Northwest Scholastic Press : Writing coach extraordinare to share ...

by Rob Melton, Contributing Editor
September 26, 2012
Filed under Fall Press Day, Uncategorized

One of the English-speaking world?s top writing coaches will speak to delegates at this year?s NWSP Fall Press Day Oct. 24 at University of Oregon in Eugene. Jack Hart?s session will reveal ?The Secrets of Telling True Stories? based on news reports that will put your publications on the path of the world?s best narrative journalism.

Hart is currently the interim director of the SOJC?s George Turnbull Center in Portland, headquarters of Northwest Scholastic Press.

During his quarter century at?The Oregonian,the Pacific Northwest?s largest newspaper, Hart served as managing editor, training editor, and writing coach. He has conducted writing workshops throughout the English-speaking world.?He also has worked as a reporter, arts and leisure editor, Sunday magazine editor, and editor at large. He has additional reporting experience at two other newspapers.

Hart is also the author of?A Writer?s Coach: An Editor?s Guide to Words That Work,released as a Pantheon hardback in 2006 and as a The paperback edition of ?A Writer?s Coach? was published by Anchor Books in 2007. A Writer?s Coach?is Hart?s effort to make writing less painful for the rest of us. The book can help any writer learn the tricks and habits of good writers.

?Just about everybody agrees that good writing is tight, that it?s forceful,? Hart explains. ?Good writing incorporates lively verbs and clean syntax. It?s colorful. It includes descriptive elements that can put you in the scene. It?s rhythmic. ? Developing a process to get you there is not some closely guarded mystery, Hart explains, but the step-by-step conquest of craft.

His latest book, Storycraft: The Complete Guide to Writing Narrative Nonfiction?(Chicago Guides to Writing, Editing, and Publishing) was published last summer.

Hart?s other works include?The Information Empire,?a history of the?Los Angeles Times,?along with dozens of articles for popular magazines, academic journals, and trade publications. His column, ?The Writer?s Workshop,? ran in?Editor & Publisher?magazine for a decade.

He edited four Pulitzer Prize finalists, including winners in explanatory journalism and feature writing. He also edited a portion of the work recognized with the 2001 Pulitzer Gold Medal for Public Service and the 2006 breaking-news Pulitzer.?Along the way he developed an international reputation for his work with narrative nonfiction.

Hart, who earned his doctorate at the University of Wisconsin doctorate in Mass Communications, was a tenured faculty member and acting dean of the journalism school at the University of Oregon, and taught at six major universities. He?s also served as visiting faculty at the American Press Institute and the Poynter Institute for Media Studies.

He has coached national winners of the ASNE writing awards, the Ernie Pyle award, the Scripps-Howard business-writing award, the Overseas Press Club awards, the Headliners awards and the Society of Professional Journalists feature-writing award.

He was recently profiled by the University of Washington as an outstanding alumnus of the Department of Communication. (http://www.com.washington.edu/alumni/notes/profiles/hart.html)?The article explains how he accidently discovered journalism and became one of the first writing coaches for a daily newspaper.

Read the in-depth Q&A with Hart about??Storycraft? and narrative nonfiction as an American literary form by Andrea Pitzer for the Nieman Storyboard:?http://www.niemanstoryboard.org/2011/10/20/jack-hart-storycraft-narrative-nonfiction-interview/

Other excellent craft articles by Hart about how to write well and tell great stories can be found online:

Source: http://www.nwscholasticpress.org/2012/09/26/writing-coach-extraordinare-to-share-secret-of-telling-great-stories-at-fall-press-day/

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Euro zone still big uncertainty, but situation improving

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Europe's debt crisis remains the biggest drag on the global economy, but the region is in a much better situation today than it was, U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said on Tuesday.

"For the first time they have in place a plausibly powerful set of financial tools to support a strategy," Geithner said.

The European Central Bank said earlier this month it stands at the ready to buy unlimited amounts of bonds issued by euro zone member states if they put in a formal request for aid and fulfilled strict domestic policy conditions.

Speaking at the Clinton Global Initiative conference in New York, Geithner noted the long, difficult road ahead for the euro zone region, saying it will be tested "every month, every week for the next several years."

"There is not going to be a week or a specific date in the future where you are going to know with total confidence how they are going to handle this," Geithner said.

On the U.S. domestic front, Geithner said a balanced mix of reforms is needed for dealing with the so-called "fiscal cliff" of spending cuts and tax rises of about $500 billion that are set to come into effect at the beginning of next year.

