Al's Morning Meeting

Please drop me a note and tell me what other kinds of stories you would like Poynter to explore to help you master multimedia storytelling. You can also go to Poynter's online training site, NewsU.org, and enroll in interactive learning classes, including "Five Steps to Multimedia Storytelling" and "Multimedia Reporting: Covering Breaking News." Both courses are free just by registering on the site.

And starting today, you can sign up for NewsU's "Telling Stories With Sound." This interactive, online course is free -- just sign up. What a great tool for print folks to learn audio, for radio folks to sharpen their skills, for TV journalists to rediscover the power of sound, and for students and teachers to gain hands-on material.

7-7-07: The Big Wedding Day

A little more than three weeks from now, wedding chapels will be packed to the rafters as couples worldwide choose July 7, 2007, (7/7/07) as their wedding day.

USA Today says:

RELATED RESOURCES

Like Al's ideas? Hear more in our broadcast and online seminars. Get Al's Morning Meeting updates as an RSS feed: * Copy this link and add it to your feed reader Sign up to receive Al's Morning Meeting by e-mail: * Click here (sent Monday-Friday at 7 a.m.) Buy Al's book, "Aim for the Heart," here, and Poynter receives a small cut as an Amazon affiliate.

Wedding planners, reception hall managers and vendors such as florists and bakers are reporting an out-of-the-ordinary number of requests for July 7. Kathleen Murray, deputy editor of wedding planning Web site The Knot, says it's one of the most popular wedding dates she can recall.

Though there are no national statistics on how many couples have chosen 7/7/07 as their wedding day, a peek at theknot.com's 1.1 million membership confirms the date's popularity: 31,000 couples are getting married that Saturday, more than twice the average summer Saturday, when 12,000 couples say "I do." Compare that with a week earlier, June 30, when 14,000 couples are marrying.

The weekends before and after July 4 are always popular for weddings, Murray says. But not this popular: Last year, on July 8, 12,226 couples walked down the aisle.

There have been other numerically popular dates, says Jennifer Schneider, senior wedding planner at Madison Event Center in Covington, Ky.

Schneider has already booked weekend weddings for 6/7/08 and 8/8/08. But 5/5/05 (a Thursday) and 6/6/06 (a Tuesday) didn't spark the same frenzy as 7/7/07.

Couples have their own reasons for choosing July 7, and Murray has heard them all. "One couple said they're math freaks."

But for the most part, couples say the date signifies hitting the jackpot, or they choose it because it's easy to remember or believe it's holy.

Others "just love the date," Murray says. "When choosing between several dates in July, it's the coolest one."

The Vancouver Sun reports:

The date is so popular, it has even inspired its own wedding merchandise branded with the date, from teddy bears and underwear to doggy T-shirts spotted with 21 hearts and poker chips made of chocolate.

Date-inspired wedding slogans range from "Lucky in Love 777" to "We Hit the Jackpot 777 On Our Wedding Day." There are more than 20,500 Google hits for the term, 777 wedding.

Sarah Morgan, a wedding planner for Urban Weddings in Vancouver, said it will be a "crazy" day. The company's photographer is booked to shoot three weddings that day.

"Two weddings is busy in the summer," she said. "Three is kind of crazy."

The appeal of the triple sevens is undeniable, Morgan said.

"It's the busiest day ever. We've had to turn people away. Everybody's had to turn people away."

A Cape Cod (Mass.) Times article includes this quote:

"It's one of the more popular (wedding) dates of the decade," says Richard Markel, of Monterey, Calif., head of the 800-member Association for Wedding Professionals.

The association has a map of places that reportedly still have space available for July 7 weddings.

All 12 of the Six Flags theme parks are holding mass weddings.

Las Vegas and even Wal-Mart are going nuts over the day, promoting it as the luckiest day of the century. The Wall Street Journal says hotel reservations in Vegas for the weekend are six times greater than for the previous weekend.

Wedding planner sites that sell 777 wedding stuff have popped up.

Why is '7' Considered Lucky?

We refer to the Seven Wonders of the World. (Can you name them? Note -- Rock City near Chattanooga, Tenn., is not one of them. Southerners will get the joke.)

There are Seven Natural Wonders of the World. There are Seven Wonders of the Modern World.

