The power of the tilde ( ~ )

Yulia and I did a workshop yesterday for journalists at a Kharkiv television news operation, ATN. The station has a new newsroom, and I sensed a lot of energy and commitment. I covered advanced Internet search techniques (aka "stupid Google pet tricks") and introductory Excel skills.

Most of the Google strategies were skills I had covered before -- they're listed on a handout I've posted online. Things like: Put phrases you're searching for in quotes; if you're looking for an exact match on a word or phrase, put a plus sign (+) next to it; if you want to search a specific domain, use "site:", followed by a snippet of the Web address (like "gov.ua" for Ukrainian government sites).

But in preparing for the workshop, I discovered an undocumented Google tips -- one of those oddities that makes software users wonder: Is it a feature or a flaw? It's hard to describe, but here goes:

In Google's English-language interface, if you precede a search term with a tilde (the technical term, of course, is "a squiggly"!), Google will look for synonyms to that term. Example: If I search for ...



... I get hits for newspaper, media and related terms. (Likewise, if you search for "~food", you get hits for terms like cooking, recipes and nutrition.) It's a cool way to do a "fuzzy" search -- to broaden your search but still keep it focused.

This works in English; I guess Google has created (or taps into) a database of synonymistic (that's probably not a word) terms.

Yulia and I tried this in Russian, and it doesn't work the same way; it doesn't search for synonyms of the word you're looking for. (My guess is, Google doesn't have the synonymistic database for other languages.)

However, Google does something else with the tilde-tagged words in Russian searches: It gives you spelling variations based on that word -- and this can be crucial for languages like Russian (in which the same word has different spellings depending on its case -- the way it's used in a sentence: as a subject, as an object, as the object of a preposition, etc.).

So check this out:

If I search for one variation of the spelling of Kharkiv (Харькова; the variation you might you if you said, "This is a Kharkiv map"), and you put a plus sign next to Kharkiv (meaning you want an exact match), here's what you get:



But if I change the + to a ~ (meaning I want a fuzzy search), I get:

That's about 1 million more hits. As I browse them, I see that Google has returned pages with such alternative spellings as Харькове, харьковского, Харьковский.

Another example: Suppose you're doing research about whether computer games have led people to commit suicide.

If you search for exact matches on the two key words (+самоубийство +компьютеры), you get 170,000 hits in Google. If you "fuzzy up" the search (another highly technical term) by changing your syntax to "~самоубийство ~компьютеры", you get 1.1 million hits -- because Google will return Web pages that have the word computer as singular or plural, as a noun or an adjective, as a subject or an object ... all the myriad possibilities.

Any ideas about what Google is doing? This trick doesn't always seem to work. It seems to work best with long words. Any Google experts out there?

Trade Information Center -- Ukraine-Bulgaria

A new office opened on the ground floor of my apartment building, and the above sign went up. It says: "Trade Information Center -- Ukraine-Bulgaria." I'm posting this for the only Bulgarian I know -- Gergana Bobeva, a journalism student at VCU.

(Then again, this could be a money-laundering operation -- to disguise the source of ill-begotten currency, as my landlord, Serge, jokingly says could be true of a lot of businesses here. ;-)

The tragedy at Virginia Tech

Like most of the world, I was shocked by the shooting rampage at Virginia Tech in my home state. I hadn't blogged about it because the carnage left me speechless. What was going through Seung-Hui Cho's mind? How could somebody be so consumed by hate? What other factors, if any, contributed to the deaths of 32 innocent victims?

I don't have answers to those questions -- even though, as a reporter and editor, I've helped covered a lot of mass violence. At the Austin American-Statesman, I helped coordinate coverage of "the Luby's massacre" in Killeen, Texas in 1991: In that incident, George Hennard drove his pickup truck into a Luby's Cafeteria, shot and killed 23 people, wounded 20 others and then committed suicide. The Luby's massacre was the deadliest criminal mass shooting in U.S. history until the April 16 slaughter at Virginia Tech.

Writing can be therapeutic and often enlightening. So I invited some of the journalism students whom I've met in Ukraine to write commentary on the Virginia Tech shootings. Maria Kirsanova, a journalism student at Mariupol State University of Humanities, took me up on the offer.