Geithner said that although the fiscal cliff is looked at with unease, it is a good opportunity for the United States to address tax and entitlements reform, and that the 2008-2009 financial crisis had been a much harder challenge that what Washington is facing today.

But political gridlock is still a hurdle for the economy.

"You still have a level of political paralysis and uncertainty about whether our political system can find a way to govern again, to govern in ways that would be good for the economy and make growth stronger," said Geithner.

Geithner said there was a lot of "promise" in the U.S. economic recovery, pointing to tentative strength in the housing market and consumers paying down their debt. But he called the drought in the U.S. Midwest "a pretty significant drag on growth."

(Reporting by Leah Schnurr and Daniel Bases)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/euro-zone-still-big-uncertainty-situation-improving-190850050--finance.html

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After 2 Months Squatting At AOL, Eric Simons Launches Claco, The ?GitHub For Teachers?

If you happened to pass through AOL's offices in Palo Alto last November or December, you might have had your first run-in with the elusive creature "founder squatter." Say what? Following in the grand boot-strapping, couch-surfing tradition, last winter, Eric Simons spent two months squatting at AOL's office, sleeping on couches and pilfering Ramen noodles and other snacks left out for employees. Simons was hard at work building Class Connect, a platform on which teachers can post and share lesson plans.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/VWChfprvavw/

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Musicians, from school bands to symphonies, risk hearing loss

KANSAS CITY, Mo. ? Every weekend in football season, high school marching bands such as Shawnee Mission West in Kansas erupt with joyful noise.

With 200 young musicians in West's band, it's a lot of blowing, pounding and tooting on instruments. Their fortes can rattle the bleachers and rouse the faithful.

But the music is doing more than raising school spirit, it's damaging ears - sometimes for a lifetime. It's not just high school band students at risk, it's anyone who plays an instrument.

Educators striving to reduce risks associated with school activities - such as football concussions and chemistry burns - now are looking at the band room.

Earplugs are joining mouth guards and safety goggles.

Last fall, the National Association of Schools of Music, which accredits more than 640 schools of music, made the topic of health risks associated with playing music a required course for all music schools. Among topics such as overuse and performance anxiety, hearing loss is the biggest concern of all.

One class has been taught at the University of Kansas School of Music, said the dean of music, Robert Walzel, a clarinetist and saxophonist.

"There isn't a one-size-fits-all to the answer of preventing hearing loss," he said. "And we also don't want parents to be scared of music programs, or keep their sixth-grader out of music. Awareness goes a long way."

Awareness arrived last fall at Shawnee Mission North when a band mom and speech pathologist, Karin Soper, was sitting several rows back in the bleachers, feeling her ear drums assaulted. Even neighbors blocks away can hear the band in its morning practices. If it was loud outside, how bad was it inside the band room?

Then she saw the tiny earplugs her son's band director was wearing.

"If the band director was wearing earplugs, what about my son?" she wondered.

Soper called the University of Kansas Medical Center to talk with an audiologist. The audiologist the band room with a dosimeter to measure decibels. West's band director, Bill Thomas, welcomed the science.

"She held it while we played one of our pieces. You could see the needle move into the red zone," Thomas said. He was surprised. The band kids were surprised. At times the levels were dangerously high.

At the University of Kansas, too, some instrumental instructors are wearing dosimeters to measure daily exposure as they teach private lessons in their studios. "Our trombone teacher was really reaching high levels," Walzel noted.

Thomas bought his own meter and installed an app on his smart phone. He tests levels now during practices and performances and inside different venues, just out of curiosity.

"The basketball buzzer that sounds off during pep band ... it's nearly off the chart," he said. He's checked movie theaters. Restaurants.

Noise levels don't just harm when a marching band goes by or a rock group plays. Area sports venues are dangerous places for ears as well. Last fall, Arrowhead Stadium pegged 115 decibels for an average reading. Allen Fieldhouse was at 125 decibels for the duration of the KU-Mizzou game. (Takeoff of a jetliner from nearly 100 feet is about 100 decibels.)

Scientists have known the dangers for years. A 1997 World Health Organization report found that North American children "may receive more noise at school than workers from an eight-hour workday at a factory."

But music hasn't been associated as noise. Research shows that classical musicians are more susceptible to hearing loss than rockers because they rehearse, teach and perform more hours per week. While rock concerts are louder, classical musicians are dosed longer.

