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journalism

A poorly flowing hodge podge (Or: Wednesday)

You might not be a journalist, Niemanlab says, but you play one on Twitter. True enough. There’s a lots of journalism being reported there. And a fair amount being poorly reported, as critics like to point out. Others might note, in response, that there’s a great deal of things underreported elsewhere that get attention on Twitter.

I prefer Twitter as an aggregation tool. I’ve talked with disbelieving journalism professors and working journalists and television producers about the quality of Twitter — they’re all using the tool these days, by the way — about that. I learn a great deal from Twitter that I wouldn’t get elsewhere.

Just today for example, a friend in Montgomery pointed out this story:

Alabama lawmakers gave final approval today to a watered-down version of legislation aimed at getting more insurance coverage for autism treatment.

The House of Representatives voted 96-0 for the bill, sending it to the governor for his signature.

The legislation requires insurance companies to offer coverage for the treatment of autism, including for a costly behavioral therapy that now is rarely covered. Businesses could choose whether to offer the coverage as part of their insurance options for employees.

A friend in Atlanta passed along this terrific Der Spiegel feature on East Berlin, before and after the Iron Curtain was pulled down.

Found this on Twitter today too, from a colleague in Arizona. Media Storm, which is journalism juggernaut that doesn’t work as a traditional newsroom, won three awards from the National Press Photographers Association.

Also wouldn’t have found this unfortunate error from the Lufkin Daily News:

And finally, we roast ourselves for mistakenly running a previously published editorial about Pearl Harbor Day in this space in Tuesday’s newspaper. Dec. 7, 1941, is a day that President Franklin D. Roosevelt aptly called “A day of infamy.” While our mistake pales in comparison, May 1, 2012, will go down as a dark hour in this newsroom.

Not to be pedantic, but The Lufkin Daily News is playing a bit fast and loose with the quote, too. That Texas paper is putting a paywall on their website next month. We wish them well.

And, if you’re thinking “Someone that says “Not to be pedantic means to, in fact, be pedantic” you are absolutely correct.

Rain, on my drive home:

There’s nothing spectacular about that video, but I do enjoy the sound.

Two posts on my Crimson blog: Tips for new journalists and Yesterdays are dead.

Also, check out my Twitter feed. Bookmark the Tumblr account.

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1
May 12

Do not eat the black olives

Quick! What is this?

You’ll find the answer over on my Tumblr. Having posted the photograph in one place, however, it seems silly to put part of the same picture elsewhere. So I probably won’t do this a lot, but I needed some sort of art for the day, and this seemed a cheap and easy way to do it.

More easy content: I accidentally landed on someone’s mailing list as they wrote to their family back home about their trip to the American southwest. Seems someone has noticed the error, or the emails have stopped for some other reason, but let’s live vicariously, shall we?

Call her Barbara, though that’s not her name.

Day One:

I’ve arrived in Phoenix. There is no phone here, but in an emergency my cell phone might work (yet to be determined, but I’ll confirm later).

Hope you are well. We have wi-fi here and I’d love to hear from you by email.

Have a good week.
Love,

Barbara

Day Two:

Hi,

Great to hear from you. We had a jam-packed day today. We went shopping, out for lunch, to the Phoenix Art Museum, and to the Heard Museum. The restaurant had typical south western fare. The native artifacts were really interesting. I have some pictures but don’t know how to get them on the IPad.

Tomorrow we’re going to golf in the morning, check out some food trucks in Phoenix, and go to the Botanical Gardens in the afternoon. This holiday is fun but exhausting!

Miss you all.

Love,

Barbara

Sounds like a great trip so far. At the art museum Barbara might have seen exhibitions by Matthew Moore, W. Eugene Smith, Gustave Baumann and others. The Heard Museum is hosting great exhibitions on the art of ceremony and the history of bolo ties, among other things. You laugh, but I bet that one cinches on tight and doesn’t let go. (Actually that sounds like a great museum. When in Phoenix … )

If they made it out to the botanical garden they no doubt enjoyed the spring butterfly exhibit.

On Day Three of her adventure she sent me a picture — out of respect for her privacy I shall not post it. Imagine a nice lady standing by several cacti all much taller than her.

“Too big to trip over! I sure wouldn’t want to fall on one though!” she wrote.

Which is where I am a bit sad. She’s trying to write her grandson. I hope he gets to see this picture eventually.

