Ross the Boss.

Former movie critic for the Tampa Tribune Bob Ross was laid off in 2007, "before it was quite the rage."

If that quote doesn't say something about the man, I honestly don't know what does.

Though I was soon informed that Ross had been a reporter for the St. Pete Times' Bradenton Bureau before taking his position as the Trib's movie critic, I must admit that I didn't expect our class discussion that day to be too rich in substance.

I also have to admit that I was pleasantly surprised.

I felt like Ross kept dropping little pearls of wisdom at random intervals throughout his visit to our class, all of which I rediscovered when I sat down to write this blog.

Ross noted that our society lacks any real broad range of rational opinion at this point and lamented that most people get their "facts" from a single news source or show.

More vividly, in this world of short attention spans, "it's like eating cotton candy all the time--mentally, you've got to have some kind of fiber in your diet."

While this is a recurring theme within our class discussions, Ross also had some plot twists that kept me guessing.

I suppose I always envisioned movie critiques to be strict analyses of all the important aspects in film and how each individual work ranks in regard to those aspects.

Ross maintains that while a good critique should incorporate those things, the work should also carry literary weight.

When he writes his critiques, Ross says that he strives to write a review that people will read from top to bottom without necessarily ever planning to see the film in question.

"A reader needs to get something out of reading a critique independently from the work," Ross said.

A movie review is, therefore, akin to a good column, where you use facts and solid reporting to construct a valid argument; the topic of conversation is the only real difference.

While Thelen said he recalled a time when people either watched all the movies or none of the movies that Ross ruled in favor of in his reviews, Ross said that it didn't matter whether people followed his advice or not, he simply served as a common, consistent point for lively discussion to revolve around.

"It's really a position of false power," Ross said, describing his work as "inflicting his opinion on all those people."

Whatever he wanted to call it that day, anyone in our class can be certain that Ross enjoyed his work as a movie critic for the Trib, so much that he pursued it even after being laid off.

"I loved it so much that I don't really want to do anything else," Ross said.

While his passion for his craft was evident, as was his sorrow for the direction that the film industry is headed.

Ross said that now we are constantly bombarded with movies programmed for the mass culture, and with numbers of newspaper critics dropping dramatically within the last few years, he feels that there are fewer and fewer people to stand up and call these films out for what they are: mindless.

Now, Ross added, if there are people reviewing movies, they're more snarky than analytical.

And with the mindset of today's film industry on "succeeding financially rather than artistically," as Ross would put it, we're seeing fewer low budget and independent films, further dumbing down our current movie culture.

As a final note, Ross told our class that whatever we find ourselves writing in the future, we should be mindful of our readers rather than ourselves--perhaps a change in that direction can dig us out of the cultural abyss we find ourselves in all too often...

...aaand cut.

Mission to Mears

The "retreaded," not retired, Walter Mears offered up some first-hand history of the newspaper and wire service as well as some poignant predictions for the industry's future.

Mears explained to our class that the early wire service, mostly a medium of exchange and creature of the American newspaper industry, soon found itself faced with the dilemma of "adapt or die" with the explosion of television and broadcast news.

These new mediums meant that stories from the wire would not always be the first time that the public would hear about certain news items, introducing an impending competition that it simply couldn't afford to ignore.

So adapt it did, and since then, the Associated Press has been responsible for most of its own reporting, striving to produce copy that extends beyond just the lead and gives something more to readers than what they could already know.

Currently, 50 percent of all stories found in any newspaper are from AP, but that's not the true success of the organization, Mears said.

While our nation's newspapers now struggle for survival due to an inability to properly adapt to the new digital age, AP has realized the digitization of news, created new products in response and priced them accordingly.

This proves to be a double-edged sword for newspapers, as not only did they not figure out a way to make money from the new digital mediums, but as a result, they are forced to pay the steep prices of the wire to fill half of their daily issues.

And now, these print organizations are succumbing to bankruptcy one after another, unable to reconcile incoming revenue against mounds of debt, often originating from these wire fees.

Amidst all this gloom and doom, Mears does have hope for the news industry, but he places the responsibility of its ultimate survival on our generation.

"As long as there are people willing to inform rather than argue, they can survive," Mears said.

He added that to do this, aspiring news journalists must adapt to be more entrepreneurial, use multiple media tools and be prepared not to work for a formal news organization, but rather sell their work out to those that want it.

Overall, Mears is confident that the basic structure of news organizations (in some way) will remain because we will find that we cannot function without them.

"If you lose the umpire, then you wind up with argument instead of information," alluding to our nation's current media diet of entertainers and echo chambers.

But more than that, any apathetic demeanor toward keeping these watchdogs serves as an "invitation to all the modern-day robber barons to keep doing what they've been doing that got us into this mess," Mears said.

In other words, if the umpire isn't looking, the players will steal the bases and the game, until they're called out and held responsible for their actions.

