So I got a guest complaint this week. Like a real, “I’m so pissed off I’m going to write corporate,” guest complaint. The long, occasionally rambling, email detailed how everyone was rude, the food wasn’t very good and I “Wasn’t rude, just wasn’t friendly.” Also at one point they were afraid to tell me about a problem with a drink because they were afraid of what my reaction would be.
Here’s the thing, almost all waiters will reach a point where they shut down on a table. Most tables I have a good connection with and are friendly with, other times, I give good service, but that’s it. I made the decision to not invest a lot of time or energy in this table pretty early on.
As I approached both women asked for plastic utensils and then one went one step farther and asked for, “A glass of boiling, hot, hot water,” so that she could dunk her plastic utensils into. At that point I figured any energy I put into that table wouldn’t be worth the effort so they got service that, “Wasn’t rude, but wasn’t friendly,” it’s called being professional and polite. They pointed out that other servers were friendlier than I was, but what they probably didn’t realize is those guests weren’t as difficult to deal with.
As far as being afraid of my reaction about a complaint about their drink, I don’t buy it. Were they concerned I’d do something to their drink? Seriously? I don’t need to lose my job and there are cameras everywhere at my restaurant. That might happen at lower quality restaurants, but I’ve worked in restaurants a long time and I’ve never seen/heard/or done anything to anyone’s food. I’m a professional, sadly, I do this for a living.
So my advice is if you want your server to be friendly to you, you might try being friendly yourself. I don’t really get expecting your server to be friendly. I just had a business lunch and I could even tell you my server’s name an hour later. She was cheerful, and polite, but I didn’t really want to interact with her. She did her job, did it well, and that was all I expected. And no, I didn’t ask for plastic utensils.
Friday, July 22, 2011
Wednesday, July 20, 2011
Objective evaluation
I didn’t start this blog just to yammer on about current events or expose partisan philosophy, but I have to admit being captivated by the Atlanta Public School cheating scandal.
I don’t have kids of my own, but it’s not like I’m a passive observer in this. My organization oversees a school in Kenya, and we’re grasping with the same questions about how to hold our teachers accountable. It’s been interesting to see that there are problems on both sides of the Atlantic with teacher accountability.
From my reading on the subject it seems that teachers are revolting at the idea that there are objective ways to measure their effectiveness. They seem to be saying if you test us, we will teach to the test at a minimum. If we feel the test is unfair, or overly stressful for us, we will cheat.
I think the APS scandal is probably the biggest, but I’ve also heard that teachers throughout Georgia are pressured to have grade books full of A’s and B’s so that kids can qualify for the Hope Scholarship. The idea that Georgia has a widespread grade inflation problem is anecdotally backed up by the large number of college freshmen who need remedial English and Math classes before starting their core classes.
I honestly don’t get what’s wrong with standardized testing. Teachers are given the subject areas to cover before the school year begins. They’re given massive amounts of help teaching to the test throughout the year. It’s fair, everyone is given the same set of parameters and the targets aren’t that challenging.
I think what teachers are trying to say is that not all schools are created equal. There have been a number of studies that show that demographics play a larger role in test scores than teacher quality. A number of researchers believe that test scores are stronger in communities with more biological parents living in the same home, the education and income level of the parents as well as length of residency. Almost all of the 44 schools accused/convicted of cheating were in low income areas of town.
Maybe standardizing tests are a better test of parental involvement, rather than teacher skill, but could it be the tests are accurate? Think about it. The best teachers aren’t going to work at the schools with the worst demographics. It’s easier, and safer, to work in an affluent Atlanta suburb, like east Cobb County, than to work in the inner city. The wealthier suburban school with better demographics get first pick of teachers, and therefore probably have a better staff. It stands to reason that it’s not just the school’s demographics at play here, but the teachers as well.
No one is offering a better solution, as far as I can tell. The answers I get when I question my teacher friends is that there other options, but they’re more expensive, and take longer to implement. They would prefer classroom evaluations play a bigger part, but evaluations are at best subjective at worst prone to favoritism and cronyism.
If schools got to grade themselves how many would report themselves as failing?
When it comes to measuring the effectiveness of our school in Kenya we largely have to rely on our own observations during our mission trip, but the more important metric is their standing in their district. It’s the only objective standard we have to look at, and just like standardized testing in America it might not be perfect, but it’s all we have.
