Gone Riding, Part 1 – Why do I ride?

Posted on July 7, 2018 by Ralph Hanson

This is the first in a series of blog posts about my summer motorcycle travels. It was written in a motel room in Idaho Falls, Idaho.

Me with Doug & Telisha Williams (AKA Wild Ponies) near the start of the Natchez Trace.

There’s an old Harley/motorcycle meme out there that says, “If I have to explain it to you, you wouldn’t understand.”

Now I get how that might make a rider feel like a “bad-ass biker,” but since I was washing my socks and undies in the sink of my motel room this morning while on a two-week motorcycle trip, I guess that doesn’t really describe me.

To tell you the truth, understanding why motorcycling means so much to me is not that hard to understand. So let me explain…

This spring and early summer I’ve been working around the clock, finishing a draft of the seventh edition of my textbook Mass Communication: Living in a Media World.  Each edition is a two-year-long process that culminates in several months of feverish writing after reading, reviewing and tagging more than 1,000 articles that provide the background for it.

Once I delivered the manuscript, I’m not done, but I’m on a looser schedule.  So come late June, it’s time to go riding. This year I had two trips planned, probably a little too close together. This is the story of the first.

Me and Bishop Matthew Riegel

In late June I rode east to meet with Bishop Matthew Riegel to ride down the Natchez Trace Parkway as His Grace was on his way to the national Lutheran youth gathering in Houston. I rode there from central Nebraska by way of the southeast Missouri Ozarks – an underrated area of great twisty roads with very little traffic.

The Natchez Trace is not as well-known as the more famous Blue Ridge Parkway running through the southeast, but it’s a gorgeous, relaxing route to ride from just south of Nashville to Natchez, Mississippi.  It’s essentially a national park that’s 50 yards wide and 440 miles long. It’s a winding, rural two-lane road that’s controlled access.  There’s no trucks or commercial traffic.  The speed limit peaks at 50 MPH, so it’s not a place for excitement. It’s a place to relax, enjoy the scenery, and travel through the country where Elvis grew up.

This trip was the third time I’ve ridden at least part of the Trace, and I’m already looking forward to the next time I can make it over there.

The Loveless Cafe

Before meeting up with Matt, I had breakfast and a Sunday morning of riding with my Nashville friends, Doug and Telisha Williams AKA Americana band Wild Ponies. (Musicians who live in Nashville… whooda thunk it?) We met for breakfast at the incomparable Loveless Café located a block away from the northern end of the Trace.  Country ham, biscuits, eggs, sausage gravy for me (though red eye was an option), and hash brown casserole.  A proper southern breakfast!

I got to the café a bit head of the Ponies, so I grabbed a free cup of coffee from the café’s store (You can buy whole country hams there at prices I don’t want to think about), and sat and waited on the porch. A perfectly pleasant way spend the time.

Then, after breakfast, we rode together. Telisha on her BMW R850R and Doug on the R1150R. Me, I’m on the Yamaha Super Tenere, AKA Big Blue. Had a great ride down the first 100 miles of the Trace. D&T headed on south, and I headed back to Nashville to meet up with Matt Riegel.

Doug and Telisha with their BMW oilheads getting ready to ride.

Matt got in late that night after having dinner with friends in a nearby city (Hi, Cheryl and Eric!). Monday morning we had a great, if hot, day riding the Natchez Trace. The Trace has more subtle charms than the more flamboyant Blue Ridge Parkway. The first 20 miles are quite twisty, and it stays quite amusing down to Tupelo – Elvis’s birthplace. Then the road straightens out, but goes through some beautiful forest areas. The last 20-30 miles were almost like going through a tunnel of trees. It smelled so good and fresh.

On Tuesday we made it to just north of Jackson, Mississippi where we stopped for brunch. Then I had to head home to get  some family things taken care before starting off on my next trip to ride the backcountry in Idaho.

You can’t argue with this kind of weather.

That evening, I had to follow my motto of “Proceed as the way opens” (from William Least Heat Moon’s travel book Riverhorse) when a line of heavy thunderstorms blocked my path ahead and required me to stop 150 miles before I planned to. But from Arkansas/Missouri border, I had an easy trip home without being menaced by any more hail or tornados.

So as you can see, it really isn’t that hard to explain the joys of riding.

