Be thankful for the gift of freedom

Soon, I will decide whether my mother can maintain her freedom.

It’s a difficult, heartbreaking decision, one I never imagined making but now cannot avoid.

Until recently, she did well on her own in a cozy apartment filled with her favorite possessions, accompanied by her aging cat, Sugar.

Then, one night, my mother climbed out of the shower and into her nightgown, and as she buttoned the last button a sharp pain shot from one arm to the other and back to hit her square in her chest. The impact nearly knocked her to the floor, yet she managed to remain upright and reach a phone to dial 911.

An ambulance arrived in less than 10 minutes. Her neighbors in the seniors-only apartment complex rushed over at the first sign of commotion. They assured her, as paramedics wheeled her away, that the apartment and the cat both would receive good care.

One of those neighbors notified my aunt and uncle — my mom’s “little brother,” as she still likes to call him — who notified me.

At the hospital, doctors actually debated whether she had suffered a heart attack. Their initial cursory examination left doubt, although her blood pressure numbers had soared and were tapping the ceiling. So, they booked her into intensive care and scheduled an MRI for the following morning, to be sure.

The MRI showed that, yes, my mother had indeed suffered a heart attack, albeit a mild one, and the damage to her heart was minimal. In the meantime, she was prescribed heavy doses of medication to bring down her blood pressure.

When I spoke to her by phone just before the MRI — I live 1,600 miles away — my mother sounded calm and relaxed, enjoying a light breakfast and feeling better than she had in weeks.

“I’m fine,” she said between bites. “You stay put; everything’s fine, no need to worry. They’ll probably keep me here a couple days is all.”

“But mom,” I said. “You’re in intensive care. They don’t put mild cases in intensive care.”

“Well,” she said, “that’s probably true. Maybe it’ll be a few days longer.”

Regardless, I prepared to visit her. My aunt and uncle, who also live many miles away but closer than I do, were not able to fly out to her bedside immediately.

But before my bags were packed, she suffered a stroke. 

Nurses were in the room when it happened, my aunt explained; they said her pupils dilated, they watched a vacant stare cross her face, they heard her struggle to speak clearly in answer to their questions. They saw she also had paralysis in her left arm and leg.

The hospital stabilized her condition again, then sent her to a medical rehabilitation center to watch for further signs of stroke. By then, I had arrived at her bedside. Shortly thereafter, she was shipped to a second rehabilitation center, this one to deal with her paralysis.

I divided my time between staying by her side and caring for the cat. My mother kept worrying about Sugar, her closest companion for going on 12 years, and I worried that her concern for the cat’s well-being was distracting her from concentrating on her own. (The cat, by the way, was doing fine, whereas I wasn’t: I’m allergic to cats.)

“I’ll bet Sugar is fit to be tied,” my mother said in one of her few lucid moments. “She doesn’t like being alone for long.”

Now, almost a month has passed since paramedics carried my mother from her apartment, and the doctors, nurses and insurance company case workers who have been by her side the whole time insist her condition has plateaued; she will not get substantially better, she probably will not walk again on her own, she likely won’t be able to live by herself again.

All of this means she cannot remain in the rehab facility, either. There is a waiting list for the beds, and as far as the staff is concerned my mother is taking up space. Of course, not one of the nurses or therapists will say that. You can tell though by the looks in their faces that the thought percolates just below the surface. They’ve seen this kind of thing before. They know what to expect, and what not to. They have practiced the conversation that comes next with friends and families.

In a few days, I will have that conversation, the conclusion of which will shape my thinking on whether my mother can return to her apartment, her favorite things, her cat, and live the way she used to live — the way she prefers to live.

Which is why, this Thanksgiving, I urge everyone who can to give special thanks for being able to avoid that conversation regarding a friend or family member, or even themselves. Because, when you get right down to it, the most precious gift each of us has is our health. And when that’s gone, our freedom usually goes away, too.