Friday, July 15, 2011
Mission Critical
Nonprofit work changes you, it just does, not the work, but the sense of mission. I’m not going to say it makes you a better person, but it can change your outlook on life, and not always for the better. I’m a patient person by nature, but the setbacks involved in growing a small organization can burn me up sometimes.
For over two years now thousands of Somalia’s citizens have been streaming across the board into Kenya because a prolonged drought and a civil war has destroyed the food distribution network in their own country. There are parts of Somalia where it hasn't rained for years
It’s not that they’re hungry. From my experience East Africans can live with hunger when need be. It’s not that they’re hungry, it’s that they’re starving.
Kenya has had limited help setting up refugee camps near the Somali border, but local politics and other issues have clouded the issue. The refugees have been seen as a national security threat for Kenya, politics at the UN, several attempts to draw them into the global warming debate, and as a result almost half a million people are living in a camp designed to hold 90,000 people.
I run an small non profit that supports an orphanage and school in rural Kenya, and we could be doing more. Among the thousands streaming across the boarder every day are countless children who have lost their parents along the way. The lucky ones are picked up by women, not unlike our own Momma Hannah, who collect children and keep them alive, but that’s not a workable long-term solution.
I run an small non profit that supports an orphanage and school in rural Kenya, and we have thousands of boys and girls who need a stable home and in theory we could provide that. I want to tell my board to gear up for a second site, fly to Kenya and start providing aid to these children, who arrive at the Dagahaley Camp malnourished and near death’s door. I want to help save these children’s lives, it’s what I do, it’s my mission and the longer I do it the more my life revolves around that.
I can see the plan spinning out in my head, what kind of supplies, personal and funding we’d need. I have this overwhelming desire to act, but then I remember our mission, and the length of our reach. I have to remember that for now I don’t have the organization capable of helping those children, so I have to focus on what we can do, and that’s take care of 35 orphans who need a home in a different part of Kenya. It’s my job to look after them, and all I can do is hope and pray, that others will find their own mission.
Caption: We were lucky enough to experience rain several times while we were in Kenya this year. This picture was taken during a ground-soaking afternoon thunderstorm, the kind of storms that are a rare gift in parts of East Africa
Thursday, July 7, 2011
Don't ask them to change
Newspapers don’t do innovation well, and by that I mean they just don’t innovate, at all, ever, under any circumstances until they know beyond a shadow of a doubt that it works and then they follow in droves.
Print outlets were late to the internet, late to social networks, late to smartphones and have largely ignored e-readers. Despite the fact that newsrooms overwhelmingly voted for “Change” in 2008 they’re extraordinarily resistance to
embrace change in their professional lives.
From what I can tell newspapers treated the internet largely the same way they treated radio and television, they ignored it and figured it wouldn’t affect their business model, they were wrong. They’ve been willing to accept looses in the hopes that, “One day someone will figure out how to make money off the internet.” Of course Twitter hasn’t really be able to make that much money off the internet.
I think the collective group think is that one day someone will provide a model, prove that it works and then all the newspapers across the world will switch to that format. It’s become sort of a mantra, a religious belief among editors that some day this will happen. The thing is I think the idea has already come and gone, victim to the newsroom’s slab like inability to embrace change.
I firmly believe that somewhere some young, probably recently graduated reporter, pagenator or editor came up with the idea that would save newsrooms. It was probably a simple solution that’s been staring editors and publishers in the face but no one can see it. The rookie probably suggested it up the chain of command where it might have even been considered… before it was cast aside. It would cost money, it would be a risk, it would change how things are done and those are things newsrooms just don’t do.
I don’t want to paint myself as this great innovator, but I’ve experienced how intractable newsrooms are to change first hand. I came to Southern Voice late in its life, but I don’t think I’m speaking out of line when I say there is a common perception among former employees that debt created by Windows Media’s accusation of Genre magazine, among others, was what killed off its viable papers like Southern Voice, The Washington Blade and David Atlanta. How buying money losing outlets would help the company’s bottom line is beyond me, but they wanted a GLBT media empire and were willing to spend to get it.
When I came to the Marietta Daily Journal I came in with an editor who wanted to change the direction of the paper. He quit shortly after I bought my condo, and I was his only hire in the newsroom. Still, I argued for change, change that never happened.