It’s time to spend time in your own head away from work. It’s time to enjoy the physicality and mental challenge of riding a motorcycle down a twisty road. It’s enjoying the smells, sights and weather up-close-and-personal. It’s meeting with friends who share your passion.  It’s getting to eat in local restaurants and cafés that aren’t part of a homogenized national chain.  It’s a chance to see this gorgeous country we live in without be separated from it by glass and steel.

I’m so lucky to have the time and resources to go riding in this beautiful country we have. (And a Dear Wife who supports me doing this!)

This is the SPOT satellite track of my trip to the Trace. The map was created using the service Spotwalla.com.

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Chapter 3 – The Changing Face of Media Ownership

Posted on July 7, 2018 by Ralph Hanson

It’s July of 2018 as I’m finishing up copy edits for the 7th edition of Mass Communication: Living in a Media World, and the question of who is going to own what in corporate media is somewhat of an open question.  I will update this post to be current as news about these mergers and acquisitions progress.

Just figuring out who controls what in our corporate media world can be complicated. Consider the following mergers/acquisitions that were under considerations in the spring/summer of 2018:

  • AT&T/Time Warner: Telecommunications giant AT&T, in June 2018, completed its purchase of media giant Time Warner in an $85 million deal. AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson said in a statement, “We’re going to bring a fresh approach to how the media and entertainment industry works for consumers, content creators, distributors and advertisers.” AT&T is anticipating being able to use its mobile and satellite distribution network to deliver programming ranging from HBO’s Game of Thrones to basketball on TNT. While the U.S. Justice Department has been relatively friendly to corporate mergers in recent years, there were arguments made that this merger might hurt consumers—primarily because the Turner cable channels such as CNN, TBS, and TNT are “must watch” channels that AT&T’s rivals need ready access to. There can be no question that this is a giant merger, but supporters of it argue that the two companies are really in different, noncompeting businesses. This is not Time Warner’s first go at the merger merry-go-round. Time Warner was owned by AOL back at the start of the millennium, but since then it has split off into several divisions and is now a much smaller company than it was in 2008. Among those sold-off divisions is the Time Inc. magazine division that gave the company the Time part of its name.
  • 21st Century Fox/Disney (or is it Comcast?): As of June 2018, Disney appeared to be the winner in a bidding war with Comcast to buy much of the entertainment business owned by 21st Century Fox. This would give Disney control of the rest of the Marvel universe by bringing the X-Men into the fold. It would also give Disney notable TV properties including The Simpsons, the FX cable channel, and National Geographic. It will also give Disney (known for focusing on blockbuster films) Fox Searchlight, which is known for small-budget, critically acclaimed films. Disney initially had proposed a $52.4 billion deal in cash and stock that would not include Fox broadcast networks, the Fox News properties. Significantly, it would also give Disney the 30 percent of streaming company Hulu that Fox currently owns. Comcast countered that offer with an all-cash offer of $65 billion. Disney followed that with a $71.3 billion offer of stock and cash. The U.S. Justice Department has indicated that it would allow this transaction, assuming Disney sells off Fox’s twenty-two regional sports networks, many of which wold compete directly with Disney’s ESPN. As of this writing, Comcast has not yet thrown in the towel, but Washington Post sources suggested that Disney was likely to prevail. (The Post also notes that the stock/cash offer from Disney offered substantial tax advantages to the Murdoch family.)
  • CBS/Viacom: CBS was purchased by Viacom back in 1999, but they split back into two corporations in 2005, with CBS handling broadcasting and Viacom handling movies and cable. Management of the two companies had substantial overlap, but they were still clearly separate corporations. In 2018, however, the companies have been dancing back and forth, considering becoming one company once again. The issues surrounding this deal seem to be largely one of how much one company would be willing to pay for the other, and who would be the management after the merger.

As you think about the companies that own our media, remember that they are not static units. They are ever-changing organizations that will work to maximize the current media environment.

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Guest Blog Post – I am the media

Posted on July 2, 2018 by Ralph Hanson

Bonnie Stewart is one of the best journalists and teachers I’ve had the privilege to work with during my 30 years in academics. We worked together at West Virginia University from 2005 to 2008, when I moved to central Nebraska.  She has worked as an investigative reporter for the IndyStar, projects reporter for the Press-Enterprise in Riverside, California, and written a book about the 1968 Farmington Mine Disaster in West Virginia. Most recently she has been the faculty adviser for the Cal State Fullerton‘s Daily Titan.

