Southern Migrator

In January 2008 this blog began under the name “Southern Migrator,” a reflection of SM’s travel from Connecticut to Georgia.

This blog had been an assignment for Quinnipiac University’s “Introduction to Interactive Communications” class under Dr. Alex Halavais. Dr. Halavais encouraged all of the students in his class to write regularly for the blog, to develop their online writing skills.

The students in his class were encouraged to blog often, to put down their thoughts about the class, interactive communication, networking, the online media environment, and whatever came to their minds. SM encourages you, the visitor, to check out their posts in the right hand rail of this site.

The course has come to end and with it, this blog. For this site, at least. Of all of the components of this course, SM found blogging the most satisfying. Southern Migrator will return in the near future, on a blog ring comprising Atlanta, Ga.-area bloggers and online writers. Watch for Southern Migrator to comment on things media related, and whatever strikes his fancy, with a stronger and more defined voice.

Until then, see you soon on the Web.

“Resurgens.”

Latin for “rising again,” it is on the corporate seal of the City of Atlanta. It’s appropriate for the city, which burned virtually to the ground during the Civil War, only to resurge as a vibrant Athens of the South, a center of business, media, commerce, culture and diversity.

SM thought of the word “resurgens” as an appropriate way to bring his Interactive Communications blog full circle. He used the city seal to illustrate his first blog posting, and felt the motto would be appropriate for this one in making a personal assessment of this class.

This semester is only the second for SM in two decades, nearly a quarter century away from the classroom. SM had no idea that during the semester, there would be a challenge of a new job in Atlanta, the struggles of relocation, adapting to a new work and life role, and completing the first year of master’s degree program entirely online.

It’s a lot harder than one imagines.

Blown assignments, struggles with understanding new technology, missed deadlines: this has been the reality of the semester. But SM did reach the desired outcome, a new understanding of working in digital media, and an understanding through this course of the concept of interactive communications, and what it means to all of us.

The modules are easy to understand, and the deadlines are not entirely unreasonable. The video lectures are unique; if this is the way the program will be administered online, SM looks forward to it.

Blogging has been the highlight. Make that the highlight. Once this course is over, SM plans to continue blogging and join a web ring in the Atlanta region, to pass along ideas, thoughts, opinions and commentary to a new audience.

If there was one recommendation for the class, I would suggest a discussion room for those in the course to exchange ideas.

SM is exhausted and looks forward to some down time before the start of summer classes. But one last order of business. He’s working on preparing for today’s final. Time to finish with a surge.

In a previous post SM mentioned the old man in the wheelchair, who puts himself in the same location every night. The man was there again this morning, still in his wheelchair, but without the coat.

One thing about him: He does not ask anyone for money. Which is one thing that cannot be said about others sharing his plight.

It’s easy to mention homelessness and panhandling in the same breath. One usually accompanies the other. The myth of a better life in Atlanta has drawn thousands to the greater metropolitan area and, occasionally, that better life has bypassed some. To survive, a segment of the area population has turned to living off the charity of others.

Recently, a convention and tourism agency commissioned a study on what people considered problems in the area. The people surveyed said pandhandling — the aggressive, in-your-face kind that is unique to downtown Atlanta — is second among things they disliked about the city. The notorious highway traffic is No. 1. Go figure.

“It impacted negatively the perception that Atlanta is a clean city,” Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “It is pretty evident that the panhandlers in the city are getting more aggressive.”

That’s putting it mildly.

SM is familiar with pandhandling. Years of living in New York City makes one familiar with the sob story, the plea for subway fare. SM knows how to deal with the fellow looking for a handout. On a good day, a buck or two.

Since coming to this city, SM has been hit on for spare change near his downtown Atlanta office an average of two or three times a work day. Five days a week, times four months … do the math.

What part of “no” do they not understand?

The city of Atlanta does have a pandhandling ordinance, but it is virtually unenforceable. Something about civil liberties, free speech and the right to beg on public streets. Cynthia Tucker, the Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial page editor and columnist for the Journal Constitution, answered this way recently:

Atlanta can do better. While the American Civil Liberties Union threatened to sue the city over a tougher ordinance, the council should have stared them down. Other cities have somehow managed to craft laws that curb panhandling, and those cities answer to the same U.S. Constitution.

