Amy Z. Quinn

If you haven't yet picked up a copy of my dear friend and Jersey Shore defender Jen A. Miller's latest book, put it
on your list of essentials. The Jersey Shore: Atlantic City to Cape May isn't just an updated version of the one she wrote a few years back, it's a total overhaul, stuffed nearly to bursting with planning tips, reviews and Shore secrets that only she could pull together.

It's not only a good read (and it is), the book is a must-have if you're planning a trip to the South Jersey Shore. I'm proud of her, and was flattered to be asked to write an essay about the Wildwoods for it, which I'll share with Citizen Mom readers here. Enjoy my essay, then buy the whole book!

My Wildwoods

 By Amy Z. Quinn

Y'know, besides the names of who owns, writes and edits their site?

Actually, it's no mystery: Naked Philly (ironic slogan: We've Got Nothing To Hide!) is owned and operated by Ori Feibush of OCF Realty (Ironic bio note: "Transparency is a word you hear a lot these days. And at OCF, it really means something.")

From my understanding of the conversation Feibush and I had today, the site serves two purposes. First, the Naked Philly blog is supposed to build buzz for the neighborhoods in which OCF Realty does business, which sounds a bit like the Philebrity/Blatstein model of early-days covert advertorial blogging. Second, Feibush told me, the Naked Philly site was launched in advance of some crazyass mapping tool he's almost ready to launch and which actually sounds pretty cool. 

The idea, he told me, was for the mapping tool to be ready to go around the same time as the Naked Philly site. It hasn't happened that way.

What has happened instead?  Since the demise of the much-beloved but short-lived Brownstoner Philly site in December, there's been a bit of a rush to fill the void in covering the city's land use/building/development/real estate scene -- an area of activity so ripe with news it practically falls from the trees. The site I work for, Plan Philly, is part of that world, though the mission there is a legitimately journalistic one. 

The way Feibush explained it, the Naked Philly site has sort of taken on a life of its own in the meantime, as people are genuinely interested in what's happening in the city's built environment. "The idea is to showcase properties in areas that otherwise wouldn't get noticed," he said. Fair enough.

Problem is, the folks "writing" the site (more on that in a second) have spent so much time reprinting press releases, running unsourced information and borrowing from others, they're building much more suspicion than credibility. Some of their posts are really good, but lacking essential information like where the information comes from or why anyone should believe it.

Earlier this week I called them out on lifting ideas and specific words from two of my stories. To his credit, Feibush responded promptly, appropriately and professionally to my concerns, telling me today it was "blatantly apparent" that his writer had used my work. It was a difficult conversation and I give him credit for it.

As for the writer, I agreed not to out her (though I do know who she is) because her name hadn't been on the original posts. That's called professional courtesy -- much like the practice of linking and crediting others' work when you reference it in your blog posts. See what I did there?

Anyway, I'm over it and willing to take Feibush at his word when he says the site never intended to come off as some sketchy cloak-and-dagger thing. And because I have seen some genuinely useful posts on Naked Philly, I'll give him the benefit of the doubt and will keep reading. Perhaps you will, too.

This is my father, Girard College class of January '47. 

On Sept. 9, 1938, my grandmother took him on a streetcar ride from Cantrell Street in South Philly to the Girard College campus. They went through the gates and to the small guard house just inside, where the guard made a telephone call and my Dad looked out at Founder's Hall, thinking it must be a palace.

A few minutes later a woman came along, and my grandmother introduced her to my Dad. The woman remarked to my grandmother, a divorcee with another son three years older, how polite my father was. He blushed.

They went to a building just to the right of Founder's Hall, in the shadow of a grove of trees, where he was measured and given a uniform, shoes, the whole kit. Then my grandmother said goobye and explained he'd be staying there, to go to school and live.

This would be his Home.

His brother couldn't join him, because he was too old for the entrance requirements, but he'd have lots of new brothers at Girard. In those days, that was literal truth: Girard boys were wards of the school, even the ones who had mothers. 

He cried. His mother told him it would be an adventure. He believed her.