We were assigned this “Hispanic package” that I don’t remember if it ever got to the page. The idea was we were going to take a look at different aspects of the growing Hispanic population in Cobb County. It was a good idea and a valid story package. I suggested we go one step farther.
The paper is independently owned and I suggested to the owner start a Spanish edition. It wouldn’t take that much start up capital. All it would really take is a Spanish speaking/writing reporter, an editor and a pagenator who could translate staff and Associated Press articles into Spanish and become the first
Spanish-language hard news daily in Atlanta.
The costs to that project would have been minimal and the possible rewards of having an outlet that targeted Latino readers could have been immense. It would have been the first, and probably only, publication of its kind where advertisers could reach the growing Spanish speaking publication. I suggest all of this to the owner who I think might have considered it for twenty seconds before saying, “It’s an interesting idea,” and probably never thought of it again.
Yes I realize it’s easy to spend other people’s money, but that was just one in probably a dozen or more ideas I suggested over my year there. Some of those ideas were suggested in meetings specifically to consider ideas for the future of the paper. None of them were ever adopted and from what I can tell they’re still doing what they’ve done since the 1970s.
I’m not the only reporter to float this idea, but Atlanta is the center of Georgia’s political and sporting world. Most papers outside of the metro area won’t send reporters to cover state politics or sporting events, instead they choose to rely on the Associated Press for all their coverage. I’ve floated the idea of customized coverage of the Georgia Legislature to a number of papers, but have gotten no response.
Editors are interested in the concept, a few even said, “We could really use something like that.” They get in the internet age that relying on the AP for their legislative copy means there is nothing unique in their day to day legislative copy and they can’t have reporters cover it from their newsrooms. They get it, but I don’t think they care, or they can’t afford it.
I have a hard time blaming them because they know that content doesn’t get them readers anymore. They don’t know what gets them readers, but they know that good solid news coverage doesn’t do it anymore, so they won’t pay for it. They are more willing to pay an Atlanta based stringer to cover their local football teams when they travel to Atlanta, but there isn’t enough money doing that to make it worthwhile for me.
One of an editor and friend of mine has this idea of doing non-profit journalism, where a foundation would be created to raise money for papers to operate. It's a good idea and it already works for NPR and could be translated to print/web outlets, but no one is willing to try it.
I don’t know what the solution to the internet is, but I bet someone out there did. It may have been sent up the chain of command, it may have even gotten to the decision makers where they thought the concept was good in theory… but would require change, and that is one thing newspapers are unwilling to embrace.
Print outlets were late to the internet, late to social networks, late to smartphones and have largely ignored e-readers. Despite the fact that newsrooms overwhelmingly voted for “Change” in 2008 they’re extraordinarily resistance to
embrace change in their professional lives.
From what I can tell newspapers treated the internet largely the same way they treated radio and television, they ignored it and figured it wouldn’t affect their business model, they were wrong. They’ve been willing to accept looses in the hopes that, “One day someone will figure out how to make money off the internet.” Of course Twitter hasn’t really be able to make that much money off the internet.
I think the collective group think is that one day someone will provide a model, prove that it works and then all the newspapers across the world will switch to that format. It’s become sort of a mantra, a religious belief among editors that some day this will happen. The thing is I think the idea has already come and gone, victim to the newsroom’s slab like inability to embrace change.
I firmly believe that somewhere some young, probably recently graduated reporter, pagenator or editor came up with the idea that would save newsrooms. It was probably a simple solution that’s been staring editors and publishers in the face but no one can see it. The rookie probably suggested it up the chain of command where it might have even been considered… before it was cast aside. It would cost money, it would be a risk, it would change how things are done and those are things newsrooms just don’t do.
I don’t want to paint myself as this great innovator, but I’ve experienced how intractable newsrooms are to change first hand. I came to Southern Voice late in its life, but I don’t think I’m speaking out of line when I say there is a common perception among former employees that debt created by Windows Media’s accusation of Genre magazine, among others, was what killed off its viable papers like Southern Voice, The Washington Blade and David Atlanta. How buying money losing outlets would help the company’s bottom line is beyond me, but they wanted a GLBT media empire and were willing to spend to get it.
When I came to the Marietta Daily Journal I came in with an editor who wanted to change the direction of the paper. He quit shortly after I bought my condo, and I was his only hire in the newsroom. Still, I argued for change, change that never happened.
