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Being acquainted with the night
When I was a kid, I used to wake up in the still of the night and wonder what it was going on in the dark half of the day.
It was silent and still and the only light on a clear night came from the moon. Once a night, after midnight, there would be the rattle of the train where you could hear up and down the town. There were factories in my blue-color hometown but I wasn’t close enough to hear the machinery.
Once or twice a week, I slept in the back seat of our Plymouth Horizon while my Dad drove into the city to pick up Mom from her retail job so she didn’t have to take the bus home after dark. People got out of work at 5, like my Dad, or 8 like my Mom. And my Dad would carry me from the car to the house so I would stay asleep, and I would wake up and it was daylight.
But some nights, I would wake up and wonder what the night was like.
Most nights I would fall asleep to the low tones of my Radio Shack AM handheld. In the summer, it was a Red Sox game out of WTIC, north and east of me in Hartford. The rest of the year it was WCBS 880, the all-news station in nearby New York City.
Newsradio 880 was an education in itself in the ‘70s and ‘80s. That old TV show proclaimed there were 8 million stories in the naked city, and they came one by one from my radio: the Son of Sam murders and the blackout in 1977, the Blizzard of ‘78, John Lenin’s murder, the Bernard Goetz subway shootings. A lot was going on in the Naked City, and I heard it all on WCBS.
All news, all the time.
There was another all-news station in New York, WINS. I stuck with WCBS, for it had less structure and more art and shoe-leather reporting. WINS had the headlines. WCBS gave you the beating heart of the city, and personalities you grew to know by listening.
I credit my parents, who were both journalists, for my eventual career. You could say I grew up in newspapers: One of my earliest memories is being in the city room of my father’s paper. And I would end up working with three editors on my first job who had worked with my Dad 20 years before and knew me as a kid.
Yet WCBS played a big role, too. It fed one of my life’s obsessions, a thirst for breaking news and the rhythm of story. And it was a constant reminder of just what was out there in the middle of the night: There was always an announcer or two giving the news and a reporter who was working nightside, traveling around the city to breaking news stories.
Little did I know in the ‘70s and early ‘80s that I would be doing that kind of work, too. Not in New York City — though I was a journalist in New York City for a decade it wasn’t for crime and general mayhem — but not too far away, in inner-city and suburban Connecticut. I learned a lot, going to midnight and early morning fires and shootings and other breaking news. Whatever fear — and fascination — with the dark went away pretty quickly.
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A turn in the road
Funny how seemingly normal days can change your life. Today is the anniversary of one of those days. It was a Monday then, too. Doesn’t mean anything to anyone other than me, but I knew immediately after and I know now, how crucial.
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‘You will remember this day as long as you live’
Photo by Thomas Svensson on Pexels.com The words still ring in my head, added to the crushing shock of the day itself, 22 years ago:
“Sept. 11, 2001. You will remember this day as long as you live.”
That’s what Dan Rather said in the opening of the CBS Evening News as the daylight began to ebb on a changed Manhattan skyline.
He was right. I’ve never forgotten Sept. 11. I’ve never been able to. I find it hard to believe that anyone who lived in the New York metro area, as I did on that day, can. That’s millions upon millions of people who didn’t experience the day on TV, as the rest of the country and the world, did. It was terrifyingly real and in front of them.
Having grown up around the New York area, and visiting Manhattan often as a kid and young adult, long before I began to work there, the destruction of the World Trade Center shook me to my core. There was the attack as terrorism, which was shocking enough. There was all the people we lost, and I’ve yet to meet anyone in New York who didn’t have a one- or two-degree of separation to one or more of the people who were lost. If you think New York City is a big, impersonal city, I’m here to tell you that it’s not.
That’s another reason why it hurt so much. New York City, as large as it is, has connective tissue that binds everyone who lives there, works there, was born and raised there.
It threw me too because I had never known New York City without the World Trade Center. It rose up out of the skyline in the same years I did. Coming into Manhattan with my parents, the Twin Towers were an imposing and reassuring presence, one that I always used, even as an adult, as a true north to orient myself on the streets of Manhattan. I’m not the only one who thought that.