 

Be thankful for the gift of freedom

Soon, I will decide whether my mother can maintain her freedom.

It’s a difficult, heartbreaking decision, one I never imagined making but now cannot avoid.

Until recently, she did well on her own in a cozy apartment filled with her favorite possessions, accompanied by her aging cat, Sugar.

Then, one night, my mother climbed out of the shower and into her nightgown, and as she buttoned the last button a sharp pain shot from one arm to the other and back to hit her square in her chest. The impact nearly knocked her to the floor, yet she managed to remain upright and reach a phone to dial 911.

An ambulance arrived in less than 10 minutes. Her neighbors in the seniors-only apartment complex rushed over at the first sign of commotion. They assured her, as paramedics wheeled her away, that the apartment and the cat both would receive good care.

One of those neighbors notified my aunt and uncle — my mom’s “little brother,” as she still likes to call him — who notified me.

At the hospital, doctors actually debated whether she had suffered a heart attack. Their initial cursory examination left doubt, although her blood pressure numbers had soared and were tapping the ceiling. So, they booked her into intensive care and scheduled an MRI for the following morning, to be sure.

The MRI showed that, yes, my mother had indeed suffered a heart attack, albeit a mild one, and the damage to her heart was minimal. In the meantime, she was prescribed heavy doses of medication to bring down her blood pressure.

When I spoke to her by phone just before the MRI — I live 1,600 miles away — my mother sounded calm and relaxed, enjoying a light breakfast and feeling better than she had in weeks.

“I’m fine,” she said between bites. “You stay put; everything’s fine, no need to worry. They’ll probably keep me here a couple days is all.”

“But mom,” I said. “You’re in intensive care. They don’t put mild cases in intensive care.”

“Well,” she said, “that’s probably true. Maybe it’ll be a few days longer.”

Regardless, I prepared to visit her. My aunt and uncle, who also live many miles away but closer than I do, were not able to fly out to her bedside immediately.

But before my bags were packed, she suffered a stroke. 

Nurses were in the room when it happened, my aunt explained; they said her pupils dilated, they watched a vacant stare cross her face, they heard her struggle to speak clearly in answer to their questions. They saw she also had paralysis in her left arm and leg.

The hospital stabilized her condition again, then sent her to a medical rehabilitation center to watch for further signs of stroke. By then, I had arrived at her bedside. Shortly thereafter, she was shipped to a second rehabilitation center, this one to deal with her paralysis.

I divided my time between staying by her side and caring for the cat. My mother kept worrying about Sugar, her closest companion for going on 12 years, and I worried that her concern for the cat’s well-being was distracting her from concentrating on her own. (The cat, by the way, was doing fine, whereas I wasn’t: I’m allergic to cats.)

“I’ll bet Sugar is fit to be tied,” my mother said in one of her few lucid moments. “She doesn’t like being alone for long.”

Now, almost a month has passed since paramedics carried my mother from her apartment, and the doctors, nurses and insurance company case workers who have been by her side the whole time insist her condition has plateaued; she will not get substantially better, she probably will not walk again on her own, she likely won’t be able to live by herself again.

All of this means she cannot remain in the rehab facility, either. There is a waiting list for the beds, and as far as the staff is concerned my mother is taking up space. Of course, not one of the nurses or therapists will say that. You can tell though by the looks in their faces that the thought percolates just below the surface. They’ve seen this kind of thing before. They know what to expect, and what not to. They have practiced the conversation that comes next with friends and families.

In a few days, I will have that conversation, the conclusion of which will shape my thinking on whether my mother can return to her apartment, her favorite things, her cat, and live the way she used to live — the way she prefers to live.

Which is why, this Thanksgiving, I urge everyone who can to give special thanks for being able to avoid that conversation regarding a friend or family member, or even themselves. Because, when you get right down to it, the most precious gift each of us has is our health. And when that’s gone, our freedom usually goes away, too.

 

The three R's of Twitter literacy

(This post was adapted from an essay for Gateway Media Literacy Partners, Inc.)