We were assigned this “Hispanic package” that I don’t remember if it ever got to the page. The idea was we were going to take a look at different aspects of the growing Hispanic population in Cobb County. It was a good idea and a valid story package. I suggested we go one step farther.
The paper is independently owned and I suggested to the owner start a Spanish edition. It wouldn’t take that much start up capital. All it would really take is a Spanish speaking/writing reporter, an editor and a pagenator who could translate staff and Associated Press articles into Spanish and become the first
Spanish-language hard news daily in Atlanta.
The costs to that project would have been minimal and the possible rewards of having an outlet that targeted Latino readers could have been immense. It would have been the first, and probably only, publication of its kind where advertisers could reach the growing Spanish speaking publication. I suggest all of this to the owner who I think might have considered it for twenty seconds before saying, “It’s an interesting idea,” and probably never thought of it again.
Yes I realize it’s easy to spend other people’s money, but that was just one in probably a dozen or more ideas I suggested over my year there. Some of those ideas were suggested in meetings specifically to consider ideas for the future of the paper. None of them were ever adopted and from what I can tell they’re still doing what they’ve done since the 1970s.
I’m not the only reporter to float this idea, but Atlanta is the center of Georgia’s political and sporting world. Most papers outside of the metro area won’t send reporters to cover state politics or sporting events, instead they choose to rely on the Associated Press for all their coverage. I’ve floated the idea of customized coverage of the Georgia Legislature to a number of papers, but have gotten no response.
Editors are interested in the concept, a few even said, “We could really use something like that.” They get in the internet age that relying on the AP for their legislative copy means there is nothing unique in their day to day legislative copy and they can’t have reporters cover it from their newsrooms. They get it, but I don’t think they care, or they can’t afford it.
I have a hard time blaming them because they know that content doesn’t get them readers anymore. They don’t know what gets them readers, but they know that good solid news coverage doesn’t do it anymore, so they won’t pay for it. They are more willing to pay an Atlanta based stringer to cover their local football teams when they travel to Atlanta, but there isn’t enough money doing that to make it worthwhile for me.
One of an editor and friend of mine has this idea of doing non-profit journalism, where a foundation would be created to raise money for papers to operate. It's a good idea and it already works for NPR and could be translated to print/web outlets, but no one is willing to try it.
I don’t know what the solution to the internet is, but I bet someone out there did. It may have been sent up the chain of command, it may have even gotten to the decision makers where they thought the concept was good in theory… but would require change, and that is one thing newspapers are unwilling to embrace.
Tuesday, July 5, 2011
It’s not the internet the idiots
Common wisdom says that the internet is destroying print media, but it’s not the internet, it’s the generation of editors I used work for. Okay, technically not the editors and publishers I personally worked for, who were awesome women who taught me everything I know about writing, but the “leading” editors and publishers who shaped the course of events from about 1998 to 2005.
When the internet came of age in the late 90s and early 2000 it was clear that it was going to change the way that people got their news. Well it was clear, but no one really bothered to come up to a solution for that. When I graduated in 1999 the question for most small newspapers what do you put on the web, rather than “how do I leverage this fantastic societal shift into a new revenue stream that will make my outlet more credible and financially viable for decades to come.”
I watched newspapers across the country follow the same poorly thought out plan of putting all of their content on a bland page, no reader interaction and accept a tiny stream of revenue from banner ads. Eventually the news websites got slicker but by then the web audience had moved on to blogs and aggregators which were quicker to navigate and more interesting. When I got to Southern Voice in 2008 they still didn’t allow readers to leave comments and by then it was clear that was fueling the visitors to blogs like Huffington Post and DailyKos wasn’t the content, which is marginal at best, but the 300-400 comment flame wars that kept driving its hits.
Still in the face of that editors and publishers have chosen to do what didn’t work for them in the 90s, bland websites with coverage of county council meetings and local sports. The people who graduated J-School in the 80s and early 90s who have been running the industry since I entered still haven’t done anything to innovate, outside of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer which has dumped print entirely.
An undergrad at Harvard can figure out how to make a multi-billion company out of a simple website but an entire generation of editors and publishers can’t even figure out how to make it revenue neutral? As far as I can tell the Baby Boomer, and to a lesser extent Generation X, leaders of journalism have been content to manage audience loss, not innovate, not take changes and not seek to change the paradigm of news because they’re afraid to. They don’t know what to do and so they hold on to a format that isn’t working with the same desperation as a crack whore looking for their next fix. They know what they’re doing isn’t working but they can’t bring themselves to adopt change.
