Why journalism remains a good major, as argued by a department chair and a third-generation journo:

If anything, (Chico State’s Susan Brockus Wiesinger) says, the skills the journalism program teaches—multiplatform writing and storytelling chief among them—are more in demand than ever before, and job opportunities abound.

Yes, she tells students, corporate daily newspapers are suffering mass layoffs, but the nation’s thousands of community newspapers are doing well, as are magazines. And the need for clearly and cleanly written content in other arenas—on the web, in business, on cable or broadcast television, in the public-relations field, and in many other areas—is growing rapidly.

When students ask her where they can find jobs, she has a one-word reply: “Everywhere.”

There are some generalities in those anecdotes, but I’d agree with the overall sentiment. I also appreciate this part of her argument:

When Wiesinger talks to incoming freshmen journalism students, she likes to ask them bluntly: “Why are you here?” She wants to learn whether they have passion for the profession—because of its importance to democracy, because of the teamwork required to practice it well, because reporting and writing vivid, meaningful stories is fun and exciting and never boring.

And she wants to encourage them, to make sure they know that by majoring in journalism they are going to learn skills that are invaluable in almost any profession and that will make them attractive to recruiters.

Chico State is a writing program, because they fear sending unprepared multimedia types out into the world. That’s the case with several of the more traditional programs. There’s no reason a department can’t prepare students with both the soft and the hard skills, and maybe even send them to computer science for a minor that will arm them for the future. That was the basis of a panel discussion we recently held at AEJMC.

But I digress.

Non-breaking non-news from Poynter, who reports that Cleveland.com (Disclosure: I once worked for a sister site) is accepting anonymous comments with open arms. (They’ve been doing this for a long time.) But the perspective is worth repeating as more and more newsrooms grow weary of dealing with the vitriole that can hide in anonymity.

“I think you miss out on the full extent of the [online] medium if you block out what readers have to say,” Cleveland.com Editor In Chief Denise Polverine told NetNewsCheck. “Some news organizations feel their voice is the final voice on a subject, and that’s not the case at Cleveland.com.” That’s not to say the comments are untouched. Moderators remove offensive ones, and on sensitive stories comments may be disabled entirely. A community manager writes a note about commenters when they attain “featured user” status and quotes something they’ve posted recently.

Does an “extraordinary situation” permit you to use someone else’s work without permission? The BBC seems to think so:

Social media editor Chris Hamilton clarifies that the organization’s policy is to “make every effort to contact people who’ve taken photos we want to use in our coverage and ask for their permission before doing so.” However, Hamilton noted, “where there is a strong public interest and often time constraints,” a senior editor may decide to “use a photo before we’ve cleared it.”

I’m sure the BBC bristles when this happens in the other direction, however. That’s essentially the argument that people like Jeff Jarvis, Jay Rosen and others take about the news, that the paper (or other outlet) doesn’t “own” content, and that when it is out there, it is out there. Information, public domain and all of that.

And now that the shoe is on the other foot — even the BBC can’t be everywhere, so there’s the pro-am journalist solution — it will be interesting to see how this is accepted over time.

We’ve all had this kind of interview:

Ten social network settings you should check right away. These platforms don’t always default in the direction you’d like. Double-check your settings, just to be sure you’re showing and hiding what you’d like. I had to move a few settings over myself, here.

Cyberloafing is good for you:

“Employees who browse the web more end up being more engaged at work, so why fight that if it’s in moderation?” says Don J.Q. Chen, a researcher at the National University of Singapore and a co-author of the new report, presented Tuesday at the annual meeting of the Academy of Management.

[…]

Chen says the web surfing provided the workers with “an instantaneous recovery.” “When you’re stressed at work and feel frustrated, go cyberloaf. Go on the net. After your break, you come back to work refreshed.”

I think the best part about this story is how Neil Armstrong, Jim Lovell and Gene Cernan are relatable to audiences worldwide:

Armstrong was joined (in Afghanistan) by 83-year-old Jim Lovell, who famously commanded and rescued the botched Apollo 13 mission in 1970, and Gene Cernan, 77, who was the last man to set foot on the moon.

For Afghan trainee Lieutenant Khan Agha Ghaznavi, meeting “these great men who have actually been to the moon and could answer my questions directly… it’s overwhelming”.

That’s appeal.

When I was young, and at a summer day camp, I heard a speaker talk about his time drifting in the Pacific ocean. I don’t remember all of the details about his story, other than that he and his shipmates were in the sea for days, that their buddies were being picked off by the sharks and that they’d learned, through — trial and fatal error — the best way to stay afloat without attracting the attention of the predators.

For five days they struggled to survive. Some 900 men went into the water. Just 317 were rescued.

I remembered the name of the ship when I heard the story years later and after I’d become interested in the history of that era. It was during a re-watching of Jaws, where the ship captain tells the same tale. This fictional character and the real man we heard as children were both on the USS Indianapolis. They’d delivered the first atomic bomb to the Army Air Corps and were later hit by two Japanese torpedoes.

As dramatic stories go, they don’t become any more intense than this one. From start to finish — when the shipment began in 1945, to the court martial the captain face (he was the only U.S. captain that lost a boat in the war put on trial for it), to his being restored to active duty and his eventual 1949 retirement or even to the Japanese sub commander who said in 2000 “”I had a feeling it was contrived from the beginning” or to his Congressional exoneration later that same year — this is a sad and epic tale.

And now it will be a movie. Hope they play it straight up.