I covered the attacks and their aftermath for my New York newspaper, and as I moved on, I also wrote about it on the anniversaries for years afterward. One of the stories I wrote, on the five-year anniversary of the attacks, delved into how TV covered the initial hours of the attack as it unfolded. You can read it several places, not just in The Hollywood Reporter I wrote it for, but also on the Today show website.
The story of that piece will have to wait for another day. But I spent a long time securing interviews and collecting and viewing the tapes of the morning shows and cable news for the hour before 8:48 a.m., when American Flight 11 crashed into the North Tower. Months. I knew after the fourth anniversary that I would write something like this for the fifth, in my role as New York-based TV reporter for The Hollywood Reporter.
I wrote a lot about the attacks and their aftermath, first contributing to the coverage for the newspaper I worked for in New York and then my next several journalism jobs. I moved to Pittsburgh and covered the 10th anniversary of the crash of United 93, which came down not too far from where I live.
I haven’t written about it much since, but mostly because I haven’t had the occasion in my job. But it remains top of my mind and the biggest story I’ve ever covered, one that hit home for me in many ways. Sept. 11 is a day that I will remember as long as I breathe.
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Friday night lights
When in western Pennsylvania …
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AI editing, part II
Photo by Suzy Hazelwood on Pexels.com I work with editors every day. I have ever since I started my career as a journalist. But the past two days, I’ve been testing out a generative AI on this blog. It’s been … interesting.
Do you write with an “ideal reader” in mind? I do. Just about everything I write, it’s with that very special reader in mind. That’s a whole other story.
And I can tell you I don’t write to please editors, although I think I’ve been able to internalize some of the advice of my best editors and coaches. I appreciate being edited and there’s very little beyond writing itself than I like better than talking about story and narrative. I’ve done that as a writer. I’ve done that as an editor. I like to think I’m pretty good at both, even though my job has exclusively been as a writer for the past decade or so.
I’ve run two blog posts past the site’s AI editor. I wasn’t impressed with the first time, which I wrote about yesterday. Then I put that post through the AI editor. I don’t think it’s useful at the moment. Maybe some day it will.
Here’s what the AI responded within a few seconds:
The blog post discusses the author’s experience with AI editing and the potential for generative AI to transform the editing process. The post also touches upon the author’s relationship with editors throughout their journalism career. Here is some feedback on the content:
- The content is engaging and highlights the author’s personal perspective on AI editing and their appreciation for human editors.
- The inclusion of personal anecdotes adds a personal touch to the post.
Overall, the content effectively conveys the author’s thoughts on AI editing, but here are a few suggestions to enhance it.
The post goes on to provide some suggestions on the original post, about sriracha, that I included in yesterday’s post. I don’t think the AI editor got the reason why I repeated the content. That’s OK. I had a human editor tell me today that she didn’t understand one of my sentences in a 2,500-word piece.
You know what? She was right.
After the AI made a few suggestions, it provided something else, which amplified what I had written in yesterday’s post:
While these suggestions could improve the content, it is important to remember that blog posts sometimes have a quick and informal nature. Therefore, incorporating these suggestions will depend on the structure and purpose of the post.
My point exactly.
But I did enjoy hearing that the content was “engaging” and “effectively conveys the author’s thoughts on AI editing.”
Thanks, AI Editor!
Has anyone else experimented with the AI editing?
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Meet your AI editor
Photo by Alex Knight on Pexels.com We’ve been worried as journalists and writers what artificial intelligence was going to do our jobs that we might be missing another way AI could alter our profession.Meet the AI editor.
I did as I went to post on my blog. Somewhere along the way, WordPress began offering an AI Assistant. I don’t remember seeing it on the iPhone app, where I do a lot of my writing and posting. But it was there as I went through the steps to post on Tuesday afternoon.
AI assistant? Sure, I’ll give it a try.
It’s been a while since I hit up ChatGPT, both because I’m wary and because I would rather spend the time writing instead of playing with the latest shiny metal object. A few months ago, as I chronicled here, I had ChatGPT help me write SEO headlines. The results were, uh, mixed.I hadn’t thought as much about AI editors as I had about the existential threat posed by AI writers. I’ve already seen algorithms write quarterly earnings and stock stories just as well and more quicker than the average financial journalist like myself. I’ve even come to terms with that happening much more often in the future, which will theoretically free me to do higher-functioning and better journalism.
