DAVID SHEETS

Freelance editor and writer, media consultant; regional director, Society for Professional Journalists; board member, St. Louis Media Halls of Fame

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Tossing away another family’s memories

Tossing away another family’s memories

Leaving Las Vegas for the final time, I tossed two large boxes of family memories into a motel’s trash bin. The double-ply cardboard boxes had “U-Haul” stamped on the side and several thick, black words in my late mother’s handwriting. A single red line ran through each after the boxes’ previous purposes were served. Except for the last one: “T’s and P’s Things.” They were boxes intended for…

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Most mobile phones still used for just voice calls, report finds

Most mobile phones still used for just voice calls, report finds

By a show of hands, how many of you still use mobile phones primarily for voice calls? Hmm. About half of you have hands raised, I see. That’s what GSMA found, too. The global trade group’s data and analysis unit, GSMA Intelligence, has finished a report based on 56,000 mobile use surveys across more than 50 global markets that indicated fully half of all mobile phone users worldwide still use…

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What's wrong with CNN? Ask these women

What’s wrong with CNN? Ask these women

The two women sat at the end of a long hallway complaining about sitting at the end of a long hallway. “I can’t hear them when they call us,” the one in a cable-knit sweater said to the other. “I don’t know why the waiting room has to be so long, anyway.” “And, good lord, do they ever keep the AC turned up way too high!” said the woman with a slate-colored shawl draped over her bare shoulders.…

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The three R's of Twitter literacy

The three R’s of Twitter literacy

  Look around. It’s easy to see. From home to school, from work to play, we’re witnessing a disturbing change in America, 140 characters at a time. That change, heralded by microblogs and trumpeted by our president, demands immediate satisfaction with digital communications, such that we’re compelled to tell networks of virtual “friends” what we’re doing minute by minute and expect the same in…

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The view from a small-town bar stool

The view from a small-town bar stool

The restaurant’s open sign was dark, but the thick, beveled windows revealed that a back table had four men sipping coffee. Behind them on the wall was a big-screen TV showing Saturday cartoons. I tried the brass door handle. Locked. A temporary sign to one side listed seasonal business hours. I was 20 minutes early. So, I left, but as I passed the adjoining hotel’s entrance, a white-haired man…

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We've had presidents like Trump – twice

We’ve had presidents like Trump – twice

  Events shape U.S. presidencies. Presidential character defines them. History portrays America at its strongest under presidents who took great political and personal risk by putting the nation’s interests ahead of their own and at its weakest under presidents who allowed animus and prejudice into their decision-making. Abraham Lincoln recognized the moral and civil imperatives in ending slavery…

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Trump's tweets hurt his support in the Heartland

Trump’s tweets hurt his support in the Heartland

  Image courtesy of Vocativ. My aunt’s glittering Christmas tree remained up and surrounded by presents well past New Year’s.   Outdoors, Trump-Pence campaign signs posted around her rolling rural community did, too – for much the same reason. “It’s too cold to do anything,” one of my cousins said. “Door froze shut on the car yesterday.” Across America’s Heartland, one southward bending jet steam…

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Everybody's already made up their mind

Everybody’s already made up their mind

Illustration by Jeff Crosby for Salon.com The sound of vomiting awakened me. The smell of it assured no return to sleep. My roommate was coming out of his coma. “That’s OK, that’s OK,” a woman told the gently groaning man who had just emptied his stomach and, I noticed a moment later, his bowels. “We’ll take care of that. You don’t worry.” I heard but did not see any of this. A gauzy, cornflower…

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The greatest man from the Greatest Generation

The greatest man from the Greatest Generation

Eugene Eisenhauer, 1924-2016 On paper, Eugene Walter Eisenhauer was listed among the Greatest Generation. His country spent decades deciding whether he belonged on that list, and when recognition finally came he mostly ignored it. Other things mattered more by then: his six grown children and their offspring, and thoughts of retirement. The southern Illinois economy central to his life was poor…

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This Christmas, cherish your greatest gift

This Christmas, cherish your greatest gift

A slim, fake Christmas tree stands close against a set of chairs in front of the nurses’ station at Missouri Baptist Hospital’s Cancer and Infusion Center outside St. Louis. Oversized gold and silver ornaments and tinsel cling to the tree’s nylon branches, which sway as the nurses, treatment counselors, and orderlies hurry to serve their patients. A few feet away, a string of red and green…

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Mizzou researchers figure out how to rescue the newspaper industry

Mizzou researchers figure out how to rescue the newspaper industry

Professor Murali Mantrala showed how one newspaper could raise profits through data analysis. (Photo courtesy of the University of Missouri News Bureau) If you’re wondering whether the newspaper industry can avoid colliding with irrelevance, there may be a way to change course, according to two University of Missouri researchers.   Murali Mantrala, the Sam M. Walton Distinguished Professor of…

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Dive into the Deep Web (but watch where you swim)

Dive into the Deep Web (but watch where you swim)

  If you ever watched the rain fill a hole in the ground, then you can understand where the term Deep Web comes from. For the past 10,000 days – the approximate age of the World Wide Web – we’ve poured gallon after gallon of content into that vast networking structure known as the Internet and watched as that content seeped into every crevasse of our lives. And the number of sources is as vast as…

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6 indicators worth watching in quarterly earnings reports

6 indicators worth watching in quarterly earnings reports

Four times a year, a downpour of quarterly earnings reports drops from the executive boards and financial offices of public companies around the country. So, grab an umbrella, because the latest storm has started. Earnings reports announce the revenue, income, and profit or losses of publicly held companies. The companies are obligated to issue them quarterly to current and potential investors…

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Angry St. Louis Rams fans should become Packers fans

Angry St. Louis Rams fans should become Packers fans

I never became a Rams fan despite the opportunities presented to me. When I was in grade school, the Rams were the closest NFL team to my hometown. On the first weekday of each pro football season, most boys came to class wearing blue and white – the team’s colors back then – to signal their fandom, or to blend with the “in” crowd. Years later in St. Louis, I bought a home within walking distance…

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Resolve in 2016 to stop texting while driving

Resolve in 2016 to stop texting while driving

I drive 18 miles of interstate each weekday before sunrise. Ahead of me, lines of fast-moving tail lights stretch into the dark toward the horizon, toward my destination, like glowing breadcrumbs aligned along a well-worn trail. As I draw near to a set of those tail lights, I glimpse something else: the soft white glow from phone screens as people text or read while they drive. I see even more of…

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Avoid holiday phishing attacks by taking these 3 precautions

Avoid holiday phishing attacks by taking these 3 precautions

The season for giving is also the season for taking. Lurking among the people exchanging gifts and glad tidings are shady characters whose only goal is to pluck opportunity from the well of goodwill filled each year during the holidays. For them, a Merry Christmas involves sending malicious messages via email. Security researchers say these kinds of messages, while not unusual, flourish around…

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Colin Powell: Digital transformation success requires leadership

Colin Powell: Digital transformation success requires leadership

Colin Powell in 2008. (Photo by Rob Reed / Creative Commons) Digital transformations rely on much more than technology and investment to succeed; they require buy-in from everyone involved, from the board room on down. Ensuring that buy-in requires strong leadership. No less an authority on leadership than Colin Powell insists as much. The former U.S. Secretary of State and chairman of the Joint…

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