There are beggars in a big city, and Atlanta is no different. People will hustle and scrape by to survive, and there is something to be said about a person who will cross the street to hit you up for spare change. For cities like Atlanta, which market themselves as a tourism destination, begging is bad for business. It’ll take a drop in business before the city decides to regroup and get firm with the panhandlers.

Trust the Southern Migrator on that.

The old man is out again tonight.

SM has been catching up on the blog, and with work and personal responsibilities, it appears that the best time to add an entry or two is last at night.

Really late at night. Early morning late.

This is the time, after eight or nine hours of labor intensive newsroom work, when one can gather thoughts and put down what’s on SM’s mind.

Which brings up the aforementioned old man.

There’s an old guy in a wheelchair who’s obviously homeless. He wears a ragged gray coat and a black watch cap low on his face, a tattered blanket across his lap. He has one leg. He’s been there for days, directly across from the office. SM has yet to see him approach passers by for a dollar. He’s not one of the agressive panhandlers who have become the scourge of downtown Atlanta. The old man sits in his wheelchair, eyes downcast, in some sort of recognition that people pass him by, unseeing and unnoticing.

Leaving work at this time, early in the morning, SM sees the old man again. He’s in his usual spot, near Marietta Street and Forsyth Place. In his wheelchair, alone and in his world.

SM has wondered for months how the old man in the wheelchair got to that spot. What happened to his family? What got the old man to this point in life?

Early in the morning, SM drives past the old man, leaving him to his world until daybreak.

Deborah Howell is the ombudsman of the Washington Post, an influential newspaper as well as an innovator of multimedia and online journalism that just happened to be at the center of a blogging controversy.

You may have read about Michael Tunison, a Post staff writer and blogger. Actually, former staff writer. He got canned after he revealed his online identity for a website, kissingsuzykolber.com. Tunison posted links on KSK to several Post stories he had run. Oh, he didn’t tell his supervisors at the Post.

Media organizations — most jobs, actually — tend to discourage their employees from working on the side in a job that might be direct or indirect competition. They have strict guidelines for personnel who want to do outside projects. In the jobs that SM has worked in, the rules are specific: the company must approve outside work in advance. This must have been lost on Tunison. But then, with sportswriters swinging ESPN and columnist jobs, and political reporters blogging for pay, the rules are changing by the day.

But back to Howell, who channels her inner Dean Wormer in advising journalists who want to blog:

Advice to young bloggers who want a mainstream media job: Don’t hide your other job. Don’t embarrass the editors. And use that talent without posting a picture of yourself drunk.

It’s no way to go through life… or this business.

Today, the state of Georgia takes time to pay tribute to those in uniform who have fought and paid the ultimate price.

April 28 is Confederate Memorial Day.

This is an official state holiday in Georgia, one of several Southern states observing a day of remembrance for the quarter million soldiers from Virginia to Florida to Mississippi who died in the War Between the States.

Down in these parts, the sons, fathers, brothers and others who died more than a century ago are still remembered. They are interred in cemeteries throughout the South, their CSA markers saluted with tiny Stars and Bars battle flags. What some recoil from as a symbol of racism and bigotry, the people here see as a symbol of a lost, but never forgotten cause.

And, there is the irony. Georgia is where the civil rights movement was forged. Atlanta is where its greatest leader, Martin Luther King Jr., preached and rose to fame. His crypt is located in the city; Oakland Cemetery is a few miles away.

Oakland Cemetery, in downtown Atlanta, is where 3,000 Confederate soldiers are buried. Along with five generals.

Down here, they’re not forgotten.

Товарищи поздравлений!

(Greetings, comrade!)

A couple of times this week, SM was reminded that the world has changed. Things are different. Time has passed.

Soviet style is cool.

Once upon a time, there was a Cold War. The chief adversaries were the United States, the leaders of freedom and democracy, and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, bastions of communism and revolution. The recognized symbol of the Soviet Union was the hammer and sickle, gold against a red background.

This was a symbol that stirred all sorts of emotions, of tanks in Hungary and Czechoslovakia, the Cuban Missile Crisis and Angola. Oh, and ICBMs and “Dr. Strangelove.” The hammer and sickle adorned the uniforms of basketball players and hockey players and gymnasts and weightlifters at the Olympics. It was as ubiquitous as the CCCP. See that symbol, and you see, well, Red.

Times change. The Cold War is over, the Soviets “lost” and went out of business. Russia is a free-market economy and less willing to hang on to its communist past.