But it was this week where I realized I had missed how generative AI could transform editing. Instead of asking AI to write like Hemingway or Garcia Marquez, what about asking it to edit like Ben Bradlee or Maxwell Perkins? Now that would be something.
I should say right here that I’ve worked with editors for almost my entire life, and been one for a decade or so myself. My first editor was my mother, a journalist and English teacher, who would take a red pen to my essays and term papers before I submitted them until somewhere in high school I stopped letting her read them. (A fourth-grader should not know proofreading symbols, as I did.) My journalist father tutored me on the skills of being a reporter, but only rarely edited my work.
Get into journalism, as I did as at 18 years old, and you realize quickly the road to newspapering goes through editors. They hire you, they can fire you, and they are your first readers. Some are good and some are great. A handful, in my experience, have been horrible. I’ve been fortunate enough to work with several great journalists, all the way through my career. There’s only been one or two that I haven’t enjoyed.
Some journalists are fine with editors. Others chafe through every sentence and paragraph. I’ve tended toward being the former, especially when I was young and had lots to learn. I went in with my eyes open and a willing heart in my first two professional jobs, one as a copy editor and the other as a reporter. I had technical skills already, thanks to a few journalism courses in college and time on the my college newspaper, the Connecticut Daily Campus. But these men and women tutored me in the finer points of journalism, how to exercise news judgment, and how to be a journalist.
(I’ve thanked some of them but not others. To those editors and reporters, living and dead, who helped shape me: Thank you. I wouldn’t have gotten as far as I did in this business — and I got pretty far — without your guidance.)
I also have tried not to calcify as the decades passed in a career that is just as fun now as it was when I started. What do they call it? Beginner’s mind. While I know more than I ever did, I’ve tried to always make sure that I learn something every day, practice and improve on my craft, and be open to the experiences. (Most days, I succeed.)Can AI be a good editor? Probably not now. We’ve had spell checkers for a long time, and they’ve saved me plenty of times. There are grammar checkers, both in software and in the cloud, which I haven’t used as much. I’m not too impressed from what I’ve seen. And I’ve avoided letting generative AI take a look at 99% of my writing, because I am skeptical of what it will provide. But I was willing to give it a try.
Here’s what I wrote:
What happened to sriracha?
Wouldn’t you know that when I was getting low on my supply, that rooster-adorned bottle in my fridge, is when the shelves ran dry.
Again. There was a shortage in 2020 due to the pandemic. Now the shortage is back.
I’m not a sriracha addict. But I’ve enjoyed it ever since I saw it a Minnesota noodle bar and gave it a try, back in 2008. I took a mental note to try to find it when I got back to Queens, and I’ve rarely been without it ever since. I even had enough during the pandemic, because in my case, a little sriracha goes a long way.
It wasn’t until I needed it that I found out there was no sriracha to be found, at least not at a reasonable price. The Huy Fong brand, with its distinctive rooster smack dab in the middle of the bottle, runs about $20 where it had been under $5 last year. I like my sriracha, but not that much.
So when I was a Trader Joe’s today, I passed by its version. And dropped it into my cart. What really could be the difference between Huy Fong’s and any others?
Turns out, a lot. I ended up having a veggie dog or two for lunch, dolloping my sriracha along with the mustard. It wasn’t bad. It wasn’t Huy Fong, either. That’s a disappointment for my taste buds. But it’s also very much a first-world problem.I ran it through the WordPress AI assistant. I was surprised what it came up with.
The post talks about the recent shortage of sriracha and the author’s disappointment in not being able to find their preferred brand. Here are some actions to improve the content:
Include more information about the reasons behind the shortage in 2020 and the current shortage.
Add details about the popularity of sriracha and its impact on consumers.
Provide alternative brands or options to satisfy the craving for sriracha.
Share personal experiences or anecdotes related to sriracha to make the content more engaging.
Consider including some suggestions on how to enjoy sriracha in different recipes or dishes. Remember to source and link relevant articles or resources to support the information provided
Wow, AI, that stings.
