Who Do Students Admire?

Five of us had lunch today with Jay Smith, the recently retired president of Cox Newspapers. Smith was in town to talk to a couple of classes at the Elliott School of Communication. Smith posed a couple of interesting questions. One that particularly struck me was: "Who do your students look up to?" Smith wasn't asking about celebrities, but about media mentors, specifically in journalism. Going to high school and college in the 1970s, my journalism heroes were broadcast giant Walter Cronkite and investigative reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein of the Washington Post, famous for their sleuthing in the Watergate crimes. In terms of literary models, my writing mentors ranged from Ernest Hemingway to Hunter S. Thompson, an admittedly wide net to cast. His query intrigued me because I have no clue what my own students would say if asked that question. Would they cite old-school journalists, broadcasters and advertising experts? Or would they throw out the names of unknown (to me) bloggers, Web site gurus and weirdo page designers. Well, I am just going to have ask them. Stay tuned. In the meantime, who are/were your mentors?

What is an Intellectual?

Please read the commentary on the attached link. Essentially, the writer argues (persuasively) that while liberal arts professors seem to get away with shrugging off the need for them to knowing math and science, the reverse is rarely true. The writer makes the case that to be a true intellectual you need to grasp all knowledge. It makes sense. Why should a biology professor have to listen to a sociologist complain about pseudo-science, when sociology profs are allowed to attack scientists as being uninformed about the human condition? I have been talking to journalism professors lately about the problem of writers who don't like doing math. That is a subset (pardon the mathematical expression) of the illiteracy issue covered by this writer. Please go to the link for the essay...then let me know what you think.

http://insidehighered.com/views/2008/08/04/orzel

Old Books You Need to Read

Here's an old list of books I've read and recommend. I plan to update this soon. Pick something out and read it.

John McPhee
The Survival Of The Bark Canoe
Oranges
The Pine Barrens
The Deltoid Pumpkin Seed
Table Of Contents
The Curve Of Binding Energy
The Crofter And The Laird
The Headmaster
Coming Into The Country
Pieces Of The Frame
A Sense Of Where You Are
Looking For A Ship

Tim Cahill
Jaguars Ripped My Flesh
A Wolverine Is Eating My Leg
Road Fever
Pecked to Death by Ducks

By Tracy Kidder
The Soul Of A New Machine
House
Among Schoolchildren

Edward Abbey
Desert Solitaire
Abbey’s Road
Down The River
The Journey Home
The Best Of Edward Abbey: A Reader

Hunter S. Thompson
Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas
Hell’s Angels
Fear And Loathing On The Campaign Trail ’72

Tom Wolfe
The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby
The New Journalism
The Right Stuff

Michael Herr
Dispatches

Scott Turow
One L

Timothy Crouse
The Boys on the Bus

Bob Greene
Johnny Deadline, Reporter
Billion Dollar Baby
Running
We Didn’t Have None of Them Fat, Funky Angels on the Wall of Heartbreak Hotel And Other Stories From
America