Look around, and look closely. Everywhere, from home to school, work to play, we’re witnessing a disturbing change in America, 140 characters at a time.

That change, heralded by the advent of social media, and the far-reaching, ever-expanding microblog platform Twitter in particular, demands we satisfy ourselves immediately with digital communications, telling our networks of virtual “friends” what we’re doing minute by minute, and expecting the same in return.

Evidence of this abounds as people meander down busy sidewalks with heads bent and eyes focused on the mobile devices in their hands; as pairs and groups in coffee shops, restaurants and other social settings hunch over their technology instead of engaging face to face; as car and truck drivers zoom past effecting the same debilitating pose behind the wheel. Twitter has attracted an audience of well over 500 million people — a number roughly equivalent to the 24 most populous nations combined. They’re tapping out an estimated 3,000 “tweets” per second, as of late 2011. And America tops this tweeting set, constituting about 30 percent of all Twitterers.

We could write off this behavior as endemic to a social species requiring engagement to survive and thrive. But such time-consuming, attention-diverting devotion to information that’s variously pertinent and pedantic instead removes us from society, inserts more space between ourselves and what we believe matters, and achieves the opposite of what we had hoped to accomplish through our amazing digital devices.

What would it take to disrupt this spreading inattentiveness before we’re reduced to letting technology do all the talking for us? Analysts say a refined Twitter temperament that fosters mature social networking is essential to sounding literate online, and the core curricula of that literacy can be boiled down to three R’s:

Restraint — We perceive the window through which we view the Internet as something akin to a one-way mirror when in fact it’s two-way, with potentially thousands of eyes peering back at us at once. Couple that with social media, which entices users to give up details about themselves to bolster their online “brand,” and little about us remains to the imagination.

Regardless, many Twitter users tweet every thought they have every minute they have them. They wax lengthy on food and fashion choices, spill secrets and tell lies, and they do these things either unaware of or indifferent to their network’s varied interests. The result: They lose followers and their networks shrink.

The best tweeters are not so random. Sree Sreenivasan, chief digital officer at Columbia University, says he waits six full minutes between tweets to ponder what he’s saying, how he’s saying it, and the possible reception from his followers. The alternative is a message that misses the mark and bruises his brand. 

“I delete much more than I tweet,” he said during a speech to the Society of Professional Journalists in September.

Research — Award-winning writer and St. Louis native Maya Angelou once said, “When you know better, you do better.” If only the Twitterverse were as insightful.

Instead, Twitter’s mix of immediacy and intimacy have the power to trump good sense. And because tweets are capable of circulating outside user networks, provided that the network's members retweet them to their own audiences, users tend to announce rather than report, hoping their personal knowledge, or wit and wisdom, carry enough water to grow their networks.

But proven knowledge — the kind supported by embedded Web links — yields more fruit because its presence demonstrates the sender’s diligence and effort to sound authentic. Like quotes and facts in a newspaper article, Web links pointing to legitimate and respected information sources help shore up the authority of tweets, and bolster the social media credibility of the sender.

“It’s not just about knowing how,” says noted social critic and modern media analyst Howard Rheingold. “It’s about knowing how and knowing who knows who knows what. ... Know-how is where the difference lies.”

Reciprocity — Social media’s best quality appears in its name. We’re drawn to tools such as Twitter because they’re both personal and public; some part of each of us seems woven into every exchange, intended or not. Moreover, Twitter’s trait of easy accessibility to anyone who uses the service encourages Twitterers to reach beyond their circles of close friends for networking with anyone who sports vast reserves of knowledge and experience.

But to get real value from Twitter, value must be exchanged.

“I think successful use of Twitter means knowing how to tune the network of people you follow, and how to feed the network of people you follow,” Rheingold says. “... If you don’t put out, you don’t get back.”