Well, not really. I wrote the post in about 5 minutes, first draft and done. That’s what some blog posts are, unlike this one, where it’s taken me the better part of a half hour to draft and redraft and edit. A lot of these suggestions I wouldn’t take just because of the structure of the blog post. I don’t need to explain why the shortage happened; I linked to two stories, without AI telling me. (That’s one of my favorite things to do in writing for the web, linking.) Nor is it my place to talk about sriracha’s impact on consumers, nor alternatives for your Huy Fong fix while the supplies are short. Nor are you going to get recipes from me.
OK, No. 4 does hurt a bit: “Share personal experiences or anecdotes related to sriracha to make the content more engaging.
That’s what I did. So AI either glossed over the anecdote or worse, didn’t think it was engaging enough.I can’t see, at the moment, how AI is going to replace the workaday editor. There are too few of them now, sadly. But I for one enjoy the interplay between writer and editor, the gut feelings and first-reader views they take, the inspiration or consternation I’ve gotten from the best editors. I think AI is a long way from that.
Don’t you?
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Sriracha blues
Photo by Leonardo Jarro on Pexels.com What happened to sriracha?
Wouldn’t you know that when I was getting low on my supply, that rooster-adorned bottle in my fridge, is when the shelves ran dry.
Again. There was a shortage in 2020 due to the pandemic. Now the shortage is back.I’m not a sriracha addict. But I’ve enjoyed it ever since I saw it a Minnesota noodle bar and gave it a try, back in 2008. I took a mental note to try to find it when I got back to Queens, and I’ve rarely been without it ever since. I even had enough during the pandemic, because in my case, a little sriracha goes a long way.
It wasn’t until I needed it that I found out there was no sriracha to be found, at least not at a reasonable price. The Huy Fong brand, with its distinctive rooster smack dab in the middle of the bottle, runs about $20 where it had been under $5 last year. I like my sriracha, but not that much.
So when I was a Trader Joe’s today, I passed by its version on the shelf. And dropped it into my cart. What really could be the difference between Huy Fong’s and any others?Turns out, a lot.
I ended up having a veggie dog or two for lunch, dolloping my sriracha along with the mustard. It wasn’t bad. It wasn’t Huy Fong, either. That’s a disappointment for my taste buds. But it’s also very much a first-world problem. I can wait until Huy Fong Foods gets itself back to normal.
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RIP, Marilyn Lovell
Been a long weekend of loss, these first few days of September 2023. Jimmy Buffett. Bill Richardson. Steve Harwell. And Marilyn Lovell, a formidable and gracious leader among the astronauts’ wives in the 1960s and early 1970s.
I met Richardson and Buffett, through work, years ago. But Lowell, whose husband was Apollo 13 commander Jim Lovell, ought to be remembered more. I was glad The New York Times gave her a great obit.
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Farewell, Super Blue Moon
Photo by Bruno Scramgnon on Pexels.com Blue moon, I saw you standing there. And, maybe, one last time.
I’ve been enjoying the super blue moon above me the last few nights, even if last night, the penultimate, was mostly cloudy. Two nights ago, the moon shined bright and big, and it was wonderful. Tonight, as I write this, it’s getting dark and I’ll find out if I get to see it one last time, this super blue moon.
I better. I’m reading that it won’t be around again until 2037. I can’t guarantee I’m going to be around in 14 years. Every day is a gift, as I am reminded. So is every night.
I love looking at the stars, ever since I was a kid and I would wake up and look out my bedroom window after my parents were asleep.
Back then, as I understand it, the sky was much brighter than today. I lived in the Connecticut suburbs, not too far away from New York City, but I could see the stars and it felt like it got plenty dark at night. The moon was the first thing at night I remember seeing and then, in the early 1970s, it didn’t seem so far away. After all, 12 Americans had walked on the moon in my short six years of life and it had only been a few months since the last mission, Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmidt, left in Apollo 17.
How did we know it would be so long before we went back?
That moon, it was yellow. I’ve been in wonder of it ever since. -
Umm, no
I know it’s Pumpkin Spice season. I only know a handful of people who do PSLs, but I hear it’s quite a vocal group. That’s fine, although I like my lattes straight up, no flavor.
But pumpkin-spice creep is A Thing, too.
Sorry, Tony. Can’t do Pumpkin Spice Frosted Flakes. Even if you are smiling.
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About Me
Journalist and writer. Loves writing, storytelling, books, typewriters. Always trying to find my line. Oh, and here’s where I am now.
Nows and Forevers 
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