On Day Five I received another email:

Good morning,

It was over 100 degrees here yesterday. It doesn’t feel too bad as long as we’re not walking around in the sun in the afternoon for too long.

The Swap Mart was OK. It was like a huge flea market, but with only new things for sale. The olive grove was interesting. There are only two places in North America where they grow olives, here and in California. The climate here is perfect for olives. They don’t get any of the pests or mold that they do in Europe, so can grow here with no pesticides or herbicides. They would be certified organic if the corn field that is within 15 miles of their grove was also organic. They also don’t have to worry about birds eating them off the tree as olives are very bitter until they have been soaked for quite a while. We had lunch outside under an umbrella. The food was excellent and the tour afterwards was very informative. I learned that olive oil should say ‘extra virgin’, ‘fresh pressed’ or ‘cold pressed’ and that we should not eat ‘black olives’.

We went shopping again after that and to a great food market where we got wood-oven pizza, salad, and other treats. We’re eating like queens. I’ll have to take up running when I get back.

We’re off to Sedona this morning, and will be there overnight.

Hope you are all well and happy.

Love,

Barbara

Someone wrote to the group asking why you aren’t supposed to eat the black olives. A fair question as I’m sure we’re all a bit more olive smart after that email, but it doesn’t elaborate on that point. Maybe she was talking about canned black olives, which sometimes use ferrous sulfate as a coloring additive. After that I’m out of guesses and I won’t look it up — because if you’ve ever done that before you understand the wisdom of not asking the Internet a question about health and safety.

And that’s where the email thread ends. Sounded like a nice front half of a fine vacation though. Hope she made it home safely with lots of pictures and adventures to share. Check out, by the way, the banner art on the Sedona link. That must be a beautiful place.

Had the new editor meeting tonight. We bring in the outgoing and now grizzled veteran and the shiny-eyed new person and talk about the job. This is what I do and don’t do. These are the positions you should be hiring for. This is what you can expect.

These are the obstacles. This is the workflow. These are the late nights. These are the things you must do. These are the few things you can’t do. Here is the production bible and notes from former staffers.

Now go out there and, as some wordsmiths awkwardly say, “commit journalism.”

The new editor works hard. She’ll grow into the position nicely.

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24
Apr 12

The long day

Last week we had the board members from the Alabama Press Association on campus. Today, it is Gene Policinski, the vice president and executive director of the First Amendment Center in Washington D.C.

Things are hoping around here.

Policinski met with student-journalists at the Crimson this morning. I treated him to a mid-morning snack after that and he told me how he got in the business, where he’s been and his upcoming projects. Very interesting — and nice — guy.

The department took him and a few students to lunch at The Rotunda Club, the exclusive dining arrangement on campus. We ate in a beautiful wood-paneled room with monogramed plates and personal attention.

I hope whatever organization that normally dines there was able to make do with vending machines.

We had a student media committee meeting, electing next year’s editors for the literary arts magazine, Sojourn, the yearbook, Entre Nous, and The Samford Crimson.

This evening Policinski was the featured guest at the Timothy Sumner Robinson Forum. This is a Samford program named for a 1965 alumnus. The Robinson family hosts the event each year in honor of Timothy, who was a veteran of The Washington Post and the National Law Journal.

At the Post Robinson had more Watergate front page stories than anyone. He’d go on to work at NYU, and then head west to pioneer much of the first online media work.

Here’s Policinski speaking in Bolding Studio about the constitutionally “unique role” of journalists in the political and legal system:

He notes “We have turned to an era where we talk to people directly.”

He applaud bloggers and citizen journalists, but notes a difference between what they might do and what a committed court reporter could offer as coverage. He’s right, and it isn’t about the journalism, but about the legal system. There’s a need, he says, for more legal training, which is part of a big project he has coming up soon with his many professional affiliations.

The state of legal reporting is in decline, but not because of the people covering it, but by volume. Meanwhile, he says, the journalism profession is “if not walking away from it is turning away because of other pressing issues.”

Great to have him on campus, though it made for a long day (and after that there was still the newspaper). It was worth it. You can follow him on Twitter @genefac.

Don’t forget: Tumblr and Twitter.

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19
Apr 12

Just because you read it

Board members from the Alabama Press Association were at Samford today talking to JMC students. Their advice: journalists are generalists, don’t limit yourself to print or video but get a bit of both, separate yourself from your competition.

The board members were passionate, optimistic and dedicated to helping their community and their industry. They gave good advice for students, both in the Crimson office, and in Dr. Jones’ print practicum class.