Anne Lamott
Bird by Bird

Ben Hamper
Rivet Head

Nathan McCall
Makes Me Wanna Holler

Joe McGinniss
Going To Extremes
The Selling of the President 1968

Russell Baker
The Good Times
Growing Up

Dennis Miller
The Rants

Howard Kohn
The Last Farmer

Robert K. Massie
The Romanovs

Calvin Trillin
American Fried
Killings
Alice, Let’s Eat

Richard Rhodes
Farm
The Making Of The Atomic Bomb

Tim O’Brien
If I Die In A Combat Zone Box Me Up And Ship Me Home

George Plimpton
Paper Lion

P.J. O’Rourke
Holidays In Hell

Mark Baker
Cops

Jim Bishop
The Day Lincoln Was Shot

Witold Rybczynski
Home

Andre Codrescu
Road Scholar

Stanley Crawford
A Garlic Testament

Nora Janssen Seton
The Road To My Farm

William Zinsser
Willie and Dwike

Mariana Gosnell
Zero 3 Bravo

Anne LaBastille
Woodswoman

William Least Heat Moon
Blue Highways

Annie Dillard
An American Childhood

Michael Critchton
Travels

Stephen Coonts
The Cannibal Queen

Michael Bane
Over the Edge

Thomas French
South of Heaven

Stephen Ambrose
Undaunted Courage

May Wynne Lamb
Life in Alaska

David Herbert Donald
Lincoln

Jim Paul
Catapult

Dava Sobel
Longitude

Oliver Sacks
The Island of the Colorblind

Jim Hughes
W. Eugene Smith: Shadow and Substance

Jeremy Wilson
Lawrence of Arabia

Richard Schickel
Clint Eastwood

Books About Writing
• “Writing Creative Nonfiction: How to Use Fiction Techniques to Make Your Nonfiction More Interesting, Dramatic and Vivid,” by Theodore Cheney, 1991, Ten Speed Press.
• “The Literary Journalists: The New Art of Personal Reportage,” edited by Norman Sims, 1984, Ballantine Books.
• “Writing for Your Readers: Notes on the Writer’s Craft from the Boston Globe,” by Donald Murray, 1992, 2nd edition, Globe Pequot Press.
• “Writing for Story,” by Jon Franklin, 1986, Mentor.
• “They Went: The Art and Craft of Travel Writing,” edited by William Zinsser, 19xx, Houghton Mifflin.
• “Handbook of Magazine Article Writing,” edited by Jean Fredette, 1988, Writer’s Digest Books.
• “Magazine and Feature Writing,” by Hiley Ward, 1993, Mayfield Publishing Co.
• “Beyond The Inverted Pyramid: Effective Writing for Newspapers, Magazines and Specialized Publications,” by George Kennedy, Daryl Moen and Don Ranley, 1993, St. Martin’s Press.
• Words’ Worth: A Handbook on Writing and Selling Nonfiction,” by Terri Brooks, 1989, St. Martin’s Press.
• “Interviews That Work: A Practical Guide for Journalists,” by Shirley Biagi, 1986, Wadsworth.
• “The New Journalism,” by Tom Wolfe and E. W. Johnson, 1973, Harper & Row.
• “Popular Writing in America: The Interaction of Style and Audience,” by Donald McQuade and Robert Atwan, 1993, 5th edition, Oxford University Press.
• “The Craft Of Interviewing,” by John Brady, 1977, Vintage Books.

Cigar Victims

Read this "news" blurb in today's Wichita Eagle — it's really more of an ad — and then read what I have to say. Then, let me know what you think.

Tour allows one last puff at three restaurants

Stogie aficionados can take a smoking tour tonight of three restaurants that will go smoke-free when the city of Wichita's partial ban takes effect Thursday. Businesses must ban smoking or build a separate smoking room if they admit people under 18. ABC Discount Smoke Shop & Fine Cigars has arranged for a party bus to leave Finn's bar, 800 E. First St., at 6 p.m. Monday. It will travel to Old Chicago West, Yia Yia's Euro Bistro and Fox & Hound English Pub before returning to Finn's at 11 p.m. The trip costs $25 per person and includes the bus, a T-shirt, a cigar and appetizers or desserts at the three restaurants. To sign up, call the smoke shop, 316-688-0112. -- Eagle staff

§§§

The only thing sadder than the arrival of this ridiculous "ban" is the fact that several corporations are exploiting cigar smokers in this way. Fine cigars, like other pleasures in life, are meant to be savored at a leisurely pace in the company of friends. The idea of someone cramming a bunch of folks into a bus and richocheting them around the city for a puff here and there (while gobbling appetizers and pastries to boot) is repulsive and smacks of cheap opportunism. This sounds more like one of those "see a dozen European countries on Greyhound in a week" kind of things. Forgive me if I pass on this and the stupid T-shirt. And shame on the restaurants who are trying to wring one last visit from excellent customers, while kicking them out the door. I will never do business with the smoke shop, its liquor store, or the three restaurants again — and I'll bet no other serious cigar smokers do, either. There are other places and other opportunities for people of fine taste.