Facebook: Friend or foe?

Recent events have demonstrated just how influential Facebook has become in everyday life. Good, bad or indifferent, the social media site holds powerful sway in almost everything we do.

If you don’t believe me, just ask Jay Reeves of the Sealy Police Department. One minute he is a captain and acting police chief. One Facebook comment later he is a lieutenant, demoted over something that has nothing to do with his ability as a police officer or leader in the department.

On a more personal note, I got burned four weeks ago because I trusted information I found via Facebook as it related to a shooting death and let that impair my professional instincts and judgment. To those affected by that, I offer my sincerest apologies.

These two incidences reflected good examples of the importance given to social media and Facebook specifically. In the case of Reeves, his comment was very benign and in what should have been a private conversation. Nonetheless, it went public and a high value was placed on it.

In my case, I got caught up in a very public discourse and acted too hastily with information. I weighted what was essentially a gossip column equally with that of legitimate, established media and as a result my reputation and level of trust with the public suffered.

One of the takeaways from this is the adage: What happens online, stays online. Once you put words or pictures out there, there is no taking it back or controlling its audience. All it takes is someone to make a quick screenshot or with the appropriate hacking skills to give even deleted items new life.

On the upside, there are tremendous benefits to social media. I’m a notorious Facebookaholic. I use it to keep up with family and friends from border to border and coast to coast to coast, plus several overseas. At The Sealy News, we use it to promote stories and advertisements and to communicate instantly with a much larger audience than we typically get on our website.

We have tried using other social media sites but they don’t get the attention or traction here that Facebook does. Apparently Twitter isn’t very popular in Austin County. We tried using it a while ago. The results were underwhelming. I’ve even gone as far as to remove the Twitter app from my phone.

Facebook has become the newsfeed and diary of our lives. I’ve noticed that I get more information more quickly from my Facebook feed than I do any other single source. As often as I get frustrated with Facebook and contemplate leaving it, I can’t. It’s entertaining and informative. I won’t go as far as to say that life happens on Facebook, but it certainly gets reported, updated and shared there.

It is a place where you can interact directly with your favorite actors, athletes, authors, artists and other celebrities. I don’t think there is a day gone by that I haven’t seen something from Star Trek actor George Takei and I don’t even follow him. He is a prolific poster and a lot of my friends share his stuff.

One thing I have to consider is how much I want to know about the new Star Wars movie coming out this year. It’s the first one in the age of social media and lots of stuff is being leaked. I still don’t know if I want to eat up all the information in advance or wait and be surprised when I see it on the big screen. So far I’ve been ignoring everything that has a spoiler alert or a disclaimer that the information hasn’t been verified.

This is certainly a lot to digest, but that’s the complexity of Facebook and the control it has in everyday life. The main thing, I guess, is to not let it consume your life. Don’t forget to turn off your phone and step away from your computer and get out into the real world. You can always post what happens later…

How to get your information into the newspaper

How come my press release/article/ad/News Bit/announcement/letter didn’t get into the paper this week?

I’ve been working for newspapers since I first joined my high school newspaper 34 years ago. A lot has changed in the way we do things in that time. Some things haven’t changed a bit. One of the things that hasn’t changed is the complaint that something didn’t get into the paper, or if it did get in it was changed or messed up.

Every so often I like to give some helpful tips for getting your information publicized in the newspaper. This is especially important for those who submit items for publication from nonprofit groups, organizations, churches, schools, etc.

First off, know your jargon. An ad is paid for and usually appears in a box at the bottom of a page. Announcements such as obituaries, weddings and engagements are paid for like and ad but are often printed like a story. Stories, and briefs – which we run as News Bits – are what I’m talking about here.

When writing something for publication, apply the KISS rule: Keep it simple, stupid. Long gone are the days when we had typesetters who would take in submissions and type them up for print. In the age of computers, streamlining and downsizing most newspapers have one person doing the job that two or more (usually more) did just a few years ago.

If you mail in or hand deliver something that needs to be typed up, it’s going to drop fast on the priority list. It might even get buried in a file of things to do later and never seen again. Email is by far the best way to submit your information. The ability to copy and paste takes seconds. Retyping can take valuable minutes. While that doesn’t sound like much, consider that the rest of this job takes about 55-60 hours a week. It all adds up.

When you do email something, again keep it simple. Please write it in a plain text format. Don’t mess around with special fonts and colors. Either write what you want in the body of the email or submit it attached in a Word document. If we can’t copy and paste it we have to retype it. This is especially true when people attach the fancy fliers they made to promote their event.

