I still love New York City street fairs, and I still find these maps very handy for getting my weekly dose, so I wanted to make one for 2012.

There’s a lot of work involved in collating the dates and locations from several web sites, and there’s no straightforward way around that. But I was hoping to at least automate the process of mapping that data. I looked around at several different systems for doing this and concluded that Google Fusion Tables would be the best tool. It comes in two tiers: simple UI platform and more a complex and powerful API platform. Unfortunately, I concluded that a) automating this project from table to map would require using the API and b) the API is somewhat beyond my humble coding skills.

So instead I took my very wise partner’s advice and just updated last year’s map, line by line. It proved to be easier than I had feared, and here’s the result.

Full Google My Map with event listings in chronological order

As with last year’s map, this includes every fair in Manhattan (only) that I could discover, including those from the three main producers plus Taste of Tribeca, Gay Pride, the BBQ Block Party, and more. It’s a collaborative map, so if you know of other festivals or want to add street fairs from other boroughs, be my guest.

All the fairs are color coded by month. Click through the link beneath the map to visit the My Map page, where a sidebar shows all the fairs in chronological order. The map is useful not only to find NYC street fairs, but also to avoid the crowds and traffic–which is what my partner mostly uses it for.

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Time now for another resource on pronunciation, the news announcer’s abiding obsession.

For this one, you have to set your wayback machine to 1857, the publication date of Elias Longley’s Pronouncing Vocabulary of Geographical and Personal Names, available (in the public domain) through Google Books. As the name suggests, this 205 page work contains extensive lists of pronunciations for place names, then personal names, then a shorter catalog of scriptural names. Because of its long-ago publication date, the book–especially the personal names part–is useful mainly for names of note at or prior to the mid-nineteenth century. It also uses an obsolete typographic phonography system (lots of funny Greek-looking characters) that is a little hard to decipher at first, but that is well-explained in the introduction and in a summary table immediately following.

For all its limitations, I find Longley’s Pronouncing Vocabulary a handy resource for names and places that often appear without pronunciations in dictionaries and encyclopedias, or without authority in many of the online sources I’ll be mentioning in future entries.

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One of Google’s many boons to foreign reporting has been its Google Translate service. There are several ways to access it. Google searches, for example, include a “Translate” link for any website that’s detected as being in a foreign language. And if you use Google Toolbar in your browser, it will put a ‘Translate’ control bar at the top of any page you visit that’s detected as being in a foreign language (including some that aren’t really foreign).

If neither of those cases apply to you, you can just go to the Google Translate page and type the URL of the foreign language website into the text box. Pick the source language (or let Google figure it out automagically) and your language, and POW, you have what’s usually a pretty good machine translation of the material. You can also type free-form text into the box (‘Where is the bathroom?’) and Google will translate that (‘Waar is de badkamer?’), adding a handy ‘Listen’ button so you can hear the pronunciation.

All this convenience and power comes with one big red-flag caution: It’s still a machine translation, which means it works well on simple, straightforward phrases, but is terrible at translating slang, idiom, and cultural context.

In the journalistic context, that means you can use Google Translate (or other machine translators) to get the gist of a foreign-language article and decide whether to pursue it further. But if you want to use any facts or quotes, machine translation isn’t good enough. For that, you’ll still (as of this writing) need to find a real, live fluent speaker of the language to translate it for you.

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How numbers are written out is one of the quickest ways to determine at a glance whether copy is intended for print/online or for broadcast. Numbers in broadcast scripts, in most cases, look nothing like those you’re used to reading on the page/screen, for the simple reason that the broadcast writer tries to relieve the news announcer of as much mental effort as possible, so she can concentrate on diction and performance. In short, you want to remove all the speed bumps that inhibit the anchor’s comprehension.

Also, spelling out numbers helps to get a more accurate time calculation from computerized word- or character-counting systems.

There are a few differences of opinion among broadcasters, but here’s my handy guide to spelling out numbers. They apply only to American-style broadcast writing.

In a nutshell, you are trying to transcribe the way the figure would be spoken aloud–within these parameters.

• Spell out ‘one’ through ‘twenty.’
• Use digits from ’21′ through ’999,’ except…
• Spell out round numbers from ‘twenty’ through ‘ninety.’
• Use the words ‘thousand,’ ‘million,’ ‘billion,’ etc. where they would be spoken: “four-million;” “21-thousand-450.”
• For a conversational style–between 1,100 and 10,000–use the word ‘hundred’ where it would be spoken, especially for round numbers: “45-hundred;” “62-hundred-and-50.”
• Don’t use a dollar sign ($), cent sign (¢), or percent sign (%). Spell them out as they would be spoken: “six-million dollars;” “87 cents;” “sixty-percent.”
• Don’t use a decimal point (.). Spell it out as it would be spoken: “62-point-five million.”
• None of the above applies to years. Write them with Arabic numerals, as usual.
• For ordinals (“first,” “53rd”) all the same rules apply, except of course you use the ordinal abbreviations (“st,” “nd,” “rd,” “th”) where they mix with Arabic numerals.

