Wednesday, February 18, 2009

Snark: It’s Mean, it’s Personal, and it’s Ruining Our Conversation

This is the title of a new book by David Denby, New York Times film critic. I became aware of it when an interview with Denby was aired on Morning Edition on NPR this week. Although the book doesn’t get stellar reader reviews on Amazon, his point got my attention – that there is a lot of mean-spirited, anonymous prose on the internet these days, posing as meaningful journalism. His thesis is well summarised in a [more favorable] review in the Los Angeles Times.

The interview got my attention because I was recently the target of a somewhat oblique snark attack myself. I received an email from an anonymous person asking if I had done any voice-over work for a certain radio station. I wrote back that I hadn’t yet, and I asked the identity of the emailer. He/she wrote back with only a link to a blog post he or she had written (anonymously). I read the post, which was about the person who reads the sponsors’ ads on this public radio station, and how robotic she sounds and how much the blogger hates this voice and wishes he/she knew who it was. A lot of commenters piled on to agree. Then one of them piped up, “I watched Forgotten Ellis Island this week and there was a voice in it that sounded just like that woman. Mary McKitrick’s name was in the credits – maybe it’s her voice on that radio station.” The blogger agreed that it might be, and then came back later with “No, I spoke to Mary McKitrick, it’s not her”.

By “spoke to”, this blogger meant that he or she had emailed me under cover of anonymity and then went back to his/her audience to report.

Of course, it isn’t worth a minute of my time to lament having my work on Forgotten Ellis Island compared to the voice of an announcerbot, but I admit it took my breath away. I mentioned the incident to some of my voice-over colleagues and was gratified that a number of them raced to the schoolyard and confronted the bullies – rather relentlessly actually – to the point that the blogger finally pulled the plug and ceased accepting comments. I thought it was amusing that they allowed so many mean comments but couldn’t handle the ones that sang my praises (admittedly, my colleagues were kind of rough on the anonymous blogger :).

In an earlier life, I was a biologist, and writing reviews of other people’s work was a constant part of my life. Book reviews, reviews of articles that had been submitted for publication, reviews of grant proposals. In the case of grant proposals and some of the reviews for journals, anonymity was required. In those cases, I always wrote as if I were going to sign my name, and in cases where a signature was allowed, I always added mine. I have never allowed the cloak of anonymity to affect my writing, never wrote anything in those reviews that I wouldn’t have said to the person’s face, and I don’t understand people who hide behind that cloak. I think David Denby is right – it ruins conversations and it’s spoiling the internet.

At the risk of sounding curmudgeonly – what in the world has happened to people’s manners?

Note: if you'd like to hear one of the passages I read for the documentary, Forgotten Ellis Island, go to the shockwave Flash part of the FEI website, click on Patient Stories, and click on the right arrow twice to get to the story about Ormond McDermott.

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Monday, February 02, 2009

MCM on PBS tonight!!


A last minute reminder: check your local listings for the more-or-less national broadcast premiere of Forgotten Ellis Island, airing tonight in most markets at 10 pm on PBS. The film was directed by Lorie Conway, narrated by Elliott Gould, and has historical voices by Mary McKitrick (that's me!) as well as Bruce Miles, Fred Keeler and Drew Hadwal.

Whether or not your family has a history at Ellis Island, I think you'll be fascinated by this beautiful and moving film.

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Monday, December 01, 2008

Voice-over Postcard Mailing Hack

I want to send a postcard to all my clients and other business contacts to alert them to a special broadcast for which I provided voice-over. On February 2nd, 2009 at 10 pm, PBS will broadcast Forgotten Ellis Island, a beautiful documentary about the Immigrant Hospital at Ellis Island. The documentary is narrated by Elliott Gould, and I provided historical voices as did 3 male colleagues. Naturally, I want to make sure that my clients have the opportunity to see this – the film has very broad appeal but of course, more importantly, I want them to hear how great I sound!

