Why Johnny doesn't read (newspapers)

There's been a lot of talk lately about the inevitable demise of daily newspapers. Circulation is declining, ad revenue is plummeting, newsroom staffs are being slashed, and stock prices across the board are in the basement.

Of course, there's been much weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth over this trend, and pundits galore offering up their opinions on why people have lost interest in reading a daily newspaper. Is it the Internet's fault? Is it the increasingly short attention span of our youth? Is it the overall economy? Global warming?

By now, you've noticed what all those theories have in common: They all make newspapers a victim of outside forces over which they have no control. No one ever seems to ask whether it's something within the newspaper that could be driving people away. Well, now someone has. John McIntyre, assistant managing editor for the copy desk at The Baltimore Sun, wrote a blog post that suggests maybe the way newspapers are written is confusing readers and sending them elsewhere for their daily fix of news and smudged fingers. He talks about longstanding conventions that people inside the news biz assume readers understand, like using a comma instead of the word 'and' in headlines and what a dateline (that all-caps town name at the start of a story) really means. It turns out many readers don't have a clue. He also points a finger at the incredibly stilted language in which many news stories are written, and how seldom they lead with the most important facts.

The post should be required reading for all freshman college journalism students. That's assuming there will be any newspapers left for them to work at by the time they graduate. Read more!

NEWS FLASH: Its knot just the Press-Citizen

A while back I wrote a post about an epidemic of improper word usage in the Iowa City Press-Citizen. For a period of several weeks, I kept stumbling across a comical number of wrongly used homonyms. The stories were written on a variety of topics by a variety of reporters, so it wasn't simply a case of having employed the dimmest bulb in the chandelier.

It probably seemed like I was picking on the P-C, but it was more a matter of it being the newspaper I read most often these days. To prove my lack of bias, I present an excerpt from a recent story about the Warren County Fair from my hometown paper in Monmouth, Ill.:

Sarah Dean, from Gerlaw, is an example of one of those specialized animal handlers. Dean is an accomplished 4-H champion who brought a goat to this year's fair. The goat, Akicita, is a personable critter that knows how to shake and give kisses on command. It is also a champion "weather" in it's own right, named Grand Champion of the Decatur and Petersburg competitions, as well as earning a number of other accolades. A "weather" is a neutered goat.

Now, I may have grown up in the middle of nowhere, but I'm no farm girl. Nonetheless, I know that a neutered ram (sheep or goat) is a "wether". Unless, of course, lightning shoots out of its ass.

I'm not even going to mention the improper use of the contraction "it's" instead of the possessive pronoun "its". Even a grammar diva can be a compassionate progressive once in a while. To prove it, here's a handy tip for the legions who feel hopelessly confused about the whole "it's/its" conundrum — try reading the sentence aloud, replacing the questionable "its" with "it is". If the sentence still makes sense, use the contraction. If it doesn't, use the apostrophe-less pronoun. You're welcome. Read more!

Google me this, please

Earlier today I spent about 40 minutes searching for the neoprene sleeve that I use whenever I have to take my laptop out of the house. I know exactly when I last used it, several months ago. I know where I last remember seeing it, in the living room next to the couch. Obviously it isn't there anymore, and it doesn't seem to be anywhere. Bear in mind, I have a very small, 1-bedroom apartment with exactly 2 closets. There aren't a lot of places it could be hiding, but I'll be damned if I can find it.

As I was digging through boxes and drawers and old backpacks, I realized how spoiled I have become by Google. Pretty much any question I can think of — what 60 kilograms equals in pounds, the Latin-to-English translation of 'timor mortis conturbat me', whether Abe Vigoda is dead or alive* — I can fire up my computer and hey presto, Google has the answer. It's entirely possible my offline finding capacity has been permanently crippled by the ease of searching the Internet.

There's only one solution to this conundrum. Google needs to develop a new application, one that will index everything in my house and then cough up its location when I type a query into the search engine. I'm not sure how it will work, exactly; that's for the computer geeks to figure out. But I hereby offer myself and my small but many-thing-filled apartment as a beta tester.

* These are all actual searches I have conducted in the last month. Judge me if you must, love me if you can, as Toby Keith didn't say. Read more!