I’ll discuss the question of precision (i.e. how accurately to represent a lengthy number) in a future post.

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Thousands, no, tens of thousands of words have been written about how to write a news lede (or lead, or leed). Whole forests have been felled. So rather than recap a lot of that same information, let me suggest you get the basics by visiting some of the sites linked to in the lede sentence of this post, and instead I will just offer a few supplemental thoughts of my own.

• If you haven’t already, go read my previous post on the use of tense in ledes.
• Likewise, my post on names in ledes.
• Now, in addition: A lede should always feature the ‘grabbiest’ element of the story. Usually, that means featuring the conflict (if any) expressed or implied in the narrative. Other times, it means featuring the ‘twist’ element, or the celebrity name, or some other ‘sexy’ aspect.
• Ledes, more so than any other part of a broadcast news script, must be in the active voice, if at all possible. (This differs a bit from print, where the important thing is to have the newsmaker as the subject of the sentence, which sometimes forces you into the passive voice.)
• Ledes should orient the audience, not disorient it. This means different things depending on the audience. In the case of OutQ News, we run a service heard nationwide, so every lede must locate the story in a state or major city. For a local broadcast news operation that does breaking news around the clock, it might instead mean always including a reference to the time the news event occurred.
• For spot news, such as we do here, only a straight lede is suitable. Creative-type ledes, such as the delayed lede which pushes the ‘nut’ (i.e. point) of the story down several paragraphs, are a no-go.

I’ll include more thoughts on ledes in future entries on related topics–or just as ideas come to me. That’s the great thing about a blog.

Questions? Feel free to add a comment below or .

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I’ve never had to actually file a Freedom of Information request. But I’ve come close enough in the past that I had to research how to do it. Behold, the Federal Open Government Guide, published by the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. It includes a very detailed but easy-to-read guide on what FOIA is, how it works, and how to formulate and file a request. To make it truly easy as pie (or PopTarts™), you’ll find on this page a link to a tick-the-boxes automated request letter generator for federal and state FOIA requests.

If I ever do need to file a FOIA request, this is where I’m starting.

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We’ve already taken some time to talk about tense (especially as it relates to the lede), but I wanted to spend an additional minute on the special case of the verb “to say.”

In general, the preferred tense for verbs of expression (say, claim, note, etc.) in broadcast newswriting is the straight present.

20-year-old Tim Spriggs says, “We need a gay-straight alliance at St. John’s for the same reason that there are organizations for other minorities.”

This works most of the time, because most often we’re describing a recent statement that reflects the speaker’s current views (as above), or the current state of affairs.

But it doesn’t always work. Sometimes a quote or paraphrase is part of a narrative that you’ve already explicitly set in the past, using the past tense. In that case, it breaks the narrative thread for you to suddenly switch into the present tense for a quote or paraphrase.

In the actual OutQ News story from which the quote above was drawn, the two preceding sentences were this:

Some twenty students sat on the St. John’s University Great Lawn making rainbow gay rights posters. They told the New York Daily News they’ve been pushing for a campus GSA for years.

We’ve already set up an event from the preceding Friday, and any quotes or paraphrases emerge from within that narrative. Thus, we’re sort of stuck with putting everything (everything within the narrative, that is) in the past tense.

But further down in the same story, we escape the little narrative about the protest on the lawn to get a quote from a university spokesman. He spoke recently, and what he said reflects the school’s current view.

But a university spokesman says St. John’s has gone as far as it can to support gay students, considering its Catholic mission and values.

So in a nutshell: Use the present (says, notes, claims) unless they’re part of a story you’ve set in the past. In that case, stick with the tense of that story.

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Because it actually has two quite different meanings, one of them loaded, the phrase ‘so-called’ is particularly tricky to use in news copy, where we’re supposed to be neutral.

Most people know without thinking about it that ‘so-called’ has two meanings. Both are a spoken way to signal quotation marks. But the first signals jargon the listener may not be familiar with, or sometimes an imposed nickname, as in this example.

Republican Stacey Campfield is the sponsor of the so-called “Don’t Say Gay” bill–it’s the same measure he unsuccessfully pushed for six years as a member of the state House.

The second meaning is the one that jumps to mind whenever the phrase is used without context.

The so-called ‘healing centers’ are really nothing more than a con game, preying on the desperate.