So, what’s the most efficient way to make this mailing happen? I have mailed postcards to clients before. I had them printed at a local shop, and then addressed them by hand because I thought a personal touch was important. A few hundred postcards. This is not happening again. As soon as I found out the air date for Forgotten Ellis Island, I knew it was a job for VistaPrint, where you can design your postcard, upload a mailing list and have your cards sent out for you.. I thought it was still going to be quite an ordeal, because I have a contact database of 3,489 companies. Not all of these will get a postcard – some of these companies have gone out of business, some stopped using voice-over, some never did. I still keep them in my database so I can maintain a history of my communications with them. I use Time & Chaos software to manage all this information.

It turns out to be incredibly simple. I finally took a few minutes to look into the process of turning my Time & Chaos database into a mailing list in VistaPrint-ready format, and it actually took mere seconds to get the list. T&C will almost instantly generate a report containing any data fields desired, and you can export the report into an Excel spreadsheet that can be then be uploaded to VistaPrint. What I thought was going to take weeks to accomplish will get done in less than a day.

The design process was not quite so straightforward for me. For the front of the card I uploaded a graphic sent to me by Lorie Conway, the filmmaker for Forgotten Ellis Island, after getting her permission to use it for this purpose. For the back, I took advantage of LazyMan Anthony Mendez’ offer of a design template (thanks Anthony!). It came to me as a psd file and opened automatically in Macromedia Fireworks (it will open in whatever appropriate editing program you use for such things). I designed the card and uploaded my front and back designs to the VistaPrint website and that’s when my troubles began. The front design is vertical, and my back design is horizontal. VistaPrint put the front design into vertical format, and then it wanted the back to be vertical as well. Somehow I got the design rotated but it didn’t look right. Finally I downloaded a template for Oversized Vertical Postcards and redesigned the back of my postcard and got it uploaded. I then called Customer Support to make sure the recipients’ names were going to print in the right place, and was told that VistaPrint’s mailing service doesn’t support the vertical format. Crikey! So now the front design has been rotated so that I have a design that VistaPrint classifies as horizontal, and I’m back to my original horizontal design for the back. Note well: if you want VistaPrint to do the mailing for you, your designs must be horizontal. If you find anything on their website that tells you this, let me know!

The postcard is now ready to go. All that remains is to edit that big Excel mailing list of mine and upload it to VistaPrint. It will not exactly be cheap, but there is no way I could send out a mailing of this magnitude on my own and still keep what’s left of my sanity. Nor would I be able to look my friend LazyMan Anthony Mendez in the eye and tell him I addressed and stamped that many postcards myself! :)

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Monday, January 07, 2008

Forgotten Ellis Island Picked Up by PBS

I just got word from Lorie Conway this morning that her film Forgotten Ellis Island has been selected by PBS "as a prime-time national special for late spring or early summer broadcast". Elliott Gould narrated this documentary, and Bruce Miles, Drew Hadwal and I provided historical voices. You can read more about the film and its grand premiere in my blog post of October 2007.

In addition to this good news, Lorie reported that "the Smithsonian Institution is planning on creating a traveling exhibit using clips from the film and images from the book and film--it will be a free exhibit and be placed in museums, libraries, schools, all sorts of public spaces across the country...they need to find a corporate sponsor to underwrite [it] but are confident it will happen."

This is very exciting news for many reasons, but the most important reason of all is that the film tells a story that needs to be told, and Lorie Conway tells it well. Congratulations to her not only for her artistry, but for her skill and savvy in the pursuit of distribution. That it took such a short time for her to get it says volumes about the film's merits.

Cover of Lorie Conway's book, Forgotten Ellis Island

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Monday, October 22, 2007

Forgotten Ellis Island.

This was an amazing day. I went with my family to the premiere of Forgotten Ellis Island, a documentary for which I recorded voice-over this past spring and summer. The premiere was held at the Ellis Island Museum on the island. A particular delight for me was to attend this screening not only with my family but with Bruce Miles and his wife Emma. The film-maker, Lorie Conway, had asked me to recommend male voice talent and I suggested both Bruce and my colleague Drew Hadwal, and Lorie hired both. Bruce and Emma made a vacation of the event and were in New York for a total of 5 days whereas my family and I just went down for the event itself. It was a gorgeous, warm and sunny day, most unusual for October, and we enjoyed the ferry ride over to the island.