Today, the Commonwealth Times -- the student newspaper at VCU -- printed Maria's guest column. Here's the link. The URL is unwieldy, so I've "snipped" it to "http://snipurl.com/kirsanova" if you want to share it.

The top of Maria's column:

The shootings at Virginia Tech are appalling and make one wonder: Why is that kind of tragedy not uncommon in the U.S.?

The media tend to focus on the availability of military-style weapons. However, as far as I am concerned, a mentally disturbed teenager bent on committing murder will find a way to do it, whether a legal gun is easily available or not. ...

Maria then goes on to discuss other factors that contribute to a violent society, and she ends with this controversial statement:

Трудно сказать точно, что так сильно влияет на поведение учащихся в Соединенных Штатах: телевидение, компьютеры, доступное оружие или что-то ещё. Да и вряд ли от этого на сто процентов застрахованы люди в других странах. Ещё труднее сказать, что может сделать правительство Америки, чтобы предотвратить такие трагедии в будущем. Да и стоит ли удивляться, что подростки решают свои проблемы при помощи оружия, когда своих внешнеполитических целей правительство страны достигает путем войн?

Oh, you don't read Russian? Well, check out the English translation in the CT!

For the record, I think Maria's assertion that intolerance contributed to Cho's rampage is incomplete. I'd argue that school officials were too tolerant with his anti-social behavior. This was a "student" who signed the class rolls with a question mark, repeatedly harassed other students, stopped coming to class ... but it seems that no one intervened in a forceful way. Perhaps privacy laws and other rules prevented such intervention.

At VCU, I also have seen instances of university officials' tolerating conduct that goes beyond rude and verges on criminal. Last semester, a student sent me an e-mail that began with the F-word, ended with "P.S. I hate you" and in between pleaded for a higher grade (probably not the most effective appeal in history). The student also contacted the VCU president's office, triggering a flurry of messages from administrators who asked me to try to "help" the young man. (The administrators dropped that request when I alerted them to the student's profanity-laced e-mail and explained that there was no justification for raising the student's grade. But, so far as I could tell, VCU never took action against the student; the student certainly never apologized.)

I'm not suggesting that the VCU student described above will go beserk as Cho did. But as some point, maybe we need to recognize these behaviors as "cries for help" -- or at least cries to protect society.

I don't mean for any of this discussion to excuse Cho or to detract from his culpability. He alone bears responsibility for the mass murders at Virginia Tech. But maybe we can find ways to prevent future Chos.

David vs. Goliath: the SWOT Analysis

The past three days, the Journalists' Initiative Association conducted a workshop on "social advertising" -- public service campaigns. Not exactly journalism, but the funding came from the World Bank (Russian has the same saying as English: "Never look a gift horse -- or an NGO with deep pockets -- in the mouth"). Plus, it was for a good cause: to get Ukrainians to drink more vodka. Ha, ha. Actually, to discourage young people in Kharkiv from smoking and drinking.

The need for such a campaign is obvious. Outside schools, you'll see students -- I'm not even sure they're teenagers yet -- smoking during breaks. It's not just boys: Smoking rates among girls here are much higher than in the United States. And if you walk along Lenin Prospect or through Shevchenko Park, you'll see masses of young people, especially guys, clutching and swigging from dark bottles of beer at all hours of the day. The Breakfast of Champions.

So I didn't mind getting roped into the workshop. I've got a little background on advertising: I give it a glancing blow in some of my courses (Media Ethics, Comm Tech & Global Soc), and I'm surrounded by incredibly smart and creative advertising faculty members. Plus, if your title includes the word "professor," more people automatically believe what you say. It's like being the Scarecrow in "The Wizard of Oz" after he gets his diploma. In fact, when I use the title "associate professor," I have an average of 27.4 percent more credibility than when I use the title "journalist." This would increase to 39.2 percent if I ever scam my way to a full professorship, statistics show.

In my parts of the workshop, I talked about creativity, the different appeals that ads make, target groups and focus groups, integrated marketing communications, and ethics in advertising (with the self-deprecating, albeit stale line, "Given the topic, a lot of people probably think this will be the shortest lecture in history").