Of course, it’s this usage–loaded with sarcasm–that should be avoided in straight news copy.

But because it’s the same phrase, and the context doesn’t always make it crystal clear which meaning is intended (see my first example), it’s generally better to avoid its use altogether. Luckily, there are a few good alternatives for the neutral, jargon-introducing version.

Republican Stacey Campfield is the sponsor of what some are calling the “Don’t Say Gay” bill–it’s the same measure he unsuccessfully pushed for six years as a member of the state House.

Other alternatives that can be used (depending on the context) include “…what’s known as…” and “self-described.”

Add a comment if you think of any others.

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One thing we do fairly often at Sirius XM OutQ News is watch (and record) floor video from the U.S. House of Representatives. Because that’s being done while we write, edit, take bathroom breaks, etc., it often happens that we’ll miss some detail. Even if you’re watching closely, action moves so quickly in the House that it’s common for something to fly by too fast to note.

This page on the U.S. House website is the handy fix for that. It includes one week’s worth of every single official action of the House (votes, introductions of bills and amendments, referrals to committee, and so on), logged in near-real time. It can be a real life-saver if you need to know the yeas and nays on some bill or amendment, including the roll call.

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If you write enough crime stories, you’ll eventually encounter a variety of different references to a kind of plea that stands in the no-man’s-land between guilty and not guilty (note: there is no such thing as a plea of “innocent”).

They go by various names: “no contest,” “nolo contendere,” and the “Alford Plea.” The first and second in this list mean exactly the same thing (nolo contendere is legal Latin). There are some minor technical differences between the first and last, but they are basically the same thing.

In a nutshell, these pleas do not admit guilt, but do admit that the state has enough evidence to convict. Defendants generally accept such a plea as part of a plea bargain, admitting to a lesser charge that will let them avoid the harsher punishment of the original charge.

No contest and Alford pleas differ from ordinary guilty pleas in that they are thought to offer some protection from a civil suit arising out of the crime.

In newswriting, I almost always go with “no contest,” which doesn’t involve Latin or the name of some guy nobody’s ever heard of. However, there are plenty of newsrooms where “Alford plea” is the preferred usage, so it may just be a regional thing.

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A Mozzarepa in the wild

In my previous entry explaining my love affair with New York City street fairs, I somehow forgot to mention the Mozzarepa.

This distinctly New York innovation (someone please correct me if I’m wrong) is basically a variation on the popular Latin American staple, the arepa. It’s a round slice of pizza-type melty mozzarella cheese between two sweet cornmeal pancakes. A salty-sweet treat that can’t be beat.

I’ve never seen them anywhere but New York street fairs, and they’re yet another reason I look forward to my near-weekly excursion.

Several street vendors do knock-offs, but they’re often left on the griddle until they singe, or the cheese is the flavorless kind you get in cheap pizzas, or the sweet cornmeal isn’t sweet at all. In my opinion, the original is the best. And according to the manufacturer’s website, you can now order a case of 12 online for 27 bucks. I’d be tempted if’n I didn’t live right in the heart of Mozzarepaville already.

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I now unveil one of my all-time favorite sites. It’s something I only use occasionally in my current deadline news job. But I used to use it all the time when I made historical documentaries. And you could get lost for hours just playing with numbers on the site.

So with that buildup, what is it?

Measuring Worth is the latest incarnation of an online calculator run by two University of Illinois economics professors. The site lets you put in a currency amount from any year back to 1774, and convert that to the value in any other year. Most commonly, you’d use it to figure out, for example, what $30 in 1910 is worth today. The answer, of course, isn’t as simple as $710. That’s just the figure calculated using the Consumer Price Index. But the authors’ basic calculator gives you five other measures (GDP deflator, comparative payment for unskilled labor, etc.) which generate a figure as high as $13,200 (for relative share of GDP). It can also handle various foreign currencies and various other ways of calculating relative value.

So, unfortunately, while Measuring Worth a great tool, there’s a learning curve (handy essays included) to figuring out what all the numbers mean and which is appropriate for your purpose. But if you need to calculate the historical Value of a Dollar (the site’s original name), this is the tool for the job.

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Editing stories from wire services and other outside sources often means ‘translating’ the item from the audience it was written for (Cleveland general audience, members of the military, Italians, etc.) to our particular niche audience, the LGBT community.

I’ve already mentioned a few cases where I had to learn about other systems of government, or phraseology, or currency. Another translation issue that frequently crops up writing ledes is ‘to proper noun, or not to proper noun.’

In general, you should only include the name of someone or something in the lede if it is a household name to your audience. Otherwise, it’s usually best to substitute some kind of generic descriptor and come back to the proper name in the second or third sentence.