Listening to a sound that registers 100 decibels (which can be reached by a flute, for instance) only takes 15 minutes before reaching the maximum daily exposure limit, according to Occupational Safety and Health Administration standards.

Which raises the question for musicians: To plug or not to plug, and with what?

Comparing earplugs to sunscreen, audiologists say that earplug technology can help block immediate hearing damage. Musicians' earplugs are not supposed to affect the perception of pitch or timbre.

Etymotic Research offers these earplugs. The company also has created an Adopt-a-Band program advertised on its website: "For the price of a slice of pizza and a soda," the site says, "you can provide your favorite musicians the opportunity to play loudly and proudly by giving them the tools and education they need to hear for a lifetime."

The program offers the plugs at a reduced price of about $6. Another perk of the program: Band directors are rewarded with a free custom-fitted $175 pair of plugs, molded to their ears.

West's band director Thomas, who now wears the custom-fitted plugs, is a believer. He keeps also spare pairs of ER-20s in his car and his pocket to hand out when students misplace theirs.

"Spread the gospel," he said. "Wearing earplugs will save your ears."

To Shawnee Mission North's director, Chad Reed, the earplugs aren't perfect but are better than nothing. "Do you know something is in your ears? Well, yeah. But it's well worth the trade-off, especially when I stand before the drum line. I have to have them in. It physically hurts if I don't."

Many high school musicians, however, are leaving the technology in the cases, said Corbin Warner Jr., a 16-year-old drummer from West. Although he wears them, "most everybody here has stopped wearing them."

Kris Chesky, associate professor at the University of North Texas College of Music, and director of the Texas Center of Music & Medicine, believes that Etymotic's ER-20s are a waste of money. "Those specialty musician ear plugs protect no better than the 50-cent foam plugs," he said.

Chesky and his research teams tested the ER-20s and dispute the company's claims.

They distort, he says.

"Research shows that when musicians use ER earplugs, the intensity and timbre of the music they produce is altered.?... Musicians can't wear them and still play well."

Chesky, who plays professional trumpet gigs in the Dallas area, owns three sets of custom earplugs. But when his trumpet comes out, his earplugs stay in the case.

His team collected a year's data using North Texas' nine lab bands, recording sound levels and averages, testing ER-20 earplugs with musicians and nonmusicians. The team has presented its research at conventions across the country and in Europe.

Etymotic has threatened Chesky with legal action. A few months ago, the company sent Chesky a 20-page cease and desist order. But Chesky isn't backing down. Etymotic did not respond to requests for comment.

Angie Reeder, an audiologist at the University of Kansas Medical Center who works with Etymotic, has heard the hearing/comfort/distortion issues before.

"This is the chasm between audiologists and musicians. We think we've found the answer and the technology, and the musicians are telling us, no, not yet. This outlines the importance of collaboration between audiologists, hearing health care providers and musicians to find what works."

Chesky said he will continue sounding the alarm that the joyful noise should be more subdued. He worries that the public will assume plugs are the easy fix.

"The field of music and music education must recognize the limitations of existing products. More than one musician friend has bought expensive ear plugs only to stop using them.

"That breaks my heart."

Chesky advocates one big change that musicians at all levels, from high school to college to professional, need to hear.

Play proudly, just not loudly, he said. "Play musically."

Or pay with hearing loss.

ASSAULTING YOUR EARS

Decibel levels and comparable noise sources:

85 Noisy restaurant, chamber music

95 Motorcycle/subway, orchestra pit

100 Snowmobile, symphony orchestra

105 Loud sporting event, concert band

110 Chain saw, blues bar/rock concert

120 Ambulance siren, marching band

Source: Etymotic Research Inc.

Source: http://www.sunherald.com/2012/09/24/4204407/musicians-from-school-bands-to.html

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Obama gives advice on anti-Islam movie: Ignore it (Washington Bureau)

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Windows Photo Gallery 2012

Windows Live Photo Gallery's name has become less of a mouthful, now that Microsoft has ditched the "Live" branding. Aside from the name change, Windows Photo Gallery adds a new collage feature and the ability to upload slideshows directly to the Vimeo video sharing site. These join the program's several standout features, such as panorama joining, photo fuse, face recognition, and all the basic photo fixes you'd expect?crop, straighten, retouch, red-eye, along with exposure, noise, and color correction. All of this comes in a very clear, usable interface that makes it easy to share your work. It remains a full-fledged consumer photo editing tool/organizer on a par with the Apple's iPhoto ($15 Direct, 4 stars), Google's Picasa (Free, 4 stars), or ACDSee ($50, 3 stars).