The audience was a group of citizens who have a grant to launch the anti-smoking, anti-drinking campaign. Angelina Soldatenko, who coordinated the training for the JIA, gave a tireless performance about campaign strategy, PR, marketing and such. We videotaped and critiqued each participant doing a television interview, and we also had the group practice holding press conferences.

The participants did a SWOT Analysis -- identifying their Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats (which in Russian would be "Сильных и слабых сторон, возможностей и угроз Анализ," but Сссву Analysis doesn't have the same ring). I walked the group through a quick exercise: What if David did a SWOT Analysis before confronting Goliath? The participants came up with things like ...

Strengths (besides the slingshot): Belief in victory; confidence; having God on his side

Threats: Goliath, aka Philip Morris (which I can get away with, since I hail from PM's home town)

Anyway, I think you can see where I was headed: that the local campaign will be more like a guerrilla (advertising) war, but "you folks are on the right side, the moral side, the ethical side." And I warned that you don't want to blow your advantage by doing something dumb or unethical, like lighting up a cigarette at the end of your anti-smoking press conference. (Hey, you didn't see David toking on a victory cigar after taking out the Big Guy. But blunders happen: Zinedine Zidane, France's head-butting soccer legend and spokesman for the European Union's "stub it out" anti-smoking campaign, was caught smoking a cigarette after last year's World Cup. The story was headlined: "He shoots, he scores, he lights another fag…")

Then I launched into taste and decency and -- let's go to the videotape ... What do you think of this commercial Ford is running in the UK?

http://dl.net.hr/webcafe/filmici/evil_twin_cat.mpg

Shockvertising occurs in PSAs, too -- like this commercial against domestic violence that got pulled in Canada [Warning: This is pretty graphic, so keep your cursor on the Stop button and bail if it's too much]:


I also showed an ad by the U.N. Mine Action Service that showed kids at a typical American soccer game getting blown up. (The tagline: "If there were land mines here, would you stand for them anywhere?") U.S. television stations refused to run the commercial. A guy at the social-advertising workshop -- a former police officer -- said he'd like to take the ad's creator out in the country and ... never mind. It's a disturbing ad, and it elicits disturbing responses.

I showed a variety of print advertisements, too -- some that probably crossed the line, some that were close, and some that were tasteful and thoughtful (though maybe a little too clever). Here are some examples:

Whether I managed to say anything intelligent or insightful about the above ads is anybody's guess. I may have just sounded profound because of the professorial aura. I sometimes feel like an impostor when I do presentations like this. It's small wonder: If you delve into etymology, you'll find that "professor" and "impostor" both emanate from the same Greek root -- actually, dating back to Aramaic times. You can look it up yourself ...

Boiko Eyes, Issue #1!

It took longer than we expected -- we had to overcome a flu epidemic, a school quarantine, a lot of skepticism and other obstacles -- but today, we finally distributed the first issue of "Boiko's Eyes." This was the project that Selma and I started back in February. The final product was a simple newsletter. The front page is above, and here's the second page:



We also published the newsletter in Russian. The students turned in both English and Russian versions of their stories. Selma and I edited the English versions; Yulia helped tremendously with the Russian copy. (And Yulia helped with the headlines, because puns like "Boiko students get their kicks playing sports" doesn't translate.)



The students who worked on the paper seemed happy -- and their schoolmates snatched up copies. (I printed 200 -- half in Russian and half in English.) The school administrators also seemed pleased.

Where do we go from here? At the staff meeting today, the students agreed to publish one more issue before school lets out for the summer. Our plan is to distribute the paper on May 21 -- but to do that, the students will have to submit their stories by May 7. That's a tight deadline; there's a weeklong "worker's rights" holiday beginning May 1. I hope the success of this first issue will motivate students to work hard on Issue #2.

(And yes, when I designed "Babushka's Bugle," I used the same template as I did for "Boiko's Eyes." Hey, if it ain't broke, don't fix it! For Boiko, I layed out the English version first, and then flowed the Russian copy into the same space. One thing I discovered: Russian takes up about 20% more room than English -- the words are longer, or you often need two Russian words to express one English word. So I had to use a smaller font to accommodate the Russian text.)

