Scott Bush

I admit it. I’m a Face­book fan.

If you’re not on Face­book, you’re one of the few. But, I can’t get too sanc­ti­mo­nious though; I’ve had my account for all of a week now. But I’m impressed.

MySpace may be the older, more well-known social net­work­ing site but it’s crap. Since News­corp bought it, MySpace has been chang­ing for the bet­ter but it still sucks—from a devel­op­ment stand­point, of course: Nested tables, no API, and basi­cally a hor­ri­ble inter­face. It’s like anarchy.

Face­book occu­pies the other side of the social-networking coin: it’s like a well-run democ­racy. What struck me most was the ease and flu­id­ity with which new accounts are made. Enter your name and you’re off. Want friends quickly? Import them from any of the major sites: AOL IM, Google, etc. and Facebook’ll bring them in. Enter your com­pany and/or school and the year you grad­u­ated (FB even auto-completes your entries)… bam, you’re star­ing at the avatars of your work– and class­mates. Click them and they’re invited to be your friend. All this is done with such web grace (thanks to graphic embell­ish­ments from a script.aculo.us–style frame­work) that it’s a joy to use.

There are security/privacy issues to be aware of. And the huge adver­tis­ing dol­lars at stake. I could go on, but I’ll leave it at that for now. I need to get over to my page and change my sta­tus… it’s addictive!

Went for a walk around Green­lake this past week­end and came across some­thing I had to pho­to­graph. Some idiot from the city put up no park­ing signs right on the most trav­elled path in all of Seat­tle! (See the orange cir­cle in the photo.) Uh, hello… who would park there? Nobody! You can’t even get a car there unless you drive over a curb. But I see their rea­son­ing: the last guy who tried to park there knocked over that tree.

Then, as I down­loaded the photo from my cam­era for this post, I real­ized I’d unin­ten­tion­ally cap­tured another stu­pid mis­take! Some lady looked out her win­dow in the morn­ing and thought, “wow, look at all the sun­shine and blue sky. Fore­cast is for a rare gor­geous day in April. Guess I’ll bring along my umbrella in case it rains!” Sheesh! I love this town, but seri­ously people!

Oh, and lest you think I’m the one being stu­pid, I’m jok­ing. Clearly the sign was there just to sup­port the yel­low tape around a downed tree. And the woman is car­ry­ing a para­sol to keep the sun off her fair skin. But it sure is fun to write like a blowhard once in a while ;-)

I don’t often write about pol­i­tics, as evi­denced by this post’s clas­si­fi­ca­tion under “life” and “misc.” But I’ve heard too much on the radio and net today about a polit­i­cal topic not to com­ment. It’s the 6–3 Supreme Court deci­sion that ruled Indiana’s require­ment of a photo ID was not unconstitutional.

Well duh.

Sure, there are objec­tions that it places an undue bur­den on the elderly or minor­ity pop­u­la­tions. They don’t hold water for me for the sim­ple rea­son that to vote you need to prove who you are. That proof comes in the form of photo ID. Indi­ana may be strict in that it requires state-issued ID and on those grounds may attract more law­suits. (Six other states with photo-ID laws accept stu­dent IDs.) An excerpt from the NYT article:

It requires a voter to present a pho­to­graph as part of an unex­pired doc­u­ment issued either by Indi­ana or the fed­eral gov­ern­ment, a require­ment that in most cases can be sat­is­fied only by a cur­rent driver’s license or a pass­port. The state’s motor vehi­cle agency pro­vides a free photo ID card for peo­ple who do not drive, but obtain­ing it requires a “pri­mary doc­u­ment” like an orig­i­nal birth cer­tifi­cate or a passport.

So non-drivers and those with­out pass­ports are also cov­ered. And there’s even a pro­vi­sional bal­lot option that gives the ID-less 10 days to bring doc­u­men­ta­tion of their iden­tity after voting–that cov­ers just about every cir­cum­stance I can think of.

I am a pro­po­nent of per­sonal free­doms and gov­ern­ment non-interference but this issue seems blown out of pro­por­tion. Want to vote? Show ID to prove your iden­tity. Seems sim­ple to me. But, if you dis­agree let me know.

