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2019年1月30日 星期三

Zorn: Warm yourself by reading the best tweets of the week, pithy commentary and a bit of my correspondence

The week's best columns, reports, tips, referrals and tirades from columnist Eric Zorn.

Chicago Tribune

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January 30, 2019

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Eric Zorn's Change of Subject


Another set of quality entries in the Tweet of the Week poll.


Last week's winner was @AmishPornStar1 for "If I'm reading their lips correctly, it looks like my neighbors are having an argument about the creepy guy next door."

This week my favorite from a pretty good batch is "A day without coffee is like -- Just kidding, I have no idea," by @pauline_mcd.

Speaking of the Tweet of the Week poll, down at the bottom of this newsletter is a copy of the correspondence I had recently with a tweeter who is occasionally a featured finalist. It deals with an issue – the Tribune's paywall – that some of you have also written me about, plus some ethical matters and, in a way, the very nature of much of journalism.

Meanwhile, much of the end of my week last week was spent deleting vile notes and blocking people on email and social media who reacted with poisonous words to my column from last Wednesday (and in last week's newsletter) headlined Yes, there's blame to go around — chaperones, where were you? — but those Covington school kids are no heroes.

I thought I'd steered onto middle ground, exploring the complexity of that situation and apportioning blame appropriately rather than hurling myself on the ground and saying we'd gotten it all wrong, like some piteous scribes did. No matter how you cut it, whether Covington Catholic student Nick Sandmann was smirking (as he obviously was) or smiling nervously and saying silent prayers (which he obviously was not, though many insisted he was) his claim to have been trying to "defuse" the situation was highly implausible. To paraphrase what I've heard others say, next time you want to "defuse" a tense situation, go stand face to face right in front of the person with whom you're having a disagreement, say nothing, refuse to move and smile at them. See how that goes for you.

That said, it's hard to remember when the nation made so much out of a story in which so little actually happened, a story with minuscule significance no matter what was said or who was or wasn't being jerky.

Maybe this will turn out to have been the work of Fancy Bear and Cozy Bear, driving more wedges into the American populace.

Truth in sentencing, please
 

Six years and nine months — "nearly seven years" or "seven years" in headline-speak around the world — is former Chicago police Officer Van Dyke's sentence for shooting and killing Laquan McDonald, legally speaking.

But his punishment for shooting and killing McDonald — at least until and unless the Illinois Supreme Court steps in or other action is taken — likely will be half that.

Accordingly, I renew my plea to my journalistic brethren to note, for clarity's sake, the actual expected period of incarceration on first reference and in headlines when it comes to this or any other prison sentence, and then allude to the technical sentence length as an obligatory afterthought.

It felt like I spent much of last week simply arguing with people. This column item touched off a dispute around the office in which we debated the meaning of the word "sentence," whether it differs meaningfully from "actual punishment" and what our role as journalists is in imparting actual, useful information.

To those are hung up on nomenclature, consider a red-light camera ticket in Chicago. If you pay the city within 30 days of receiving the citation, the fine is $100. If you're later than that, the fine is $200.

It would be misleading – weird and wrong -- for me to say that the red-light fine is $200. But the situation with the prison "sentence" that is automatically halved unless the prisoner misbehaves in prison is nearly identical.

If a red-light violator follows the rules, the fine is $100.

If a prisoner follows the rules -- doesn't commit any gross infractions when locked up, the sentence -- or actual punishment -- is automatically reduced.

For the initial offense -- running a red light or shooting and killing someone without justification -- a certain punishment is administered.

You have to compound your original error for the basic punishment to be increased.

The courts use this legal fiction -- hand down inflated "sentences" -- has to do with encouraging good behavior behind bars by reserving the prison's right to administratively extend punishment without the rigmarole of full trials.

In any other situation, this legalistic use of the word "sentenced" would be absurd --- reminiscent of Mr. Lambert in Monty Python's "Buying a Bed" sketch --   "You have to multiply everything Mr Lambert says by three. It's nothing he can help, you understand. Otherwise he's perfectly all right."

Van Dyke's controversial 'nearly seven-year' sentence explained
 

The bulk of my Sunday column dealt with the controversy over the light sentence that former Chicago police Officer Jason Van Dyke received for shooting and killing Laquan McDonald. I won't excerpt the column here but I will note that a member of the defense team peppered me with an email complaint in which she asked if I'd read the brief the defense filed in advance of sentencing.

Because it was my week to argue with people I responded,

No, but you'll forgive me for not consulting for insight and analysis the attorneys who put forth the offensively absurd argument that Van Dyke was afraid of Laquan McDonald and was in reasonable fear that McDonald was about to attack him or was showing indications that he might attack. … Those of you on his defense team have zero credibility with me, as you showed the willingness and ability to argue that, in effect, up is down.

Harsh, yeah, but, I mean, really. I respect the role of defense attorneys in court and I'd want the wiliest one possible myself were I ever to get into a serious scrape, but let's not confuse them with truth seekers, as a general rule.

Illinois now has the lowest prison phone rates in the nation, and that's a good thing

The back story to this column is that I sat up in my chair when I heard Jason Van Dyke's wife, Tiffany, testify at his sentencing hearing that among the hardships she and her two daughters had been experiencing was the cost of staying in touch with her husband while he was in jail: "Every week I must spend a minimum of $400 to $500 on phone calls for the three of us to speak with him," she said.