When writing about your event or activity, please keep it short and focus on the who, what, when and where. Please don’t pontificate about how wonderful your group is and what an amazing benefit that will come from the activity. We know that’s important, but 99 percent of the time we have to cut that part out anyway due to space limitations.

When writing, please do not put two spaces between each sentence. We know that’s what they taught in school but the reality is that we have to remove the extra space. A single space may not be much, but when you add it up over the thousands of sentences in a newspaper, you lose a lot of space and in a newspaper, space is expensive. The same goes for indenting paragraphs. The computer program we use does that automatically for us.

Please do not write in ALL CAPS or capitalize every single noun. Please limit capitalization to the first word in a sentence, proper nouns (names) and titles if they appear with the name. For example, your would say “Superintendent Sheryl Moore” or “Sheryl Moore, the superintendent.” Seasons are not capitalized. Spring, summer, fall and winter are all lower case.

Quite often we get people who go through the effort to put information into nice, neat columns. Please do not do that … ever. It makes more work for you to format it that way and just as much work for us to unformat it. If you need to put things in columns, please ask us first how best to do it. There are tricks of the trade that make it easy on both ends.

To submit pictures, please email them as attachments. Please do not imbed them in a Word document. It takes extra time to extract them and they lose a lot of quality in the process. The larger the JPG file you can send, the better.

Lastly, please submit your item as early as possible. Our deadlines have been Monday at noon, but with the high volume of stuff coming in at the last minute, we may be forced to move that back to Friday.

Doing these things will help assure that your information gets into the paper quicker and more accurately. Thank you for your cooperation.

An empty day filled with love and memories

Dear Dad,

I know Friday may be one of the emptiest and most painful of your life. I hope it isn’t. I hope it’s one filled with many joyous and happy memories of Mom.

Fifty years is a heck of a milestone. Had she not been called home last May this weekend would have been one of the biggest celebrations of your life. Mom would have been showered with gifts and accolades and congratulations for putting up with you for so long!

Seriously though, you were a great husband and I know she cherished her life with you. Even now you remain a truly wonderful father and grandfather. Family was always important to both of you and it shows. All of your grandchildren have loving and caring families and that is a legacy you can be proud of.

I first started thinking about writing this column more than a year ago. Of course, back then I thought it would be a dedication presented to both of you. In a way it still is. Mom’s memory is as strong with us today as was her love for us the previous 49 years. As she gazes upon us from Heaven, I’m sure what she sees fills her heart with gladness.

Looking back at the last 50 years it amazes me what all we have been through. You and Mom sacrificed a lot to make sure all of our needs and many of our wants were met. My brothers and I rarely did without anything. We always had plenty of food, lots of toys, a color TV and our own bedrooms.

More than that, we had parents who took us to church, attended school conferences and programs, coached Little League, served as Scout leaders, took us fishing and camping, played games, played catch, prayed regularly (and I’m sure irregularly at times), took (dragged) us to Grange meetings, volunteered with the fire department, and did a whole host of other things that aren’t coming to mind just now. (Hey, I’m approaching 50 and the memory ain’t what it used to be…)

The thing is, you and Mom not only filled a need when you saw it, you often led the charge to get things done. I have some friends who could learn from your example and a lot of friends who did! The values you and Mom instilled in my brothers and me shaped us into the men we are today. Those are the same values we are modeling and instilling in our own children.

Under your roof, our friends always knew they were welcome and safe. Our home was at times a refuge for castoffs and runaways until they could turn their lives around. That’s something that has lived on in my house.

One of the things that always amazed me is how graciously you allowed us to experiment and carve our own paths in life. You and Mom were always a safety net when we failed and a lighthouse when we got lost but you were never a tour guide taking us where you wanted us to go. As my own kids reach their teens and 20s I’m discovering how very hard that must have been for you to do, especially with me being the first in line and suffering from a very creative wanderlust.

I know it must have seemed cruel for me to take off with your grandkids and move more than a 1,000 miles away. I now know how it feels as my daughter is back with you in Colorado and my oldest son is with his other grandparents in Florida. I miss them dearly and I feel the emptiness of their absence, but I am sure proud of them and all that they’re accomplishing.

I guess that brings me back to the emptiness of your 50^th anniversary and first one without Mom. I hope you can see how full life was (and is) and what an incredible legacy you have left. I know there is a void where Mom was, but our lives and our hearts are full and this is a day we can all cherish and celebrate. Congratulations Dad, and thanks to you and Mom for a lifetime of love, laughter and a commitment to making this a better world in which to live.