He was almost exactly the same age my son is right now.  

When I was little, we'd go to Founders Day, strolling around the campus while my Dad stopped to chat, shake hands and/or reminisce with what seemed like every other guy we passed. The wives embraced my mother, greeting each other like cousins, and they exchanged brags while we kids rolled our eyes. 

He'd take us inside the breathtaking chapel, where despite the carved admonition THE LORD IS IN HIS HOLY PLACE KEEP SILENCE BEFORE HIM, he'd whisper to me, proudly, how the chapel was non-denominational so all the boys could pray together. He'd point out how there were no crosses, no images of Christ, how he made his Sacraments at the Gesu Church and how he and the Jewish kid in his bunk used to joke they must really be brothers because they looked so much alike, dark-eyed and tanned from summers at the Girard camp.

When we didn't go along, my Dad would bring home Hum Muds wrapped in waxed paper, and we'd dunk them in milk. As a kid I wore his letterman's sweater, a steel grey G sewn onto scratchy scarlet wool.

Now he's old, one of the many elderly alumni Girard is losing every day. These days when I take him to Founder's Day, we sit in the Armory at ever-smaller tables of his brothers, who all kiss me on the cheek and tell me how much I look like my mother.  I try not to cry as he struggles up the long, turning staircase inside Founder's Hall, walking through the rooms full of Girard relics, pointing himself out in photographs, naming his friends. I pull out the bound volumes of the campus paper from the 1940s, and pick out his name so many times I lose count. 

Because "Russell Johnson" asked, this is why I can't be truly objective about what happens at Girard College and to its students, any more than I could be objective about any other member of my extended family. That statue of Stephen Girard is as close to a paternal grandfather as I ever got.

To be clear: Nothing I write comes out of personal animus toward Autumn Adkins Graves, whom I've never met. Rather than having an axe to grind against her, I admire the brains and balls it takes for a black woman not even 40 years old to be chosen to lead a school like Girard.

I find myself identifying with her in many ways, not just because we're the same age but because back in 1937, neither of us would have been welcome in the Girard family that so unconditionally embraced my Dad.

Yet I'm concerned by what I'm hearing, especially comments about how it's becoming "Autumn Adkins Academy" and "You have to spend money to make money," and most damning, from a current student: "Girard College does not feel like home anymore." I understand that some staff layoffs are part of department restructuring, but there are other issues.

I disclosed my conflict in the earlier post because I teach my Media Ethics students to be truthful when something could compromise their objectivity. I didn't go into all the gory details because, as I teach my News Writing students, we are not the story. I will continue to ask questions, seek information, and analyze the many documents now coming my way because that's what I teach my Investigative Reporting students. I'll continue to provide a place here for those who care about Girard to share their thoughts because that's what a blog is for.

You can either understand, or not. It doesn't change what I do.

While most of the city's attention has been focused on the situation inside the troubled Philadelphia School District, things inside Girard College seem to be in a state of rapid decline.

There are a number of reasons I can't approach this story as a neutral reporter but I am happy to provide a place here for folks on campus to tell their stories in the hope that the city's reporters will take notice.

Last semester, I heard disturbing reports about things like the kitchen running out of food and many students who hadn't eaten much at dinner the night before (apparently pork was served and many student don't dig on swine) receiving only fruit at breakfast -- hardly enough to fire up the brain for a day of learning. 

I've heard repeated reports of former staffers and students being discouraged, or outright prohibited, from visiting the campus. It's not for me to blame any of this on Autumn Adkins, the thirtysomething who became Girard's president in 2009, but things do not seem to be moving in the right direction.

Most recently, on April 14, my sources say, about 10 teachers and staff members were given official layoff notices. All of them showed up to work the next day, where students were understandably upset. That happens at any school where beloved teachers depart, but at Girard it's important to remember that the school itself is designed to be a -- and sometimes, the only -- stable and consistent thing in the child's life.

Aside from the money story, there's a human story here. Regardless of the school's history or what anybody thinks about Stephen Girard, there are kids on campus hurting and they deserve better.

