not legal in Monaco, where Mosley lives with his wife.)

You may be thinking at this point, “So what is the lesson that you want to share with your kids, Tom? Tell us before we have to pull it out of you!”

In what, to Max Mosley, must have been a painfully twisted idea, the S&M sex video was filmed with a camera hidden in the brassiere of one of the participants (not Max, I’m assuming). That’s it; that’s the point that I want my kids to understand.

The world in which we live is closer than anyone would have thought to the “Big Brother” world written about by George Orwell. Only it is even more insidious than Orwell imagined, because rather than an evil government conspiring to remove our privacy, we are doing it to ourselves. Through our brassieres, through our camera phones, through our lack of respect for privacy.

My kids need to know this, before they start adding videos of their own (hopefully much more family-friendly than Max’s) to their MySpace, or Facebook, or whatever place they will consider to be “private,” “safe” and “boss” in the future. Because it isn’t only Big Brother we need to fear today; it’s Big Dominatrix with the Little Video Camera…or our best friend who doesn’t have the sense to yell “Cut.”
“max+mosley” prostitution video privacy commakazispeek