But Photo Gallery still lacks a couple things you'll get in those competitors, including built in maps to show photo geo-location and the ability to edit camera raw files. I also had trouble using it with Apple iCloud's Photo Stream, and the app isn't aware of the EXIF orientation info, so photos display upside down. And like a lot of Microsoft software these days, Photo Gallery only runs in Windows 7 or Windows 8. But luckily, XP and Vista users can still download earlier versions of the program that run on their systems (from the Microsoft's Windows Essentials 2012 help page).

Interface
Windows Photo Gallery feels like a full-blown image editing application, yet manages to maintain its ease of use for general consumers. The main window is adorned with an Office-like ribbon toolbar across the top; and the new Find tab lets you filter by keyword, rating, date, face, and more. Below the ribbon is a three-panel interface, showing your folders on the left, the images in the middle, and actions like tagging and editing in a right pane.

As in more advanced photo apps like Lightroom, double-clicking an image in Windows Photo Gallery brings it up, and doing so again returns you to gallery view. At the bottom right, there are rotate image arrows, next and previous buttons, and a zoom slider that lets you size both thumbnails and single image view to whatever zoom level you want (the mouse wheel can also be used for zooming). Holding the left mouse button lets you pan around the photo, which I found to be a very fluid way of navigating images.

I do wish the left panel offered a Last Import option the way iPhoto does. The Find tab, however, can fill this role; it lets you limit the gallery view by date, month, or year taken, as well as by the people in the pictures, star ratings, and flagged status. You can also click the binocular icon to search within those results. If the default interface doesn't suit you, you can customize it by adding or subtracting options from a quick access toolbar located either below the ribbon or up in the window border to save viewing space.

Photo Importing
The import experience is just what you'd want. As you import, you can group photos by date and time, add tags, add the date to filenames, and now set a base file name. Raw camera files are supported, but only if you've installed your camera manufacturer's codec in Windows. Fortunately, gallery tells you if you need to do this, and it even takes you to the camera manufacturer's download site. As with most photo editors these days, any edits you make don't affect the original imported image, but rather a copy is saved with the edits.

I found working with large raw files slower in Windows Photo Gallery than in pro-level apps like Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3 ($299 Street, ), and unlike iPhoto and Picasa image adjustments didn't work with raw images. As I mentioned above, iCloud Photo Stream images shot with an iPhone 4S presented problems for me: I wasn't able to save changes, and the photos displayed upside down.

Photo Editing
All the expected photo adjustments are on offer: cropping, red-eye fixing, straightening, exposure, color correction, and even noise reduction. Buttons let you apply fixes automatically, but a "Fine tune" button offers deeper control (such as an adjustable histogram, highlights, shadows, sharpness, and color temperature). This version adds a new tool: Blemish removal, which worked excellently in my testing, as did the red-eye fix.

An Auto-adjust option lets you configure what you want fixed?any combination of exposure, color, NR, and straightening. It did a mostly good job on my test images, never drastically exaggerating brightness or other factors, as some editors occasionally do. The editing is non-destructive, so, at any point, you can revert to the original. A new batch edit lets you apply fixes to a bunch of selected images at once, but it only works with the auto-fixes?color, exposure, straightening, and noise reduction?not with the fine-tuning.

Face Tagging and Geo-Tagging
Face recognition takes an important role in Photo Gallery. The ribbon bar has a prominent People tag button, and your friends' faces stare up at you from the bar's Quick find area, offering to show all photos featuring them. You get a dropdown showing your contacts (any of which you can assign to the face) when you select an image and choose "Tag as." The face-recognition software becomes increasingly accurate as you identify more people's faces. A "Batch people tag" option opens its own tab and proposes faces of folks you've already tagged. A simple Confirm or Ignore button completes the action, and if there are more pictures the program thinks are of that person, it will keep displaying them till there aren't any more. It's very similar to the way Picasa's face recognition works.

Geotagging works with cameras' built in GPS (such as the iPhone's), or you can manually enter locations. You can sort all geo-tagged photos grouped by location. You can right-click on a geo-tag to see the location in Bing after the browser launches, but there are no maps inside the app, as there are in Picasa and iPhoto. Of course, if you upload geo-tagged photos to Flickr, you can see them placed on a map online.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ziffdavis/pcmag/~3/G-ubwft1f50/0,2817,2370417,00.asp

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