Do you work at Girard College, or are you a student? Please feel free to leave your thoughts/tips/information here or email me at citizenmom@gmail.com . Hail Girard.

Over on StateCollege.com, Michele Marchetti offers a look at the Penn State Meats Lab, its Friday meat market and the critical role Penn State plays in the local food movement:

Because of the educational opportunities the Meats Lab offers, colleagues in Connecticut and New York have described it as a backbone of the local food movement, he said. “Pennsylvania has more meat plants than any other state, because they’re so small,” Raines says.

“There are almost 100 USDA-inspected plants in Pennsylvania. We keep quite busy keeping all these other little guys going.” When I ask Raines whether Gov. Tom Corbett’s proposed budget could threaten the future of that mission, he replied: “We have no idea, honestly, how we’re going to fare; that’s about the best answer I can give.”

via www.statecollege.com

Read the whole story for details that will leave you hungry for a burger brought to you by Dear Old State. For maximum effect, top it with a slice of cheddar from the Creamery. Forget farm to table, this is campus to table. 

Just read about a fascinating bit of parenting discussion at SXSW on raising digital natives, that is, kids who grow up online and using mobile technology. Now, I'm not sure my kid would be ready for a Twitter account at age 7, as mentioned in the piece. But one angle of the discussion, about how TV watching fits in, rang true in Citizen Mom's house: 

The main point of disagreement amongst the group arose over the issue of limiting TV time. Bracken, for instance, will not let his daughter watch TV, but has no problem showing her streaming Netflix shows on his iPad. Sinker agreed, noting the unlike regular TV, streaming media contains little or no commercials for unhealthy foods or products parents might find to be objectionable. Some in the audience did not agree with this explanation, however, and called Bracken's approach hypocritical. (InnovationNews Daily, via @NatashaChart)

To me there's nothing hypocritical about this, in fact, controlling what visual media kids consume is as important as controlling how much is watched and on what device. This is why as a parent I've always loved On Demand kids programming so much -- it isn't just being able to cue up Phineas and Ferb whenever and wherever, it's being able to do so in a way that avoids the commercials for Totino's Pizza Rolls and Fuzzoodles. It's about monitoring quality, sometimes more than quantity.

I'm convinced that we avoided turning Jack into one of those kids who demands a new toy every time he's in the store by keeping him away from TV commercials for as long as possible. Now, at age 9, he not only prefers watching TV programming online or on demand, but the very idea of having to show up in front of the TV at a certain time to watch a certain show is alien. It's just not the way his world works.

Sweet, sweet money: The Inquirer's Heard in the Hall blog reports this morning that a Big Beverage interest group is giving Children's Hospital of Philadelphia $10 million to fund (wait for it) "research into and prevention of childhood obesity."

The three-year grant is funded by a new organization, the Foundation for a Healthy America , created by the American Beverage Association, the national trade group representing manufacturers and bottlers. The ABA was instrumental in lobbying Philadelphia City Council to reject Nutter's proposal to tax sugary drinks at 2-cents per ounce as a way to cut consumption and raise money for the general fund.

In a press release Wednesday, CHOP insisted that it will "retain absolute clinical and research independence," as the source of its funding for the research is likely to come under attack from those wary of the beverage industry's influence.  That includes funding for clinical studiesto be submitted to peer-reviewed publications.

Let's see now, research into and prevention of childhood obesity . . . OK, lemme take a crack at this one:

My intensive field research over nine years of parenting is that many overweight children consume too much sugar. To prevent this, don't put Mountain Dew in your toddler's sippy cup. This message brought to you by Mountain Dew. WHERE'S MY TEN MILLION?

From Phillyburbs.com:

"That is sort of the group's (Westboro Baptist Church) M.O., at least with us. They issue a press release that they are coming and then they don't show. They just want the publicity," the chief said.

In 2007, the group was a no-show at a military funeral in the township, said Dickinson. 

You know how this dance goes: Write story about Westboro threatening to picket a funeral, then follow with a story when they don't show. Either way, the lunatics win. 