Digital marketing analyst Mike Calloway adds that “one of the greatest benefits of being part of a social network is staying up to date on all of the current events and updates. By providing your audience with information that is relevant and popular, you give yourself and your brand a distinct advantage.”

And when sharing relevant and popular content, “try to share great information that people can find only from you. ... Of course, other people will share some of the same information as you, but you should be a great hub of information that no one but you could provide.”

 

The secrets of great journalism

Recently, I was invited to speak at Francis Howell Central High School in suburban St. Louis about best journalism practices, and came up with this presentation on the wisdom of the profession gleaned outside of book-learning:

<div style="margin-bottom:5px"> <strong> The Secret to Great Journalism </strong> from <strong>David Sheets</strong> </div>

The secrets of great journalism

Recently, I was invited to speak to journalism students at Francis Howell Central High School near St. Louis about the lessons journalism serves up outside the classroom. Here, then, is the presentation I gave, listing practical advice over book-learning:

FHC_PresentationPP.ppt Download this file

Journalists, watch what you say in Charlotte

A reminder to journalists covering the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, N.C., this week: Watch what you say.

The urge to step outside of your professional selves and wax opinionated will be strong, thanks to the polarized political air filling the convention arena, but also because of electronic media’s rising demands that journalists discard attempts at objectivity to distinguish their brand — the new watchword in digital engagement.

Yield to temptation this week, and risk winding up like David Chalian, former Washington bureau chief for Yahoo and now a likely case study at j-schools and multimedia labs everywhere.

Chalian was about to be interviewed by ABCNews.com at the Republican National Convention in Tampa, Fla., last week regarding Hurricane Isaac’s turn away from Florida toward New Orleans and the potential effect of that change on the delegates’ discourse, and was caught on an open microphone implying GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney’s campaign was indifferent to specific persons in the storm’s projected path.

“Feel free to say: They’re not concerned at all,” Chalian was heard advising someone with ABCNews.com. “They are happy to have a party with black people drowning.”

What followed was another kind of storm led by Yahoo’s immediate firing of Chalian and subsequent apology to Romney’s campaign, saying the remark “was inappropriate and does not represent the views of Yahoo.” A crowd of journalists and pseudo-journalists immediately added their voices to the maelstrom, alternately defending and admonishing Chalian and Yahoo, and raising debate over the value of opinion in news reporting.

The debate becomes acute in Charlotte, and may turn the convention’s attention more toward media than politics. One side says broadly that a journalist’s opinion adds perspective and humanizes reporting; the other side insists it disrupts a delicate balance in otherwise non-partisan or non-advocacy news coverage. At the least, both sides say, voicing an opinion makes clear what journalists are thinking and rationalizes their behaviors.

All this has put journalists and their audiences on the defensive, and creates the perception that journalists in general lack judiciousness. Critics categorize them as “left” or “right” of reality, though the critics often exist in their own reality. Add to this the general vilification of facts central to any wisdom, especially if those facts cant perceptibly in particular direction, and the journalist’s goal of objective, unbiased reporting becomes practically impossible.

Mind you, objectivity is only a goal, and a tough one at that. The lesson I learned on this was simple enough: A j-school professor once gave my class a list of information on a mimeographed sheet and asked us to write a news story based on just those printed details. Toward the hour’s end, he read out loud the first few paragraphs of 10 completed stories. Not one was written exactly the same way. Were everyone in class absolutely objective, none of the stories would have been different.

That’s because we all are prisoners of perspective, with frames of reference adjusted for slightly different focuses. Journalists, however, are charged with adjusting their focus to see the root causes of action or inaction. The trained journalist is inculcated like a scientist — examining and re-examining theories and testing the veracity of each. Sure, opinions matter even in science, as nobody wants, say, doctors who can’t relate to patients because their judgments are limited to what they’ve read in medical journals.

But everyone in Charlotte at the DNC this week will have an opinion. The real news will be the facts plucked from this made-for-TV sea of subjectivity. 