But the hammer and sickle remains. As a fashion accessory.

The other day here, SM was at a Wal-Mart when he saw a young man wearing a baseball cap. Backwards, of course. On the cap was the red hammer and sickle of the CCCP.

A couple of days later, SM was at work. One of his co-workers was wearing a T-shirt. It had “Soviet” and the hammer and sickle.

SM is old enough to remember when wearing this clothing was enough for a preliminary investigation by the FBI.

Now, you have hammersicklestuff.com for all things revolutionary.

Russkie style. Wear it well.

SM has been blogging (off and on) about topics that come to mind, mostly media related, some regarding current events (such as the tornado last month). It’s time to join like-minded people in the greater Atlanta area who blog and write about all things Resurgens.

So, where are all the Atlanta bloggers? And, what do they write about?

Checking out the local blog talent requires some prospecting. For example, Terrablogs’ ATLblogs.com shows writers of various content — music, art, promotions and the like. Mostly personal discussions and ramblings, could be worth a start.

About.com’s list of blogs by Atlantans or from the Atlanta area is somewhat more revealing. Some are corporate-provided, others more informative. Bloglanta writes about all things ITP (Inside the Perimeter). I liked the site and hope to use it to get more familiar with the blogging scene here.

SM will keep looking for an Atlanta blogging place in the near future.

It’s Pulitzer Prize day!

Once a year, newspaper staffs around the country huddle around wire desks waiting for the bulletins from the Columbia School of Journalism, to see who gets recognized for the year’s best work in journalism.

This year’s honorees are on Pulitzer.org.

The Washington Post received six – SIX! — awards, in all the major reporting categories along with Public Service (for its reporting on poor treatment of Iraq War veterans at Walter Reed Hospital). The New York Times picked up its customary two, for Investigative Reporting (with the Chicago Tribune) and Explanatory Reporting.

So, to recap: Two well-funded, high profile, big-stick newspapers receive Pulitzers in eight major categories. SM has always said this, the big boys always win.

The Boston Globe, Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, Concord Daily Monitor and Reuters were honored in the non-televised portion of the Pulitzers.

And, does any even read Investors Business Daily? (home of Pulitzer winner for Editorial Cartooning, Michael Ramirez)

And, why were there finalists in Editorial Writing, but no winners? Was editorial policy in America’s newsrooms that weak?

SM will say this on the blog, for no other reason than it’s about time: the Pulitzers leave a lot to be desired in this day and new-media age. Eight awards to two newspapers does not say much about the hard work and exceptional product by reporters, editors and staffs not on the New York Times or Washington Post.

On the same day the awards were announced, word came that the Seattle Times
is eliminating 200 positions. The newsroom is losing 49 position, 30 of them through layoff.

Maybe the Washington Post and the New York Times can find a place for a couple of them.

A couple of weeks ago, Southern Migrator was, well, migrating.

More than a thousand miles, give or take, to his new home in Georgia, about 24 miles to the west of the city of Atlanta. Just in time for Tornado Bill…

(SM named the tornado “Bill” because it was the second one of the year in Georgia. As well as an aside to Connecticut news organizations’ annoying habit of naming blizzards.)

But back to the migration.

SM has lived in Connecticut for just shy of 21 years. A lot had accummulated over that time. A wife. A dog. A cat. Boxes of memories. Old Christmas cards. A wedding album. Funeral programs. Tax returns. A dried-out rose from mother’s casket. Honeymoon photos from Nassau.

A lot to memories to load up in a 2001 Nissan Altima.

One week earlier, SM listened to the sound of a roaring diesel train pass by his office. He observed as people wandered through downtown Atlanta in awe and amazement at nature’s fury and random violence. The cracking sound below their feet was glass, not hail. But Atlanta is over the shock and cleaning up.

The joke back in Connecticut was that the storm chased SM back to the Nutmeg State. Let’s say, SM will never curse a snowstorm again. But as the dog and the cat and the wife and the boxes were prepared, it dawned upon SM.

Connecticut, the Land of Steady Habits, will be one of the memories packed away. Crisp falls that ceded to chill, brisk winters. Springtime. Little league baseball in East Hartford. New York city only a couple of hours away.

Too much to reminisce about. There will be time later. SM had to put it out of sight and mind upon crossing the state line into Georgia.

There’s too much work still ahead.