Sun­day morn­ing we all piled into the Mariott’s ball­room eager to hear the results of indi­vid­ual write-off com­pe­ti­tions. Before we did, though, we were treated to an array of pre-annoucements announce­ments. They included a slideshow of stu­dent pho­tog­ra­phy sub­mit­ted to the com­pe­ti­tion (and there were some amaz­ing shots); the stu­dent jour­nal­ist of the year and the runners-up; and a video entic­ing us to attend the fall JEA con­ven­tion in St. Louis.

Again, many the Wash­ing­ton schools grouped together (though this time much more loosely) to cheer one another on. We were so bois­ter­ous that the announcer (H.L. Hall, who’s been announc­ing indi­vid­ual award-winners since I was a stu­dent!) paused after each Wash­ing­ton­ian was announced. Given the rapid­ity with which H.L. reads these names (there were 714 win­ners from 1869 par­tic­i­pants to get through) that’s pretty impres­sive. In my years attend­ing and chap­er­on­ing these con­ven­tions, I’ve never seen such an impres­sive dis­play of sol­i­dar­ity among the schools from any state. I counted 17 sep­a­rate schools from Wash­ing­ton whose stu­dents took home awards in the write-offs.

Among them were many Hawk­eye stu­dents, I’m proud to say. Vince has com­piled a com­plete list in a press release that I’ll get and post soon. I was pleased to learn that a stu­dent from Wenatchee’s Apple Leaf, where my friend Jeff Nusser advises, whom I talked to about the News­pa­per Lay­out com­pe­ti­tion, received an hon­or­able men­tion. Good for her!

With check­out com­plete and bags secured in a hotel store­room, the after­noon lay ahead of us. Vince, Tim, and Mark took a few stu­dents to watch the cumbersomely-named The Los Ange­les Angels of Ana­heim do bat­tle with—and lose 4 to 2—to the Seat­tle Mariners. Not being a base­ball fan, I took a con­tin­gent of seven stu­dents on two short bus rides to end up at The Block at Orange, a big out­door mall. Sure, sure—another mall. But it was some­thing to do and the food options were much bet­ter (finally got some sushi).

The trip home felt short, but that may have been due to the fact most of us were sleep­ing on the bus to LAX or on the plane home. But I’d be remiss if I didn’t acknowl­edge the kind gifts the Hawk­eye stu­dents chipped in to get each of us chap­er­ones: I was given an excel­lent sand hackey sack and some Dis­ney play­ing cards; Vince a God­fa­ther quote book; and Tim a Japan­ese cook­book. All gifts showed gen­eros­ity and a knowl­edge of what we enjoy. So thank you everyone.

I’m look­ing for­ward to St. Louis in the Fall and Phoenix next year! I’m also look­ing for­ward to a con­ven­tion that pro­vides free wifi access, as this one didn’t and that makes post­ing a blog for par­ents much harder!

My trite com­ment about the snow back home has back­fired, as the beau­ti­ful SoCal weather has dis­ap­peared, replaced by grey clouds and cold breeze. In short, it’s like a nor­mal April in Seat­tle today.

I thought it’d be a good time to explain what makes these con­ven­tions worth com­ing to. It’s not the hotel pools, though the num­ber of swim­suited high school­ers there would make you think oth­er­wise (none from the Hawkeye’s con­tin­gent, though). It’s the qual­ity of thought and ded­i­ca­tion of the edu­ca­tors and pro­fes­sion­als here to teach these ener­getic and eager young jour­nal­ists. I attended dis­cus­sions of stu­dent press rights and respon­si­ble jour­nal­ism, as well as more tech­ni­cal ses­sion on “new media” in jour­nal­ism (slide shows with audio, video on web­sites, etc.) and Adobe Bridge and Cam­era RAW for­mat. These are the sorts of edu­ca­tional expe­ri­ences that make all the travel, late nights, junk food, and rambunctious—and often screaming—high school­ers worth while.