Go Cubs ... Go!?

Enough with the boring health stuff. It's time to talk about what's really important — the Chicago Cubs.

The second half of the season begins today after a four-day pause for the All-Star Game and attendant hoopla. I usually dread the All-Star break, because it is four days without real baseball and let's face it, the middle of July is not exactly a whirlwind of sports activity. There's major league baseball and ... let's see ... oh! the Tour de France (but no Lance Armstrong this year), and ... um ... the British Open (but no Tiger Woods this year), and ... yeah, that's about it. So the All-Star break is a wasteland. It's four days when sports fans are expected to actually, like, interact with their friends and family instead of the television or radio. Like I said, a wasteland.

But this year, I found myself actually looking forward to the All-Star break. I needed a little breather after the first half of the season saw the Chicago Cubs bolt out to the best record in the major leagues (57-38!) and lead the NL Central Division by 4 games over the Satanic Red Fowl (aka the St. Louis Cardinals). As much as I love the Cubs, I think we can all agree that this is not typical Cubs behavior. Yes, I want them to win, I ache for them to win. I'm just not used to them, you know, winning. How long will it last? When will the bottom fall out and the joke be revealed? Is it possible that this really is the year? No Cubs fan with a memory that stretches back to 2003 wants to get their hopes up. But at the same time, I am not going to be one of those lame fans who breathes a sigh of relief when the Cubs hit a rocky patch, thankful that they seem to be reverting to all-too-familiar form.

No, I want them to win. I expect them to win. More importantly, I am starting to believe that they can win. So you can see why the four-day All-Star break was so needed. It was a chance to regroup, to take a deep breath before plunging back into the season. Now I'm ready for the wild ride to October. Bring it on! Read more!

All over but the waiting

Well, it's over. I had my last chemotherapy treatment on Thursday — 6 cycles of two treatments each, every two weeks since January 25. Actually now that I think about it, it was every week for the first month because of my participation in a clinical trial that involved the administering of a fifth drug in addition to the usual four-drug (ABVD) regimen for Hodgkins' lymphoma.

To celebrate, I made chocolate chip cookies and took them to my wonderful oncologist and his amazing nurses to celebrate their finally being able to get rid of me. After all the ups and downs and complications of the last six months, I told Doc that I couldn't understand why he hadn't shoved me off on one of his colleagues that he doesn't like. (He told me that unfortunately, right now he doesn't have any colleagues he doesn't like.) Doc ate two of the cookies during my appointment so I think he liked them. He did ask me if I had put anything in them to pay him back for giving me poison every 2 weeks for 6 months. He made me eat one first before he would eat his.

When I went back to the infusion suite for my chemo, I was surprised to be presented with a certificate for "graduating" from chemotherapy, signed by a number of the nurses (and Doc). As the last of the four drugs I usually receive was being infused, one of the nurses who had treated me several times over the past six months (but not today) came over and asked if it was true that it was my last visit. I said yes, and she said "great!" and went away. Then she came back just before I left with another certificate, saying that several of the nurses I saw a lot hadn't had a chance to sign the first one so they made another. I may have teared up a little bit, but I'm sure it was just allergies. Oncology nurses (both the outpatient clinic and the inpatient floor) are amazing people. It can't be easy to know you are going to lose many of your patients, but you'd never know it from their consistently upbeat and encouraging demeanor.

So overall the day turned out better than it started. The woman who normally gives me a ride on chemo days (a former co-worker who lives in West Branch) forgot to pick me up this morning so I had to drive myself in, which made me a little bit late but it all worked out. She left a voice mail message for me this afternoon apologizing all over herself for forgetting, but honestly I'm surprised she remembered all those other times. It was so great to have a ride every week, because I am often a little groggy right after chemo (a side effect of the pre-medications they administer to prevent nausea and allergic reactions). And I didn't feel so guilty about imposing on someone since she wasn't really going out of her way (her husband works at the hospital and she always drops him off and picks him up anyway).

What now? Now I have to wait 3 weeks before going back for a PET/CT scan that will tell us whether I am in remission or in trouble. It will be a long 3 weeks. All distractions will be gratefully accepted. Read more!