Scared of the black guy getting elected president?

Or maybe you are trying to get a job as a GOP hacker and blogger for Karl Rove’s new political/media firm?

I mean, I don’t have any idea what your agenda is, but if you could just provide one good thing George Bush has done for this country, maybe we can talk about it…

Not sure to what you are referring exactly, but in fact, as it states on my curriculum vitae and professional linkedin profile linked all over this site, I worked as THE free-lance reporter for the Dallas Morning News out of New Orleans from the fall of 2000 until the winter of 2004, when I moved back to Alabama briefly and then to DC for awhile. The last story I did for them was on global warming and “the big one.” You can check that in any news database, such as Lexis/Nexis.

The Dallas Morning News, while one of the top 10 circulation newspapers in the country at least back then, putting it way ahead of any Alabama newspaper in any hierarchy I can think of, was about as cheap as many corporate newspapers today. Too cheap to fund a full-time staff bureau, in fact, although they did send a couple of staffers down for awhile after Katrina. But you can ask anyone else in the New Orleans press corps or the New Orleans press club, including a couple of Alabama grads who worked for AP who lived across the street from me Uptown, I ran it like a bureau and we never missed a major story in all that time, with the slight exception being the New Orleans school shooting. Me and RB were both out running errands that day. I also helped the New York Times on their coverage of that story, and have the pay stubs to prove it, buddy : )

I was also called a “Correspondent” on the byline stories I did for the Christian Science Monitor, but of course that was also a free-lance position. Not sure what problems people seem to have with free-lancers in Alabama. Stringer is the technical journalism jargon for it, but since the masses have no idea what that is, and since people who do not understand the business use it as a derogatory term, free-lance reporter and writer will do, don’t you think?

Now, since you asked, where is your journalism resume and professional linkedin profile for people to judge your blogging credentials vs. mine?

Oh, that’s right, you don’t even claim to be a journalist. Nuff said…

Glynn:

Thanks so much. Next time I’m down toward the beach, and luckily I have a place to stay there, I’ll ask if I can come browse the back files.

As soon as I get the vaguest idea about what my Advanced Reporting schedule will look like, can we arrange a day for you to speak? The class meets twice a week for about an hour and a half, on Tuesdays and Thursdays; it’s all j majors, most of whom are graduating imminently.

I’d happily plug you in any time between September and Thanksgiving.

I would love content, war stories, etc., concerning not so much technical but journalism “stuff” … your reporting techniques (if any CAR, great; if traditional shoeleather type stuff, well, that’s my area too); adapting good content to a different medium sort of discussion; hefty doses of reporting advice and attitude adjustment, as need be, for
the Web vehicle. I don’t have any ideas about blogs, so that would be great stuff to hear too…

Frankly, if you’re OK with this, I will try to set up something that will span at least two class days … rumor is we sometimes have money for visiting lecturers. Would a gig like that work for you? What if (you are now familiar with my presumption so I ask this up front) we could pay only expenses? We’re not a big deal at AU as, of course, our colleagues at UA (at least not anymore; long story you may know of if you’re familiar with the Curse of Bobby Lowder) so sometimes groveling is required.

BTW, I don’t know “Flip” personally — she left about the time we got merged into our current department; if she’s still teaching here I am unaware of it, but apparently she was here for five years or so, did not get tenure. All I really know of her is a letter she wrote about Joe Turnham to the O-A News some years ago. I did not, um, agree.

Thanks so much for your generosity in responding to all of this and offering to come help out here!

Judy

Judith,

Your name sounds familiar but I don’t know if we’ve met.

If you have the obit I did on him, you have most of what I know. I also interviewed him in Magnolia Springs and did a two part series for Gulf Coast Newspapers. Not sure the exact date, but around 1990-92, still in the books at the papers. Somewhere I have the audio tape interview.

Unfortunately, in a major renovation project last year, I finally threw out all my old newspapers.

I would love to speak to your class sometime. I talk to Rick Bragg’s class at Alabama every year about Web publishing. Maybe you can invite Susan “GOP Girl” Fillipi, who claims to teach at Auburn and is my number one blog critic : )