That means, for example, that you can always use “President Obama” in the lede without further ado. But you probably wouldn’t want to use “the Human Rights Campaign” in your lede. In that case, you’d say “A gay rights group is lobbying the White House blah blah blah” in the lede, and use the group’s name in the second sentence.

I say you wouldn’t put HRC’s name in your lede. But we probably would, because virtually everyone in our LGBT audience has heard of it. On the other hand, when we’re adapting a story from the local paper in Columbia, South Carolina and it puts “State Rep. Todd Rutherford” in its lede, we’d probably ‘translate’ that by saying “a South Carolina lawmaker” in our lede, and using his proper name further down.

In some cases, a generic descriptor is too generic to put in the lede. Consider this wire service lede:

(Boston, MA) — Members of the Governor’s Council are criticizing Governor Deval Patrick’s latest selection for the Supreme Judicial Court.

Fine for a Massachusetts audience, which hears about the ‘Governor’s Council’ all the time. The Council is an elected advisory body–but that seemed too vague to put in the lede. On the other hand, ‘Massachusetts Governor’s Council’ isn’t so big a puzzler that it’s what we call a ‘show-stopper’ (causing the audience to loose the thread of the story), so I put that in the lede, and used ‘elected advisory board’ as the subject of the second sentence.

Then there’s the middle ground: a name that’s kinda-sorta familiar to your audience, is to use the name in the lede, but add a descriptor before it. So: not just “Silvio Berlusconi” as the AFP dispatch from Rome might have it, but “Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.” Likewise, “California Governor Jerry Brown,” “New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg,” “Apple C-E-O Steve Jobs,” and so on.

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The Annual 9th Ave International Food Festival

Not every New Yorker enjoys our street fairs. In fact, a lot of us hate them. Every season, the New York City papers are filled with stories about what a nuisance they are. With two or three running simultaneously each weekend day during the summer, the street fairs snarl traffic and displace parking spaces. And, it’s said, they’re all the same, with the same vendors pushing the same merchandise.

City government here has recently responded to citizen complaints with a plan to reduce the number and operating hours of the fairs. Activist groups are also pushing for greater variety among and within the fairs.

But, honestly, I couldn’t care less. I love New York City’s street fairs just the way they are (although I wouldn’t complain if there were more and varied local vendors). I pick up a new wallet, new socks, a new messenger bag each year. I can’t wait each week or so to enjoy a big plastic cup full of fresh-cut watermelon spears. And the people-watching simply can’t be beat.

In fact, I love them so much that in 2009 and again this year I created a custom Google Map that shows the dates and location of every street fair in Manhattan from April through November. If you love street fairs like me, or if you hate them and want to avoid them like herpes, check it out.

So far as I’ve been able to determine, this is the most complete listing available online, since it draws information not only from the websites of the three main street fair producers, but also includes several one-off events I happen to know about, like the Barbecue Block Party, Gay Pride, and the Ninth Avenue Food Festival, among others.

Here’s all the fairs, color-coded by month. Click the link below the map to jump to the full Google My Map, which includes a sidebar with all the events listed by name in chronological order.

Full Google My Map with event listings in chronological order

As I said, this map includes only Manhattan street fairs. But there are events scheduled in most of the other boroughs, not to mention Long Island, New Jersey, and beyond. My map is open to public collaboration, so please feel free to add any events you know of.

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Last September, outraged by a tabloid lie that I was uniquely positioned to debunk, I wrote a blog entry criticizing Britain’s Daily Star. I noted that they had simply fabricated two American gay rights groups that  were purportedly criticizing the U.S. version of the sketch comedy show “Little Britain” for running “homophobic” skits. Other UK newspapers and web sites picked up the Star story, and it went semi-viral.

Cut to last month. To my astonishment, my little cyber-shout had actually created consequences in the real world. The Daily Star has paid damages and apologized to Little Britain’s stars for lying. Here are more details from the Press Gazette and BBC News.

Not only that, but a more-respectably daily, The Independent had to apologize — for quoting me! I had speculated that the Star story was really a publicist’s plant intended to drum up attention for the U.S. debut of the show. I didn’t name any names, of course, because if it was a plant, it could have been planted by a lot of different people. But that didn’t stop The Independent from passing along my clearly-labeled speculation. Oops. Under Britain’s rather onerous, plaintiff-friendly defamation law, they wound up having to apologize to Little Britain’s publicist for implying that the firm did a bad thing.

There’s a lesson in all of this, though I’m not completely sure what it is. Maybe just that I should have thought twice about setting off a shit-storm in the first place. None of the shit that hit the Star and The Independent landed on me, but that’s just because I got lucky.

UPDATE: Apparently, London’s The Times had to apologize as well.

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