Top 5 Ways To Fall Back In Love With The South

Ah, springtime in Crackerstan! As we recover from the flood of goober politicians and their moronic policies polluting our state legislatures, while ignoring the pending tsunami of awful political media designed to make Gomer Pyle’s chest swell, there really is no better place than the Deep South for springtime frolics. We’re prettier than the rest, so let’s get on with our fun, sun, and glory. Here are my suggestions to help remind the world of our beauty and our elegance. And yes, we do have a little bit left.

1.) The Spoleto USA Festival in Charleston, SC. May 23 – June 8. You’ve stumbled into as much Old Euro elegance, grace and glamour as you’re going to get within our mostly Moon Pie walls with this one. Gorgeous people, gorgeous events, beautiful city, beaches, fabulous weather created just to show-off your best sundresses and sandals, even with its notoriously haughty and dull Charlestonians. And heck, even those people are on their best behavior during Spoleto. Just go.

 

2.) The Carolina Cup. A steeplechase race. Camden, SC. March 29. This one’s just genuine Old South. The ponies and understated 100% cotton finery give it away. And where else can you see adorable little college students hurling their cookies into the grass whilst wearing their Sunday best? (Other than on every southern college campus, of course.) Forget the SC colleges mass-partying on the infield though, and take in the horses and the serious equestrian scene around the paddock area. Southerners do horse stuff almost as well as rich Saudis. (You’ll even spot a few of those there too, but they’ll be wearing their Aiken-inspired southernwear as camouflage, and their womenfolk won’t be all covered up.) If you want a true Garden and Gun culture-feel of the South, you’ll find it at the Carolina Cup. Drink when you see an aspic on a tailgate eaten by a startlingly handsome young buck in a seersucker suit. You will, if you can stay sober for just a minute or so. Some of the gents are so comely they could give even Ralph Lauren’s male model, Nacho, a run for his horse-people money. Besides, it’s no secret now, not since that Appalachian Trail business, that South Carolinians and Argentinians have been mingling for generations. It’s a polo thing. Don’t forget your Croakies, menfolk. Even if rain is predicted this year.

 

3.) Intown neighborhoods – Atlanta. Now until late May. If the traffic and the freeways and the Braves moving to bland, kinda ugly Cobb County have just worn you down, a calming Sunday afternoon drive through Atlanta’s oldest intown neighborhoods such as Ansley Park, Peachtree Battle, Brookwood Hills, even the more gaudy nouveau riche Buckhead enclaves like Blackland Road, will perk your spirits right up with their display of floral riches and lush, leafy tree canopies. Picture pretty lawns galore, and until some piece of shit ’95 Toyota Corolla wrapped together with Bungee cords and fishing line lunges into you, you can close your eyes and think you’re on the prettiest boulevard in France. Tom Wolfe describes it well in A Man In Full. Springtime as tonic.

4.) Lakes, rivers, and water-skiing. Anywhere South. Friends-with-boats are a good thing. Make some. Borrow some if you have to.

5.) The fields and valleys of Western North Carolina. Just go driving up there until you find them. You will. Take someone you’ve been hoping for with you, if you need to fall in love somewhere special. You will.

What Would You Pay To Go Full Multimedia?

I recently completed a 4-month long project during the course of the Georgia General Assembly’s 2010 session; from opening day to Sine Die (last day)… give or take a week or two off here and there when the legislators had to excuse themselves to, like, go figure stuff out.

This online video project was taken on with veteran southern politics newsman, Tom Baxter, at the behest of CBS-Atlanta, WGCL. You can review some of the 30 videos created and promoted here.

CBS-Atlanta had no designated political reporter at the onset of the project, that began in January of 2010. They needed to supplement their broadcast product with targeted, specialized online media. Not more “Tough Questions” ambush-style product (Saltzman is perfectly capable of THAT gig all by her scowling self), but with more feature-type of media offerings from a seasoned reporter who understands Georgia politics.

Baxter delivered the goods. At times it seemed as if there wasn’t a single person, of the daily hordes walking up the gorgeous marble staircases of the State Capitol, that he didn’t have a full bio on… stored in his usually-in-need-of-combing head. In four months of activity, I saw only one politician refuse an interview request with Baxter, and that was a pol who had just been demoted by the House Majority (or Senate, I forget) leadership, so the pol had to go off and lick his wounds, thus brushing-off Mr. B. in his haste to process all that new-bad karma.

So well regarded was Mr. B in the long history of work he’s done in southern political (print) journalism that powerful people seek him out to have a moment with him. Hell, the dude could just stand in the hall with a mic turned on (as I rolled media card) and every single person in the Capitol would come by to say their piece – and be delighted to be doing so. It makes ’em feel special.