Sat­ur­day also brought the first of the two awards cer­e­monies: group hon­ors. As usual, the crowd first lis­tened to the NSPA pre­sen­ter (Washington’s own Logan Aimone from Wenatchee, who replaced Tom Rol­nicke) intro­duce the head table, which included the new head of the Stu­dent Press Law Cen­ter. The SPLC has been defend­ing stu­dent jour­nal­ists for decades, includ­ing the Hawk­eye circa 1995 for some inci­dent about pho­tog­ra­phers pho­tograph­ing an on-campus fight. The crowd chipped in and raised just over $2500 to sup­port the impor­tant work of the SPLC.

I won’t keep you in the sus­pense as we were: the Hawk­eye placed 10th in the Best of Show cat­e­gory for papers pub­lish­ing 13–16 pages! Con­grat­u­la­tions to all the staffers who con­tributed to this accomplishment!

Wash­ing­ton state was well rep­re­sented. Schools from Gig Har­bor, Puyallup, Mt. Si, Han­ford, Wenatchee and many other loca­tions also took hon­ors in their cat­e­gories. Advi­sors and edi­tors from the schools had met dur­ing the con­ven­tion and decided to all gather in the same cor­ner of the ball­room, thereby giv­ing us more con­cen­trated vol­ume when any of our mas­sive group won. It was quite a fun expe­ri­ence and always an honor to be num­bered among such qual­ity publications.

The remain­der of the evening was small group out­ings: some to din­ners, oth­ers to shop­ping, and a siz­able con­tin­gent to Dis­ney­land. Tomorrow’s our last day. Sad­dened by this, Mark, Vince, and I drown our sad­ness in a donut.

Sat­ur­day brought the first set of ses­sions, write-off com­pe­ti­tions, and more enjoy­ment of the Ana­heim weather. (This was made more poignant by the news that back home was blan­keted with 3–5 inches of snow. In April. Late April.)

I only attended one ses­sion on pho­tog­ra­phy in a large ball­room, but not because I wasn’t inter­ested in oth­ers. They were sim­ply full. For the first time in over 15 con­ven­tions, they had “bounc­ers” refus­ing to allow stu­dents down hall­ways to get into overly-full ses­sion rooms. Def­i­nitely a prob­lem, and really not fair to stu­dents who were shut of out not only of the “pop­u­lar” ses­sions, but just about all of them.

The coolest part of my day was catch­ing up with the other Washington-state jour­nal­ism peo­ple I’ve come to know at state and national con­ven­tions. Included among these is my for­mer high school class­mate Jeff Nusser, now advi­sor of the Apple Leaf in Wenatchee. Another plus: spend­ing time with two students–one Hawk­eye, one Apple Leaf—preparing them for their first write-off com­pe­ti­tion in news­pa­per lay­out. I par­tic­i­pated in that cat­e­gory as a stu­dent and have judged it many times since.

Vince DeMiero, the Hawk­eye advi­sor, and I vol­un­teered to judge write-offs; it’s another con­ven­tion tra­di­tion. We had din­ner on JEA in the ban­quet room that then became a hub of activ­ity for the next three hours as jour­nal­ism edu­ca­tors, pro­fes­sion­als in the field, and I poured over student’s entries. Vince and I judged Lit­er­ary Mag­a­zine Lay­out, Lit Mag Illus­tra­tion, and Lit Mag Poetry—something of a depar­ture from our usual cat­e­gories but it was quite fun.

Mean­while, fel­low chap­er­ons Mark Isak­son and Tim Cash­man took stu­dents to var­i­ous loca­tions for din­ner. One des­ti­na­tion was a sushi place “nearby,” only about three miles away. Not sure of the whole story, but no sushi was had but sub­sti­tutes were found, I’m sure. Con­tin­u­ing another Hawk­eye con­ven­tion tra­di­tion, no stu­dents attended the dance.

Ses­sions again tomor­row as well as the first awards cer­e­mony, this one for news­pa­pers and year­books. Indi­vid­ual hon­ors are awarded at Sunday’s cer­e­mony. Fol­low­ing that is our evening group activ­i­ties: Dis­ney­land for some, and other less-animated fun for others.