And then there was one

We had a going-away party for Selma today. Tomorrow, she is going to Kiev, where she'll spend two nights at a friend's apartment and then take a Saturday-morning flight back to the U.S. (It's the same flight Lorenza took last weekend.)

The party was held at the JIA office, with Aleksey and Angelina Soldatenka, our translator Yulia, the office manager (Tatiana), and Selma and me. The Soldatenkos broke out some cognac and champagne, and everyone made multiple toasts. We gave Selma a set of traditional tea napkins; she gave presents to us, too -- I got a handful of tokens for the Kharkiv metro system.

I gave Selma what is a tradition when an important editor or reporter leaves a newspaper: a mock front page devoted to the departing journalist. It's the newspaper equivalent of a roast -- funny, sometimes a bit crude. I called this spoof paper "Babushka's Bugle." The picture you see above is probably too small to read, and many of the jokes are insider, "you had to be there" jokes. But here's the lead story:

---

As Williams departs, a nation mourns

It was the best of times; it was the worst of times. These are the times that try men’s souls and women’s soles. I once had a dream about such times … Oy vey! My editor, who just came back from a journalism workshop, is trying to tell me something: “Write for the reader!” хорошо [OK]; as any fool can see, the sad news I am illuminating is this:

The legendary American journalist Selma Williams is leaving Ukraine this week, triggering an outpouring of grief and gratitude from our proud nation.

The government has declared a 30-day period of mourning, during which newspapers are forbidden to use poetry in the leads of their stories.

If Mrs. Williams’ departure has a silver lining, it is this: It has united President Viktor Yushchenko, Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych and Princess Yulia Tymoshenko, as well as the communists, the socialists, the capitalists, the subbotniks, the druids and the 251 other political parties.

Ukrainians of all political stripes have agreed to put aside their differences and work together to persuade Mrs. Williams to return to Ukraine. They have offered her unlimited cookies and tea for lunch for every day she spends in Ukraine.

The Verkhovna Rada passed a law thanking Mrs. Williams for training journalists in Ukraine and for buying enough train tickets to keep the transportation system solvent. Under the new law, Mrs. Williams can ride for free on any overnight train, as long as she sleeps in a top bunk.

Neighboring Russia greeted Mrs. Williams’ departure with dread. President Vladimir Putin closed his country’s borders to prevent the U.S. trainer from helping Russian media.

Clearly, Mrs. Williams’ departure has caused the greatest consternation in the Ukrainian Reality since the Orange Revolution. As I wrote earlier, these are indeed trying times.

– Andreyevsky Spuf

---

The story on the lower half of the page showed the reaction of various people to Selma's departure. For example:

---

Borat Sagdiyev: With Selma safely corseted back in U.S. and A., my sister is again sexiest bitch in glorious former U.S.S. and R.

---

We're all going to miss Selma a lot -- both for her professional skills and her optimism and good humor. She's a terrific colleague, and Ukraine won't be the same without her.

R&R is over ;-(

Lorenza (pictured above at one of the Kharkiv markets) returned to Richmond yesterday. [Insert sounds of weeping and anguish here.] She departed in typical whirlwind-Ukrainian fashion:

On Friday night, we went out to dinner with my friend (and landlord and downstairs neighbor) Sergey, and his friend Sveta, and her daughter, Lana. Sergey has a car -- a roomy Renault -- so we drove to a restaurant away from the center of town. After dinner, we walked around (through Gorky Park) until it was about 11 p.m. Then Sergey drove us to the bus station, so we could catch the 11:30 p.m. bus to Kiev.

This bus stops at Borispol airport before heading into downtown Kiev, which was perfect. Lorenza and I arrived at the airport at around 7:30 a.m. -- in plenty of time for her 11 a.m. flight.

You're not allowed to leave Ukraine unless you've spent a night on a train or a bus. It's the law.

Lo and I hung out in the airport, drinking coffee and talking, until her flight started the customs and boarding procedure around 10 a.m. Then I got a ticket for the return bus to Kharkiv -- which passed through the airport around 11:30 a.m. I hopped on that bus and got back to Kharkiv around 7 p.m. Lorenza arrived in Richmond around 6 p.m. her time, so everybody got home safely.