Cheating ruins the game for everyone--as we have seen--and I consider it a duty and a privilege to serve as a future umpire.

Bloggy blog blog. Take 1.

So, I decided that for this first round of "Best of Blogs," I would just jump right in to my freebie topic instead of delving into the world of serious, public affairs blogs, as I could use a laugh after this week.

In fact, the need for laughter quickly became my theme for this assignment, as all of my choice blogs for this round were picked because I generally find them hilarious for one reason or another.

The first blog, entitled "Tard-Blog", is a chronicle of the life of Riti Sped, a former special education teacher, as it applies to her students and the daily occurrences she faces in class. The blog seems to serve as a platform through which she can vent her daily frustrations in a healthy (according to me) way.
Despite numerous typos, a complete disregard for political-correctness and very informal structure, I absolutely love to read this blog. At times, I have sat down to read a post or two of Riti's rants, only to find that I was still reading hours later, until I simply ran out of material.
There is almost no post on this blog that has failed to make me laugh until I cried upon reading--laughing being perhaps my all-time favorite thing to do. And it is Riti's natural grasp of timing and knack for incredibly vivid descriptions that keeps the laughs coming and effectively keeps me reading and even re-reading her blog.

I have been a long-time fan and avid reader of the Dilbert comic strip and it didn't take me long to realize, in his short introductions to his compilations of strips or other office-themed books, that I would read anything Scott Adams ever chose to write. I enjoy his voice and how effortless it seems for him to write such cleverly funny things so much that I would read his grocery lists.
So when he started a blog and I found out, it was certainly a joyous occasion for me.
Adams' blog is equipped with various sidebars, connections to his comics and other interactive additions, unlike the blog of Riti Sped which is quite plain with just links to her archived posts, which makes for an ever more enjoyable online experience where a reader can easily navigate to other related interests.

For my final blog choice, I have recently become a fan of the poetry of Anthony Bourdain, professional Travel Channel "foodie" and host of the show "No Reservations." While I fawn over Bourdain's airy gift for verse while he does his voice-overs on the show, I always understood that it may be the result of the time he's allotted to carefully construct what he wants his audience to hear. But his blog revealed that his voice and grace for language is all his own and it's simply how he thinks, speaks and writes naturally. Even when he writes something I disagree with or I find a comment of his unnecessarily harsh, I still loved reading it because of his way with words and ability to turn a phrase.

I highly recommend you click on those links if you have a healthy sense of humor, a little time and an appreciation for the english language at its finest. Enjoy.

Finally Fennelly

I felt as though I had been struck by a crisp, clean breeze of fresh air when the first topic on the pecking order with Tampa Tribune sports columnist Martin Fennelly was not "What makes a good column?" but was, instead, death.

We finally had a real-life topic with a real guy--not some super-professional who's, at times, way too guarded or some over-zealous caricature of a human being, but a happy medium.

We finally had Fennelly.

He looked like a sports coach--maybe football or basketball--complete with a zip-up jersey sweater and press pass dangling around his neck which, whether due to my imagination or not, I mistook for a whistle at first glance.

While I don't really find joy in following sports, more often than not I would rather be playing than simply talking about them, I found common ground with Fennelly in his interest in people.

He spoke of the many times he covered the deaths of people, some of which he had been covering in life up until some tragic event. He was adamant that these stories aren't "obits," but "salutes" instead, where he strives to tell "a morsel about a person that lets readers connect with someone else" and just "bring it home for everyone." For Fennelly, details are everything.

Fennelly asked us to consider how many times any one person would be written about in a newspaper and revealed that he just tries "to get it right" when he's faced with the task.

Aside from what he actually said to our class, the fact that he was constantly trying to engage every person in the room at one point or another was a tribute to how vital Fennelly finds the human aspect to not only his work, but life in general.

At one point he even craned his neck as he leaned back in his seat just to be able to peek around a computer and make eye contact with those on my side of the room.

One of the best parts about Fennelly is that he isn't bound to these nostalgic "salutes" but is also a quick-witted, genuinely funny guy to listen to. After posing the question of how his own "salute" might be written, his reply was "a sports journalist also died in the crash," as a side bar or over-liner to the death of some famous athlete who found himself on the same plane.

Fennelly also finds humor in "taking people to task" when he feels they deserve it.

"If I wanna call someone an idiot, I don't just say he's an idiot--I'd rather make someone look like an idiot."

But what is most appealing about Fennelly, to me at least, is how you know he cares so deeply about what he does and the people he covers.

At one point, while speaking about a young athlete's death, whose story and family he had come to know quite well from covering her, his voice cracked as he strained to hide the tears that were welling up in his eyes, until he finally came right out and said how much her story affected him.

You could truly feel his compassion.

And then, as quickly as he had come undone, Fennelly recovered and moved on.

It was as if he was going through the stages of grief right before our eyes, moving swiftly from denial to acceptance, like a dance he's known the steps to for years...