Dr. Jones got the ball rolling: “What skills do these students need?”

The consensus response? “Everything.”

Sounds familiar. We talk about that all the time at Samford, where our program endorses a broad-based approach. It helps make interns and graduates look more valuable to potential employers.

After that, the students have to take it upon themselves, but to get that encouragement from the faculty, to hear it from the pros — and to see how the industry is coming around to that reality, is a great thing. We’re doing it right.

And then there’s the latest from Pew.

The report goes on to say that 32 percent of these people say the disappearance of their local paper would have a major impact on their lives. Among people who aren’t that interested in local news, about half say their lives wouldn’t change at all if they didn’t have a local paper. Good, for newspapers, right?

But look at it another way: That means 68 percent of local news enthusiasts don’t believe the disappearance of their local paper would affect their lives in a major way. And 34 percent of such enthusiasts say the disappearance wouldn’t affect their lives at all.

This likely reflects local news enthusiasts’ reliance on TV; Pew reports that 80 percent of them use broadcast TV on a weekly basis, compared to 48 percent for newspapers, 52 percent for radio and 57 percent for “word of mouth.” TV was also the preferred source for weather and breaking news, the two issues local news enthusiasts follow most closely.

Believe being the key word. Look, the more media the better, and not just for our students’ sake. If I may return to my watchdog roots for a moment, someone has to watch the politicians and agencies and the occasional white collar bad guys.

And if papers go away, how will you get your comics?

One of the publishers today told the students he’s done everything in a newsroom, report, write, layout, copy editing, emptying garbage and writing the horoscope when it didn’t make it in on time.

So keep that in mind the next time you have a glance at Pisces.

Lessen’s tonight’s fortune somewhat, don’t you think?

I posted that on Facebook. A friend commented ” I got that one once. Three years later, I know my time is coming!”

Not everything you read is worth taking to heart.

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16
Apr 12

Meanwhile, in the classroom

I taught about false light in two media law classes today.

The three criteria required for a false light case:

1. Publication of material must put an individual in a false light.
2. The false light would be offensive to a reasonable person.
3. The publisher was at fault.

Two anecdotes from the lecture:

The Sun ran a picture of Nellie Mitchell, a 96-year-old Arkansas woman, in a fabricated story about a 101-year-old female news carrier who had to give up her job because she was pregnant. The Sun’s editors needed a photo for their false story. They assumed Nellie was dead and pulled her picture from a previous true story. She was alive and, by then, feeling litigious. She sued. She won $1.5 million in 1991. (That’s $2.5 million today)

In the 1980s WJLA in Washington, D.C., did a story on genital herpes. The reporter shot b roll on a busy D.C. street. The videographer zoomed in on a woman who was easily recognized. In the 11 p.m. broadcast the anchor read the script “For the 20 million Americans who have herpes, it’s not a cure” as tape rolled with the woman’s image. She won her case and was awarded $750.

I like media law, but I think you have to have an anticipation of enjoyment of it before you take it as a class. I imagine that students who don’t have some inkling of that beforehand find themselves miserable. But it is a vitally important topic.

I think I enjoyed it, in part, was because the first media law case I ever read about was Carol Burnett v. National Enquirer, Inc. I loved Carol Burnett as a comedienne, even if her sketch comedy show (which I caught it in syndication) was for an older audience. It always felt like I was getting away with something to be able to watch it late at night, but I remember thinking that Burnett’s case, while important, probably felt ancient to most of my peers. It had happened almost 15 years before we studied it, an eternity to undergrads. (I did not talk about it in class today.)

And so I vowed to give contemporary examples in a media law context. Need to brush up on the dockets a bit.

To know the more than a name makes a case history more interesting. To see this makes it all stick in your head:

I actually remember that bit, which is remarkable with my memory. I suppose it speaks to the impression those talents could leave upon you. To this day my favorite stylings are physical comedy and the famous loss of composure. I blame Harvey Korman for that:

Had a guest in my Mass Media Practices class today. My old friend Napo Monasterio came over from The Birmingham News to talk about that happy, curious, more-flexible-than-ever place where journalist, coder and designer meet. Napo is from Auburn, though he was a year or two behind me. Now I see his work all the time.

Here are some of his page layouts and the online package that went with it. Now he’s developing apps.

He was formally trained as a print journalist and designer, but his desire to learn new things keeps opening doors for him. I hope students pick up on that.

“Just like a firecracker going off in the air — kabuuuuum.”