Patty Duke does Ukraine

I grew up watching what are now cult classics like the Patty Duke Show, about "identical cousins": the proper and prim Brit, Cathy, and the stereotypical American teenager, Patty. The theme song said in part:

Where Cathy adores a minuet,
The Ballet Russes, and crepe suzette,
Our Patty loves to rock and roll,
A hot dog makes her lose control --
What a wild duet!

This week, while Lorenza was here in Kharkiv, we took in a Ballet Russes -- performed at the local opera house. That was on Wednesday, and it was fun! The performance consisted of four pieces -- some classical ballet and some very modern. Sorry, no photos allowed.

Today (Friday), Lorenza, Selma and I visited the Kharkiv Zoo and then went to a cafe in adjoining Shevchenko Park. At the cafe, I ordered ... crepe suzette. (Then Lo and I came home, listened to rock and roll and ate hot dogs -- ha, ha.)

The park is interesting -- always full of people. A man was playing this traditional Ukrainian instrument:

Some R&R, and L&L

The first L stands for Lorenza (Marcin), my partner and best friend, who visited me this week so we could enjoy some fabulous [insert second L'ing here]. Lo flew from Richmond to New York to Kiev's Borispol airport, arriving on the morning of April 5. I met her at the airport, and then we took a taxi into Kiev.

We stayed for four days at the Kozatsky Hotel, in the center of the city -- where all the government buildings are. The Kozatsky faces the Maidan, or Independence Square, a plaza that was the scene of Ukraine's 2004 "Orange Revolution": That's when hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians descended on the Maidan to demand that the government throw out the results of a rigged election and hold a fair election (which was won by the current president, Viktor Yushchenko).

I was nervous about staying at the Koz because there's been a lot of political turmoil in Ukraine: The Parliament (called the Verkhovna Rada) has taken away a lot of the president's power, so Yushchenko has retaliated by dissolving the Verkhovna Rada and calling for parliamentary elections in May. I've seen on TV and the Web and in the newspapers stories about demonstrators converging on the Maidan for Orange Revolution Part II, and I was wondering whether the congestion of people would prevent us from getting to the hotel.

Adding to my worries were e-mails like this from the U.S. Embassy in Kiev:

In light of press reports of possible demonstrations in central Kyiv, the Embassy would like to remind Americans to be aware of their security and to avoid large public gatherings and demonstrations. Even demonstrations intended to be peaceful can turn confrontational and possibly escalate into violence. You are therefore urged to avoid the areas of demonstrations if possible, and to exercise caution if within the vicinity of any demonstrations, as well as assess their impact on traffic and transportation. Americans witnessing violent or unusual activities should leave the area and then report any potentially illegal activities to the police or to the Embassy.

But those concerns turned out to be totally unfounded. Yes, there were demonstrations -- and people camped out on the Maidan -- but things were calm and peaceful. As Lorenza said, this demonstration wouldn't have even registered on Latin America's protest meter.

So to everybody who e-mail me and asked about my safety, let me assure you: I'm fine.

Lorenza and I took a lot of long walks around Kiev. I've posted pictures in my Picasa Web Album. Here are some samples -- first from the Great Patriotic War Museum ...



... which also featured dueling "peace tanks":



Kiev's funicular -- a cable car that joins the "upper city" with Podil, the Dnepr flood plain turned residential neighborhood. In the Podil, Lorenza and I visited the National Chernobyl Museum:



This car with the CCCP plates (Сою́з Сове́тских Социалисти́ческих Респу́блик, or Union of Soviet Socialist Republics) is part of a theme restaurant that (to me) had a Dukes of Hazzard feel. Lenin would be spinning in his grave.

Easter in Kiev

I spent Easter with Lorenza in Kiev. Here are some photos of a pageant -- or some kind of musical performance -- that we saw. It was set up on a stage in front of St. Mikhayil's Monastery of the Golden Domes.