A number of freelance writers like me have been floating the idea of offering lower cost, customized coverage of the Georgia Legislature to small papers in Georgia to be turned down without any consideration. I can’t blame then because content doesn’t drive readership anymore, but it does like they understand what drives readership. The are interested in prep sports coverage, but aren’t willing to pay enough to make it worth my time.
From where I sit, and that’s underemployed because two generations of editor and publishers have failed, what drives content is controversy, opinion and personality. Newspapers especially haven’t embraced any of that, but neither has broadcast news, which hasn’t changed their format and is also losing audience share.
The first rule of writing is to be entertaining, and because this generation of editors and publishers grew up where the audience was a given they’ve never understood that. They inherited these centuries-old institutions and that history was a comfort that they didn’t need to do anything different to find an audience. Most newspapers weren’t really even concerned with increasing their subscriber base, as far as I could tell. The just believed if they produced the same content they would have the same readership so they keep churning out dry, impersonal news created by interchangeable drones.
News that entertains and news that informs you don’t have to be mutually exclusive. Both broadcast and print outlets need to realize that they have to put together a package that people want to read, want to see, and they just don’t get that. Crime blotter and obituaries just doesn’t do it anymore.
When the internet came of age in the late 90s and early 2000 it was clear that it was going to change the way that people got their news. Well it was clear, but no one really bothered to come up to a solution for that. When I graduated in 1999 the question for most small newspapers what do you put on the web, rather than “how do I leverage this fantastic societal shift into a new revenue stream that will make my outlet more credible and financially viable for decades to come.”
I watched newspapers across the country follow the same poorly thought out plan of putting all of their content on a bland page, no reader interaction and accept a tiny stream of revenue from banner ads. Eventually the news websites got slicker but by then the web audience had moved on to blogs and aggregators which were quicker to navigate and more interesting. When I got to Southern Voice in 2008 they still didn’t allow readers to leave comments and by then it was clear that was fueling the visitors to blogs like Huffington Post and DailyKos wasn’t the content, which is marginal at best, but the 300-400 comment flame wars that kept driving its hits.
Still in the face of that editors and publishers have chosen to do what didn’t work for them in the 90s, bland websites with coverage of county council meetings and local sports. The people who graduated J-School in the 80s and early 90s who have been running the industry since I entered still haven’t done anything to innovate, outside of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer which has dumped print entirely.
An undergrad at Harvard can figure out how to make a multi-billion company out of a simple website but an entire generation of editors and publishers can’t even figure out how to make it revenue neutral? As far as I can tell the Baby Boomer, and to a lesser extent Generation X, leaders of journalism have been content to manage audience loss, not innovate, not take changes and not seek to change the paradigm of news because they’re afraid to. They don’t know what to do and so they hold on to a format that isn’t working with the same desperation as a crack whore looking for their next fix. They know what they’re doing isn’t working but they can’t bring themselves to adopt change.
A number of freelance writers like me have been floating the idea of offering lower cost, customized coverage of the Georgia Legislature to small papers in Georgia to be turned down without any consideration. I can’t blame then because content doesn’t drive readership anymore, but it does like they understand what drives readership. The are interested in prep sports coverage, but aren’t willing to pay enough to make it worth my time.
From where I sit, and that’s underemployed because two generations of editor and publishers have failed, what drives content is controversy, opinion and personality. Newspapers especially haven’t embraced any of that, but neither has broadcast news, which hasn’t changed their format and is also losing audience share.
The first rule of writing is to be entertaining, and because this generation of editors and publishers grew up where the audience was a given they’ve never understood that. They inherited these centuries-old institutions and that history was a comfort that they didn’t need to do anything different to find an audience. Most newspapers weren’t really even concerned with increasing their subscriber base, as far as I could tell. The just believed if they produced the same content they would have the same readership so they keep churning out dry, impersonal news created by interchangeable drones.
News that entertains and news that informs you don’t have to be mutually exclusive. Both broadcast and print outlets need to realize that they have to put together a package that people want to read, want to see, and they just don’t get that. Crime blotter and obituaries just doesn’t do it anymore.
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