Rome, it is said, was built on seven hills. Medieval Christians counted seven deadly sins. Explorers traveled the seven seas. We use a seven-day week. People still say they are "in seventh heaven" when they are happy.

There are ample reasons that people give for why the number seven might be lucky, if you believe in luck. For example, seven is a big number in Masonic circles.

The News Sentinel in Knoxville, Tenn., gives some examples:

When people are asked to choose a number between one and 10, the most popular choice is seven.

Every religious tradition and ancient story explaining the ways of heaven and Earth has seven as a discerning number:

Buddha walked seven steps at his birth. Seven is the definitive number in Cherokee cosmology. In Islamic tradition, seven is used to symbolize infinity; ancient Egyptians saw the number seven as a symbol of eternal life. Seven oxen pull the sun across the world in early Scandinavian lore. There are seven sages in Hindu mythology, seven candles lit during the celebration of Kwanzaa, seven rings given to the Dwarf Lords in "Lord of the Rings."

The number seven is used 507 times in the Bible. There were seven days of Creation, seven Old Testament patriarchs, seven requests in the Lord's Prayer, seven demons cast out of Mary Magdalene. Jesus said we must forgive our enemies not merely seven times but 70 times 7 times. There are seven deadly sins, seven virtues, and The Book of Revelation refers to the seventh seal, the seventh son and the seven heads of the Beast.

There are seven notes on the musical scale, seven colors of the rainbow, seven wonders of the ancient world, and in many ways, the number seven sets the seasons because the summer solstice takes place when the sun passes in the seventh Zodiac sign. It's as if seven is the number that strikes up the band as time marches along on the calendar.

You can also read about the "Seven Lucky Gods of Japan," who embody the "seven virtues" of candor, fortune, amiability, magnanimity, popularity, longevity and dignity.

Recently I told you about the surprising amount of water that ethanol plants use. Now, The Des Moines (Iowa) Register is learning more about the pollution problems that come with dramatic increases in ethanol production. Look at this interactive map, and click on the violations at some of the plants around Iowa, just as an example of what you should be looking for.

The Register says:

Iowa's ramped-up ethanol and biodiesel fuel production led to 394 instances over the past six years in which the plants fouled the air, water or land or violated regulations meant to protect the health of Iowans and their environment.

In addition, many biologists consider the industry's most prevalent environmental issue the water pollution and soil erosion that will accompany the increased corn production needed to meet ethanol's soaring demand.

The buzz about biofuels centers on a huge environmental perk. During its production and use in vehicles, corn-based ethanol burns cleaner than gasoline, emitting 20 percent less of the heat-trapping gases that contribute to global warming. Ethanol made from corncobs and switchgrass would cut the load by 90 percent.

But along with the benefits, the biofuel boom has brought environmental problems -- and the total impact isn't yet known -- to Iowa, a Des Moines Sunday Register analysis shows.

The Washington Post produced an interesting mega project on how teenagers shop. Why do this? Because teens are a significant chunk of the retail economy, spending $179 billion a year.

The paper explains:

Sixty-one teenagers in grades seven to 11 from all over the region, mostly from public schools, responded to our call. They came to Tysons in jeans, flip-flops, dresses, head scarves, gym shorts and braces. Some shopped with their parents, others just with friends. They came armed with carefully saved weekly allowances, baby-sitting money, birthday gift cards and, yes, their parents' credit cards. One girl delayed a trip to Pittsburgh to join in.

Although several boys said they would come, only one did. Apparently, boys are not recreational shoppers. This was a girl thing.

We equipped the shoppers with paper and pen, asking them to record their movements through the mall, writing down every stop and dollar spent. Some wore microphones to record their conversations and observations. Seven reporters trailed them. Five videographers and four photographers documented their journeys.

They spent about $3,700. They are serious bargain hunters and took high prices as an insult to their intelligence. Make sure to check out the links for multimedia at the top and right side of the page.

---

We are always looking for your great ideas. Send Al a few sentences and hot links.

---

Editor's Note: Al's Morning Meeting is a compendium of ideas, edited story excerpts and other materials from a variety of Web sites, as well as original concepts and analysis. When the information comes directly from another source, it will be attributed and a link will be provided whenever possible. The column is fact-checked, but depends upon the accuracy and integrity of the original sources cited. Errors and inaccuracies found will be corrected.