This is what I wrote and read to my students before the last election minus the last sentence, which I added for this fall semester.

Journalist & Cal State Fullerton Daily Titan adviser Bonnie Stewart

Journalist & Cal State Fullerton Daily Titan adviser Bonnie Stewart

You need to understand something about me.

I am the media — mainstream media.

I am tired of the cheap shots and threats from the truly biased, politically motivated commentators and elected officials. The media work tirelessly to find and tell the truth.

I have spent my career telling stories that had to be told…stories of priests who abuse little boys, stories of nursing homes that allow maggots to crawl on human beings, stories of hundreds and thousands of dogs and cats euthanized because people won’t take care of them, stories of elderly black people removed from their homes via eminent domain because powerful business people wanted their prime city property, stories of teachers who bring food to school to feed their hungry students, stories of the mentally ill who kill themselves because there is no help, stories of 78 men who died because a coal company was greedy, stories of people who pollute our rivers, land and ocean because they can get away with it and save a little money, stories of nurses who steal drugs from handicapped children, stories of men and women who lie, cheat and steal.

I am the media.

Every day I rededicate myself to finding and telling the truth and helping my students do the same. The work is hard. The work is stressful. I am proud of it. I teach my students that every story they do is at that moment the most important story they will ever do, so they must take it seriously.

The media have a huge responsibility. The Constitution gives the media that responsibility. I do not take it lightly nor do I take attacks on my profession lightly. I am the media. I stand with journalists here and around the world as they seek the truth and report it.

-Bonnie Stewart

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Guest Blog Post: I’m in love with a journalist

Posted on June 29, 2018 by Ralph Hanson

The following was originally a Facebook post by my long-time friend, Sharon Joebgen Steffen. Unlike most of the people who guest post here, she works in corporate finance, not journalism or communication.  She is also married to my undergraduate and graduate school friend, Brian Steffen, who is a former journalist and a communication professor at Simpson College in Iowa. Thanks, Sharon, for letting me reprint it here:

Brian and Sharon Steffen

Brian and Sharon Steffen

This is a longer post than I usually write, but I would appreciate it if very much if you would take the time to read it through.

First off, I am biased. I am biased in what I write here, because I am in love with a journalist. He is my sons’ father and my best friend of over 36 years. I am sad. I am sad that some of my friends and many strangers believe that the media is the enemy. And today, that thinking ended in bloodshed.

Since I assume those that believe this have never actually known a journalist, let me tell you about mine and many like him.

Brian Steffen has worked for a small community newspaper, a daily newspaper, and the Associated Press wire service. He has gotten up in the middle of the night to assist the police by taking pictures they request at a murder/suicide and a plane crash in order to aid in their investigations. He has come home to a new wife at 2:00 AM because the city council decided it had a lot to discuss and citizens needed to know what they had planned for their community. He has drove a broken down car to a 747 plane crash in a corn field and stayed for an indeterminate number of days until the cause was sorted out. And he has interviewed more politicians than a person should have to know in a lifetime – Republicans and Democrats – so people know where the candidates stand.

And then, when he was done with that, he went back to school to earn a doctorate so he could teach others. He has taught those that have gone on to win Pulitzers and he has spent weekends sitting in a coffee shop to help veterans learn how to write better.

Why? Because he believes that a free press is as essential to freedom as the very air we breathe is to life. And I have the honor to know many past and present colleagues of his that conduct themselves exactly the same.

Please. You know me. Can you please just think bigger than the slogans and political quips to trust me on this? The media is NOT the enemy. A silenced press crushes a democracy. It is easy when you don’t know a journalist, someone like my husband, to demonize and draw your line based on what you know not of. But you know me. And I know journalists. The media is NOT the enemy.

My husband doesn’t know I am writing this. And he may be unhappy with me or embarrassed. But I know this for sure – he will not be mad. Because he believes in my freedom to write it.

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Guest Blog Post: Babies don’t belong in cages

Posted on June 20, 2018 by Ralph Hanson
Holly Jacobs

Holly Jacobs

Thanks to romance writer and family friend Holly Jacobs for this powerful guest blog post.  I try to stay away from non-media politics here, but the recent events on the US-Mexican border are not about politics, they are about basic human dignity.