Decades ago, those who owned the presses directed every ebb and flow of public opinion. This control persisted until the public’s trust was broken. The Bay of Pigs, the Gulf of Tonkin incident, the Pentagon Papers leak, Watergate — these all helped reinforce the importance of unbiased news media in curtailing government and institutional injustice.

Today, when so many people are ready to weigh opinions as facts, and legitimacy is quantified in decibels, journalistic objectivity and restraint still shine like diamonds in a coal mine and remain the best measures of professionalism. That’s why journalists should mind their words while in Charlotte, or risk looking like charlatans.

 

Six tips for writing professional tweets

(This post originally appeared in "Net Worked," the digital blog of the Society of Professional Journalists.)

It’s amazing the things that we see people tweet about. Personal beliefs. Private conversations. Elicit behavior. Groundless criticism. Uneducated perspective.

Yes, I’m talking about journalists, too.

Sure, some genuine news seeps through to the Twitterverse — the brilliant coverage by Andy Carvin of last year’s “Arab Spring” foremost among the examples. (Remarkably, a year later, his work still sets the standard.) Otherwise, what remains on that social network largely amounts to boorishness and self-aggrandizement, impugning and assuming, snobbery and effrontery.

When I came up through the journalism ranks, any sort of spotlight-hogging was frowned upon as ethically dubious, if not forbidden by company policy. Today, a persistent and effusive social media presence is considered essential to one’s employment, if for no other reason than to continually trumpet a media “brand.”

This deep bow to branding waxes ominous, thanks largely to such popular social media measuring sticks as Klout assigning a manufactured importance to digital socialization — an importance weighted in favor of quantity instead of quality. If we agree to hold up these sticks as accurate, then news reporting via social media is bound not to be.

Why? Because there’s a certain assurance news consumers get from a journalist’s professional detachment, and we see that assurance petering out now as news providers strive to be heard above the loud partisan polemic drowning rational thought — a polemic they help stir up.

The solution, short of wiping social media off the map, is greater attentiveness toward distinguishing personal from professional content. Though there are claims that a personal touch demystifies media and as a result makes news more consumable, personalization also blurs the line separating judgment from fact. And when journalists apply it, they put their profession at risk of being marginalized by “citizen” journalists who insist they’re merely following the example.

So, then, make that example an admirable one:

Separate personal from professional tweets — If this means creating separate Twitter accounts, so be it. And try not to use the company logo or any derivative as a personal avatar.

Exercise care with criticism — Do you love “50 Shades of Grey”? Do you hate the movie remake of “Spider-Man”? That’s fine, but keep those opinions off all professional social media accounts, unless it has a discernible job relevance. Otherwise, inserting opinion only waters down what little objectivity a journalist can muster.

Keep company matters inside the company — There may be discord between management and staff, or personnel matters that prove irksome, but venting discontent via veiled insult on social media not only undermines others’ faith in you, it also could prove actionable in a court of law. In the same vein, honesty regarding one’s own reporting or editing errors may evoke pangs of guilt and frustration, but it  reinforces credibility and respectability as well.

Rein in the urge to be defensive — By its nature, journalism invites criticism, warranted or not. Certainly, some of that criticism can be mean-spirited and vindictive, instead of constructive. Avoid driving a conversation further down the same dark road. As humorist Mark Twain once said, “Never argue with stupid people; they will drag you down to their level and beat you with experience.”

Resist posting vacation and food photos — It’s always good to get away from it all when possible; it’s bad to drag readers and viewers along. That beach picture with Diamond Head in the background, while pretty, smacks of braggadocio, and may even suggest to others a laxity at work — especially if the picture puts you in one place while the calendar says you should be somewhere else. Food photos, on the other hand, pose a different problem, one rooted in esthetics. Put simply, food never looks as good in social media as it does in person.

Avoid posting sales pitches — Ensure personal brand integrity by not promoting other brands in tweets through sales pitches or links to special deals. Leave that up to the sales people who are supposed to market those products.