Here's a movie that Lorenza shot:

In Mariupol, feeling like celebrities

Selma, Yulia and I took a night train to Mariupol, on the Sea of Azov, to conduct workshops for journalism students at Mariupol State University for the Humanities. The university lavished us with such attention that we felt like celebrities. At times, I wondered whether they had confused us with some visiting dignitaries.

We happened to arrive on the 60th birthday of Bogdan Vasilovich, dean of the university's College of Philology (which is what they call liberal arts here). Bogdan is a real Renaissance man -- a poet, a composer and, from all indications, a great guy. So the school organized a concert and party for him. The concert, above, featured various singing groups -- with Bogdan's poems set to music. Faculty members and other people paraded up to the stage and gave Bogdan gifts: a computer, a video camera, enough flowers to stock a florist shop ...

The university officials asked if we wanted to join the party on stage. We demurred, but they arranged spectacular seats in the middle of the concert hall. And after the concert, we were included at a fourchette -- a banquet -- in Bogdan's honor. The table featured caviar, cognac, vodka, all sorts of wonderful dishes. And people gave toast after toast to Bogdan. This time, we had no choice but to join in. (Selma suggested that we sign "Happy Birthday," but in the end, I gave a fairly traditional -- albeit short -- toast.)



The next day (Tuesday), I conducted a workshop on computer-assisted reporting -- advanced tips for searching the Internet and an introduction to spreadsheets and data analysis. After that, we had a meeting with the rector, Kostantin Balabanov (below, with an assistant administrator, Svitlana, who orchestrated our visit, which was "very good, indeed!"):



Then Kostantin and Svitlana held a press conference for us with the local media -- and with students -- asking questions: about the press in Ukraine, the press in the United States ... and about the "certificates of completion" that I promised to give the students who attended our workshop. ("What can we do with the certificates?" a student asked. I answered: "If you have your certificate and 5 grivni, you'll be able to buy a cup of coffee." This joke tends to work better in English.)



The press conference was on Mariupol television that evening and the next morning. Also on the TV news were clips of the Bogdan's birthday bash.

On Wednesday, Selma and I did a workshop on civic journalism. We used the exercise I described earlier -- a skit that compares old-school and new-school journalistic writing. I played the reporter who wrote a flowery story about city budget season; Selma was the curmudgeonly editor who told me to (re)write the article for the readers, not for my ego.

Somewhat as I had feared, about half of the students preferred the "to everything there is a season"-approach to the budget story. Selma and I resisted saying: Wrong answer! But we made a case that readers are better served by the civic journalism style. And at the end of the workshop, we gathered for a group photo:

Privatization, the fortune-cookie view

Yesterday, we had a roundtable discussion of editors of newspapers that may be privatized over the next few years. During that discussion, I pulled out an old chestnut that I've seen attributed to everyone from JFK to Linda Ellerbee. In fact, Al Gore used it when testifying before Congress a few weeks ago about the "inconvenient truth" of global warming. Gore said:

"As many know, the Chinese expression for 'crisis' consists of two characters side by side. The first symbol means 'danger.' The second symbol means 'opportunity.' I would like to discuss both the danger and the opportunity here today."

The Mandarin Chinese pictograph for "crisis" -- "wei ji" -- is:



I applied the above bromide to the privatization of media, which is indeed a crisis for currently government-owned newspapers and TV and radio stations: They're going to lose their subsidies and their financial security -- and have to find advertising and other revenue sources. That's the danger. The opportunity is: They'll be independent -- they won't have to pull any punches when they report the news -- and that will mean better journalism.

A few editors -- in particular, Ivan Tsygan, editor in chief of Reshetylivs'ky Visnyk -- were intrigued by rhetorical device/analogy.

I have to confess that I gave a rather shorthand version of the "danger + opportunity = crisis" canard. Victor Mair has labeled this a "widespread public misperception" fueled by New Agers. But Gary Feng says "the urban myth has some kernel of truth in it." Benjamin Zimmer has assembled an insightful essay with historical context about the controversy.

The bottom line is that media privatization is indeed both an opportunity and a danger (and a crisis) for Ukrainian editors -- even if the Chinese reference wilts under close inspection. (But if "wei ji" holds up, it does make a better story!)