From the just-released State of the News Media 2011 report:

In 2010, however, some of the biggest new media institutions began to develop original newsgathering in a significant way. Yahoo added several dozen reporters across news, sports and finance. AOL had 900 journalists, 500 of them at its local Patch news operation (it then let go 200 people from the content team after the merger with Huffingtonpost). By the end of 2011, Bloomberg expects to have 150 journalists and analysts for its new Washington operation, Bloomberg Government. News Corp. has hired from 100 or 150, depending on the press reports, for its new tablet newspaper, The Daily, though not all may be journalists. Together these hires come close to matching the jobs in 2010 we estimate were lost in newspapers, the first time we have seen this kind of substitution.

Granted, it's not an even swap, as many of the lost newspaper jobs were higher-skilled, more experienced and better paid than ones in upstart local online sites. Then again, if you sent a reporter with decades of experience to cover a local zoning spat or a supermarket opening (the way a neighborhood Patch or a Yahoo! local might) it would be a waste of everyone's time and money. Yet both are needed.

So while I've been -- and will continue to be, when appropriate -- a critic of local "content providers" like Patch, etc., I'm also am in a position to work with eager young journalists out looking for their first and second jobs.  And the fact is, there are jobs for them right now, sites hiring people and paying them to do locally-focused journalistic work -- the same kind I started my newspaper career doing. It's not only Yelp-ish restaurant ratings and group coupons. 

This is not great news for mid-career newspaper reporters losing metro daily jobs, though even here, AOL and Yahoo! are both hiring far above entry level. This is simply too important, and too positive, a piece of the big puzzle of journalism right now to ignore. 

If the local online news networks survive, it surely follows that their journalistic standards and the quality of the work will mature. There's definitely no reason for them not to try.

THE SANDS ARE lonely in the fall. On those broad New Jersey beaches, where the rollers sprawl inward in ridges of crumbling snow, the ocean looks almost wistfully for its former playmates. The children are gone, the small brown legs, the toy shovels and the red tin pails. The familiar figures of the summer season have vanished: the stout ladies who sat in awninged chairs and wrestled desperately to unfurl their newspapers in the wind; the handsome mahogany-tanned lifesavers, the vamperinoes incessantly drying their tawny hair, the corpulent males of dark complexion wearing ladies' bathing caps, the young men playing a degenerate baseball with a rubber sphere and a bit of shingle. All that life and excitement, fed upon hot dogs and vanilla cones, anointed with cold cream and citronella, has vanished for another year.

Christopher Morley's Philadelphia

From "The Shore In September," by Christopher Morley. From Travels in Philadelphia, 1920

via www.youtube.com

Official video for what is already officially the unofficial song of the year, Cee-Lo Green's "F**k You." It's truly cathartic.

NSFW, but you knew that.

via www.youtube.com

Robert Conrad Eveready Battery commercial, 1977.
Often seen during Johnny Carson -- or at least, that's where I remember seeing it, during sleepovers at my grandparents' house.
C'mon. I dare ya.

via www.youtube.com

Three years ago today, I signed up for Twitter, beginning a love affair that now involves 2,368 people directly (952 I follow and my 1,416 charming, smart and gorgeous followers) and thousands more by association. For this, you can either thank or blame the editor who sent me a link to Ana Marie Cox's then brand-new feed and said something to the effect of, "I think you'd be good at this."

I'm certainly not as popular as Ana Marie, but I tend to my Twitter counts like an old man with his tomato plants, and have a very low "block" threshold. Also I can't bear to think about politics, cats or my pants quite that much. So it's all good.

This week also marks six years since I launched this blog, which has slowed somewhat but (like the blog world itself) definitely grown and changed because of Teh Twitter. There's so much more quick-hit posting because of the increase in mobile, plus microblogging/sharing sites like Twitter and Tumblr, and Facebook's ability to easily link from almost everywhere. So while it's meant not spending entire days sitting in front of my computer working on the blog, it's also meant I need to be more disciplined and focused on actually making time to think and write. I'm working on that.

Trust the process, I guess.

Mumford and Sons, "Little Lion Man"