I have built a career on family and love. On glee. I have no glee today.

Before I started writing, I worked with breastfeeding moms.

One incident stands out to me. A mother who was going in for open heart surgery and wanted to continue breastfeeding her baby. I worked with her and her doctor and she managed it. This was a mother who would do anything for her child. She was in the middle of a health crisis and her first thought was for her child.

I totally understood, because I would do anything for my kids and family. I would take bullet for them. I would do anything. Anything. I would do anything to see that they were safe and had a better life than I had. I want to give them the world.

So I understand parents who are leaving countries where murder and mayhem reign. They bring their children and make the hundred/thousand mile trek to our country hoping for asylum. Hoping to keep their children safe. Hoping to give their children a better life. And when they get here, we take their children. We put them in cages. We put them in detention centers. We put them in tent cities. We take babies and put them in cages.

Babies in cages.

I haven’t slept for the last couple days. Every time I close my eyes I can see these children. I can hear their cries. And my mother’s heart breaks because a baby is a baby. A child is a child. My human heart breaks. And yet, I know that nothing I feel can begin to approach what these parents feel. What these children feel.

Babies in cages.

I have built a career on family, love and glee.

I do not post political things here. I don’t want to bring politics to my sites. I want to bring glee, optimism and hope.

But I can’t find the glee today.

This isn’t about politics. This is about children. About babies.

This is about our government taking children away from their parents and turning them into political pawns. Using them as hostages. This about them putting babies in cages. This is about them setting up a system with no procedure to reunite these children with their parents.

We have had black stains on our country’s history. Slaves. Taking Native American children from their families to “educate” them. Japanese internment. I was aware of our past, but I thought we as a country had moved beyond those horrific stains. And yet, here we are in 2018 putting babies in cages.

So this post isn’t political. It’s about the kind of country we are. This is about the soul of our country. And I say, we are better than this.

Today, please make calls to your representatives. Not only on a federal level, but on a state level. Tell them that babies don’t belong in cages. Tell them to do their jobs and put a stop to this atrocious policy.

Because babies don’t belong in cages.

Those are words I never thought I’d say.

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Guest Blog Post: Digging in the (White) Trash

Posted on June 12, 2018 by Ralph Hanson

Please welcome Dr. Tasha Dunn, one of my colleagues in the UNK Department of Communication with her guest blog post about her upcoming book, Taking Out the “Trash”: Mediated Representations and Lived Experiences of White Working-Class People, coming soon from Routledge Books.

By Tasha R. Dunn

Dr. Tasha Dunn

Dr. Tasha Dunn

I grew up in a trailer park, recently earned a Ph.D., and make my living digging in the trash. Many people find this hard to believe, especially given the oppressive ways residents of trailer parks—a vast majority of which are white and working-class—are depicted in popular media.

I don’t know about you but I have yet to find a poor or working-class white person portrayed in a positive and empowering manner. Additionally, the fact that I dig in the trash sounds a bit unusual for someone with a Ph.D. but the trash I dig in isn’t literal, it’s symbolic. I dig in “white trash,” which is the most common term used to describe the white working-class population—an irony when considering the current U.S. cultural climate where derogatory labels for a vast majority of minority groups are shunned.

The fact that white working-class people are associated with such a negative label is one of the reasons why I dig in “white trash”—I seek to understand and ultimately challenge it, which I do in my forthcoming book, Taking Out the “Trash”: Mediated Representations and Lived Experiences of White Working-Class People.

I wrote this book because, ever since I can remember, I have felt the weight of media on my shoulders. I remember sitting in front of the TV comparing images of white working class people on screen to my experiences growing up in a white working-class family and neighborhood. I would constantly make comparisons, finding people in films and television shows who both were and were not like me. I embraced our similarities (e.g., I was white, poor, and lived in a trailer), but was bothered by our differences.

I was not stupid. I was not a criminal. I was not excessively sexual. I was not dirty. Yet, because most of the white working-class people on screen were, people assumed I was, too. The “white trash” stereotype had a significant impact on the way I felt others saw me, and how I saw myself. This experience is what led me to write the book which, as the above suggests, analyzes the relationship between mediated representations and lived experiences of the white working-class population.