Lorie Conway and Bruce Miles


Lorie Conway and Bruce Miles


Bruce and I were as excited as children. Although we had been brought in for the final stages of production, we had gotten very attached to the project not only because it is such a compelling one – who among us Americans cannot relate to the story of immigration? but also because of Lorie Conway’s enthusiasm and passion for the story of the Immigrant Hospital that she was telling through this film. Also, at the time we were hired, the film still did not have a primary narrator, and we had been bursting with anticipation in the last months, waiting to hear who it was going to be. We have known for about two months that the narrator would be Elliott Gould, and we were very much looking forward to the possibility of meeting him. We were not disappointed!

The lights finally dimmed and the film began, and we were riveted. It was a poignant story, movingly told. A number of surprises revealed themselves: on the dock back in Manhattan, while we waited for the boat that would take us to the island, we got into a conversation with a woman who had come all the way from Australia for this occasion. We did not have a chance to ask about her involvement with Lorie’s project, but as we watched the film, we learned who she was. Part of my script had included a description of the final hours of the life of a patient at the Immigrant Hospital who had died of scarlet fever. It was a very sad story, but it wasn’t until I saw the film that I realised just how sad it was. This patient, a young man of 19, was not an immigrant seeking citizenship in the United States; rather, he was a visitor, with gainful employment elsewhere. Unfortunately, he had forgotten his passport on the boat, and was detained at Ellis Island until officials could determine his status. During his detention he had the great misfortune to contract scarlet fever, from which he never recovered. The Australian woman we had chatted with on the dock this morning was that young man’s niece. If you go to the Forgotten Ellis Island website and click on Patient Stories, then click the right arrow twice, you will hear this young man's story told by Elliott Gould, and the account of his public health nurse, Lucy Simpson, read by me.

Another surprise was to learn that in the audience today was a man who had come over from Germany as a small child and had caught the measles. He was nursed back to health at the Immigrant Hospital, and he remembered the place with great good will. The hospital staff had been kind to him, as they were to so many; a great majority of the people who were treated at the hospital recovered fully and were allowed to leave and pursue their dream of citizenship.

After the screening we did indeed get to meet Mr. Gould, and Emma took a picture of him with Bruce and me, which I will post here after she and Bruce get back to Phoenix and have had a chance to rest at home for a few seconds after which I will start pestering her.

[Note on 25 Oct - here is the picture! Thanks Emma!]

Bruce Miles, Elliott Gould and Mary McKitrick


Bruce Miles, Elliott Gould and Mary McKitrick

There followed a lovely catered lunch which was held in a part of the old hospital that has been renovated thanks to the efforts of the non-profit organisation, Save Ellis Island. It was a bit of a hike to get to that area and we had the chance to see some of the hospital and its grounds. It was eerie, I must say, to see it. One cannot help but feel the presence of an extraordinary segment of American history in that place. Without immigration, none of us would be here today.

Elliott Gould did a superb job narrating the film. Bruce – I have known Bruce for a couple of years and we’ve worked together and I knew his talent. But I was blown away by his work on this project. It was really impressive. So was Drew Hadwal’s. And you know what – I even was impressed by my own work! I hope you all will get a chance to see this beautiful film. Lorie Conway is truly to be congratulated on an excellent piece of scholarship and artistry. With luck this documentary will air on television this winter.


Forgotten Ellis Island cake


Lorie's cake!



Lady Liberty

Lady Liberty


Ellis Island Immigrant Hospital


Part of the Immigrant Hospital and Grounds


Inside the Ellis Island Immigrant Hospital


Inside the Immigrant Hospital


restoration at Ellis Island


Part of the restoration project at Ellis Island




My guys


Ellis Island Museum


Part of the facade of the Ellis Island Museum


Manhattan skyline


Manhattan skyline

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