That ain't right, I thought, and went about reporting for another plea to lower prisoner phone-call rates. But in the course of this reporting I found that, yes, rates from certain jails are excessive (Van Dyke was being held in distant county lockup for his protection before sentencing and I suspect his wife was exaggerating their phone bills a bit), in the main the story in Illinois is very good. Sometimes finding that a scandal isn't really so scandalous will cause me to abandon a story or an issue, but in this case I thought the news was so good it warranted a write-up.

Study after study going back decades shows that prisoners who are in regular contact with friends and family have better outcomes after they are released — are more likely to lead stable lives and less likely to re-offend — than those who are cut off from an outside support network. More than 95 percent of today's inmates will be released someday. Keeping his family ties tight is in everyone's interest.

Elsewhere…

I discovered "brown noise" last week. This video explains the various sound colors very well. Brown is great for working.  
 
Another interesting explainer in Vox: Why you shouldn't exercise to lose weight

Now here's my correspondence with the many-time Tweet of the Week finalist

HIM/HER: Good morning, Eric! First, thank you for selecting my tweets so often for your feature. I'm very pleased that you like them and it's been great fun to see my stuff up there with the likes of Conan O'Brien. You've been very kind.

I was surprised to see that the Trib is now requiring a paid subscription for online access. It strikes me as wrong that the Trib would publish people's tweets without compensation but make those same people pay to see their own tweets or anyone else's.

I'm not suggesting compensation but I also don't agree with the Trib using my free content and charging people to see it. What I'm asking instead is that you not to include my tweets on your lists going forward. I hope I don't seem ungrateful and I trust that you understand the principle. Thanks!


ME: First, yes, of course. I'll abide by your request. And I appreciate very much the tone of it. Your tweets are your creative product and you have every right to control them. In about four years of collecting and re-posting I've never been asked by a writer not to include his or her tweets in the Tweet of the Week feature – though that option is in the boilerplate text atop every poll – but I suspect now that we've raised our paywall still higher that request may now come more often.

We've lowered the number of free articles and features people can access each month as part of our ongoing effort to drive the subscriptions that fund the vital journalism we do (and no, I am not telling you that compilations of tweets are either "vital" or "journalism"!) As I'm sure you know, these are tough times for newspapers.

Attention – followers, likes, retweets – is the coin of the realm on Twitter. People not only write for free, they often write anonymously. My idea in curating and presenting the best tweets I can find is that I give the writers some of that coin of the realm in exchange for their efforts. They get eyeballs and followers, my readers get a few chuckles.

Something similar has long gone on in both print and electronic media: Reporters and columnists ask people to speak to us – to provide their expertise, their reflections, their experiences, their inside knowledge – for free in order that we might generate better content for a profit-making enterprise. (Note that it is in fact a violation of journalistic norms to pay for interviews) Radio talk show hosts ask people to come on their programs for free in exchange for "exposure" that might – who knows? – have some tiny benefit down the line.

That informal contract seems to have worked for everyone so far regarding the Tweet of the Week feature, especially since tweets are not otherwise a marketable or saleable commodity.

But I do take your point that the higher paywall creates an ironic/unfair situation in which those who have generated the content have to pay to see it (unless they are under their two-free-articles-a-month limit). I think the principle on which you stand is sound and if anything changes I'll let you know.

HIM/HER: Thanks for your thorough and thoughtful response. I didn't realize that there was already an existing paywall with limited free articles. It never made my radar screen - I guess I never hit the threshold.

I may be a rare species on twitter. I don't care about increasing my follower count or getting famous. It's purely a fun diversion and I don't take it too seriously. I just love humor and wordplay. Despite that attitude (or maybe because of it) I have a substantial account, and more importantly, I've made a lot of good friends. Thank you for honoring my request. If things change, please let me know. I understand the economic pressure on newspapers in this day and age, but I'd love to see it go back to the way it was.

I'm interested in your thoughts on this topic.

Mondays at 11:30 a.m. I talk about the news of the day with Bill Leff and Wendy Snyder on WGN-AM 720. You can listen on the radio, on the live stream  or via podcast. Here is the page where their audio segments are archived.  Here is this week's segment, which I did by phone because I am a snow wimp.

The Mincing Rascals is an award winning news-chat podcast that touches on state local and national news and cultural moments. It usually features some combination of host John Williams, cartoonist Scott Stantis, program hosts Steve Bertrand, Justin Kaufmann and Patti Vasquez, and me. We record Thursday mornings and post in time for the drive home, usually. Find us on iTunes or your favorite podcatcher.

At the end of the show we give our recommendations for things we're watching, reading, listening to, eating, drinking or otherwise consuming, and we'd like to include listener recommendations. But even if you're not a listener, just a newsletter reader, you can participate by using your phone to record a voice message and upload it to producer Elif Geris -- far right, above; egeris@wgnradio.com.

Thanks for opening this email and following the links. Did you know that the major metric for success these days isn't clicks, but how many online visitors we personally convert to subscribers, digital and otherwise? How many people finish reading one of our stories or columns and then say to themselves, "Well, that was so good, I'm going to subscribe right now." I think you know what to do with this information.

 

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