I begin by analyzing how white working-class people are depicted in media, with a particular focus on reality television because this is the genre where they are featured most often as evidenced by the slew of recent shows such as Here Comes Honey Boo Boo (2011-2014), Swamp People (2010-present), Duck Dynasty (2012-2017), Welcome to Myrtle Manor (2013-2015), Hillbilly Handfishin’ (2011-2012), Appalachian Outlaws (2014-2015), Moonshiners (2011-present), Redneck Island (2012-2016), and more.

Next, I interview and spend time with members of the white working-class to understand how they respond to and deal with the stereotypes and oppressive ideas about this population that are communicated in reality television and other media outlets.

A focus on white working-class people is important, not only because of their increasing presence in media, but also because of their role in fueling the unprecedented rise of Donald Trump—a phenomenon that has made this population a central subject of U.S. cultural discourse.

While the “white trash” stereotype may make it easy to dismiss members of the white working-class population as buffoons—a situation I know all too well—their role in fostering Trump’s success indicates it is time to think in more complex ways about white working-class people than we have in the past, which is exactly what my book intends to do. Rather than relying solely on analyses of mediated portrayals to contribute to understandings of a highly influential population, my book digs deeper in the “white trash” to provide alternative stories that are rarely, if ever, found in popular media; stories that illuminate the multidimensionality of a population that is often portrayed in one-dimensional ways to better understand their role within, and influence upon, U.S. culture.

Come dig in the trash with me by reading my book. While I don’t have the space to fully explain what you will find, what I can say is that you will undoubtedly discover pieces of this population’s story that have been buried and unaccounted for, but are powerful, complex, and important to engage.

 

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Chapter 11 – Burger King’s award-winning Google Home of the Whopper

Posted on June 6, 2018 by Ralph Hanson

Burger King – Google Home of the Whopper (Case Study) from Casal + Peña on Vimeo.

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Ch. 7 – Brian Ibbott’s Podcasting Empire

Posted on May 24, 2018 by Ralph Hanson

Colorado podcaster (and friend of the book) Brian Ibbott has been posting audio shows online since 2004.  He now has a whole host of programs he jokingly refers to as his “podcasting empire.” Here are links to all of them:

Coverville
Once a week show highlighting independent artists and the songs they transform to make their own.
Wednesdays, at 1 p.m. Mountain (watch live at coverville.com/live)

The Morning Stream
Daily news, comedy and variety show, with co-hosts Scott Johnson and Brian ibbott. Taking a look at the daily news, and also featuring weekly guests that discuss tech, movies, and more. Thursdays feature an actual therapist that helps a write-in listener with something they’re struggling with.
Monday through Thursday at 9am Mountain (watch live at twitch.tv/frogpants)

Film Sack
A weekly look at a streaming movie, usually from the bottom of the barrel. Sci-fi, fantasy, horror and thrillers – we pick it apart! Co-hosted by Scott Johnson, Brian Ibbott, Randy Jordan and Brian Dunaway. Podcast uploaded every Monday.

Soundography
Co-hosts Brian Ibbott and Hammond Chamberlain pick an artist or band every week, and then spend the week listening to their entire library of music. The show features highlights for the band/artist’s music, their biography and interesting trivia, and each week, Brian and Hammond create an additional playlist or deeper cuts to complement the band’s greatest hits. Uploaded every Monday at Soundography.com.

The Pokemon GO Podcast
A podcast to complement the popular IOS game. Uploaded every week at pokemongopodcast.com.

And coming this summer:

So You Think You’ve Got The Talent to be America’s Next Top Podcasting Idol!
The world’s first reality podcast competition to find the next great podcast host. Watch for news at http://americasnexttoppodcaster.com

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Ch. 6 – Categorizing news sources

Posted on May 21, 2018 by Ralph Hanson

Patent attorney Vanessa Otero has created a chart that categorizes news outlets by political bias and overall quality.

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Chapter 5 Link – Short Story ‘Cat Person’ from The New Yorker

Posted on May 17, 2018 by Ralph Hanson

The short story ‘Cat Person’ by Kristen Roupenian became the second most read article of the year in The New Yorker for 2017. You can read or listen to it here:

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