Baxter doesn’t deal in rumor and innuendo. Nor commando-style microphone shoving into faces whilst yelling ridiculous questions. All you’re ever going to get from a bizarre method like that is decades of resentment. You’re certainly not going to forge relationships. More like you’re just banishing yourself into the political wilderness, for no apparent reason, where you’ll be left alone with no one to go on the record for you when you might need them, say ten years down the road of your mutual careers in politics and/or journalism.

That or either you’re in it for your personal careerism, perhaps thinking you are getting yourself off to that mythical place that no longer exists called “the networks.” Like anyone wants to go THERE nowadays. It’d would be the journalistic equivalent of being shipped to Siberia if you ask me, which of course no one did.

Politics is local. Anything you do at the national level is just pack mentality pointlessness of rote meme recitation to mass media consuming drones. For a bigger paycheck and a whopping mortgage in Arlington, VA, with Ivy League to pay out the ass for bratty kids who should be sent to community college anyway.

For the most part, other than a wild flame-out or two here and there, politics is a long haul endeavor. And if you don’t cover it with that in mind you’ll get nothing. Nada. (Just ask Dale Russell.) If you don’t ask nicely, you’ve just made yourself a career-long enemy… if you are young, unwise, and think that is how news must be churned – with impolite, disrespectful behaviors as a motivator. And you can go back to your newsroom and call it news if you wish. Or a report. But trust me, it will not be journalism.

Baxter is a genuine journalist. The news he writes and the stories he tells come from the people in power and elsewhere who are willing to go on the record and talk openly and with transparency about the political process. And there are never just two sides of a story. Rather, especially in politics, it’s more like there are 10-15 sides of a story. Baxter lets ’em all whisper their various POVs in his ear, weighs all the chatter with his years of experience in the game, and then he writes. Or in our multimedia case, talks out perfectly crafted sentences off the top of his head – no script, no rehearsal. Dude was a born TV broadcaster and never knew it!

Anyway… getting to the point of this blog post, which was supposed to be about money and budgets, but if you’re going to entertain a thought towards southern politics Baxter will get your attentions. So, on to the point… here’s the gear list and pricing (retail) for what amounted to a series, an archive really, of about 30 videos. 30 videos,  most in the 3-minute range, that incorporate what will be Georgia’s 2010 political history. And yes, I wish news orgs would see themselves more as archivists and librarians who also exist to serve the greater historical good, but that’s a whole other discussion, eh?

• Camera, Kodak Zi8: $170. on sale at Target
• Tripod, some cheap crap off of eBay – $30. (will not last longer than a few weeks without breaking, but if you’re going cheap you work with what you got, right?)
• 8-gig memory card – about $40.
• Adobe Premier editing software package – about $100.
• Audio-Technica Pro 24 external mic – $100.

So there. For under $500. you too can get yourself a multimedia broadcast production facility. Moreorless. Of course that’s just the gear. You must then determine just how much time and cost you are going to invest in your multimedia online endeavor. What is worth the multimedia online treatment in your shop? And what is it worth to you in this social media, online world we’re all creating and growing day by day?

You tell me. Or better yet… let WaySouth Media tell you.

Chris Dickey – Phony Southerner

Chris Dickey, son of the famous Southern poet James Dickey, cons Yankee editors at Newsweek into believing he’s still a son of the South so he can write-up a load of overwrought, overwritten, stereotyping copy about our behavior during this time of “change.”

Now this part of the country, where I have my deepest roots, feels raw again, its political emotions more exposed than they’ve been in decades. George W. Bush and Barack Hussein Obama have unsettled the South: the first with a reckless war and a weakened economy, the second with the color of his skin, the foreignness of his name, the lofty liberalism of his language. Suddenly the palliative prosperity that salved old, deep wounds no longer seems adequate to the task.

Seems to Dickey Daddy’s Boy that none of us are all that crazy about “change.” Could be most of us Southerners aren’t all that crazy about pretentious wankers from Paris trying to pass themselves off as natives. Full story here. And Matt Towery’s take on all this backwater bs is here, y’all.

Welcome to Mostly Media!

After spending just a little too much time over on, let’s just say another blog, it became clear that there was a need for a blog about southern media matters. Or heck, even a blog that focuses mostly on Atlanta news media. With some contemporary culture thrown in to liven-up the room.

If you’re as keenly interested in all-things-media as we are, and interested in opining about it all, then let me know if you would like to be a Mostly Media frontpager. And load-up your pictures and your video as well as your text. Let us know too if you’d like your blog included on the Mostly Media blogroll over to the right. (Atlanta blogs with a focus on media, culture, politics are given an automatic green light.)

The world is our oyster! As seen through our new news lenses.