Tuesday, May 31, 2005
Friday, May 27, 2005
A high school journalist, undercover
David McSwane wanted to do "something cool." What he did wound up shutting the entire U.S. Army's recruiting effort down for a day. McSwane is a senior at Arvada West High School in Colorado; he's an honors student there and editor of high school newspaper, The Westwind. When he heard that the Army was failing to meet its recruiting goals because of the unpopularity of the war in Iraq, he decided to find out just how far the service would go to sign someone up. That's when things started to get interesting.
More
Read more about journalism and issues facing the profession at JPROF.com.
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Read more about journalism and issues facing the profession at JPROF.com.
Another review for Web Journalism
My friend and colleague Herb Thompson (a great American) has done it again. He has written another very nice review of one of my books, Web Journalism. This one appears on SecondaryEnglish.com, a web site geared for teachers of high school English. (Herb had also written a review of Journalism: Who, What, When, Where, Why and How for the same web site and had included an interview with me along with the review.) "Anyone interested in writing and communicating through this new medium would benefit from reading this book, and I highly recommend it," Herb says.
More about Web Journalism: Practice and Promise of a New Medium
Read more about journalism and issues facing the profession at JPROF.com.
More about Web Journalism: Practice and Promise of a New Medium
Read more about journalism and issues facing the profession at JPROF.com.
Wednesday, May 25, 2005
The Numbers Guy
Numbers are funny things -- especially for journalists. 
They sound so definite and authoritative. Numbers represent facts in a seemingly indisputable way. They are easy to use and easy to understand.
But numbers should always be checked for context and source. One journalist who regularly examines the source and context of numbers is Carl Bailik, a Wall Street Journal reporter who writes a column called The Numbers Guy. This column is one of the free features of the Wall Street Journal web site, and those interested in good reporting should check it regularly.
More
Read more about journalism and issues facing the profession at JPROF.com.
They sound so definite and authoritative. Numbers represent facts in a seemingly indisputable way. They are easy to use and easy to understand.
But numbers should always be checked for context and source. One journalist who regularly examines the source and context of numbers is Carl Bailik, a Wall Street Journal reporter who writes a column called The Numbers Guy. This column is one of the free features of the Wall Street Journal web site, and those interested in good reporting should check it regularly.
More
Read more about journalism and issues facing the profession at JPROF.com.
Women as news sources
Women do not make it into news stories as sources as much as men do. That is the basic finding of a new study conducted by the Project for Excellence in Journalism and funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts.
The basic finding is probably not surprising, but what is impressive and important is how widespread and consistent is the tendency of journalists to use men rather than women as sources of information. The study looked at 16,000 news stories in 45 different news outlets. Researchers coded the gender of the sources quoted in the stories and found that “men are relied on as sources in the news more than twice as often as women.”
This is the case despite the fact that news organizations have made efforts to get more women into the ranks of reporters and editors and women are taking more active roles in business and public life. “The numbers suggest that the representation of women as sources in the news has a significant distance to go towards reflecting their role in American society generally,” the study says.
Read more about journalism and issues facing the profession at JPROF.com.
The basic finding is probably not surprising, but what is impressive and important is how widespread and consistent is the tendency of journalists to use men rather than women as sources of information. The study looked at 16,000 news stories in 45 different news outlets. Researchers coded the gender of the sources quoted in the stories and found that “men are relied on as sources in the news more than twice as often as women.”
This is the case despite the fact that news organizations have made efforts to get more women into the ranks of reporters and editors and women are taking more active roles in business and public life. “The numbers suggest that the representation of women as sources in the news has a significant distance to go towards reflecting their role in American society generally,” the study says.
Read more about journalism and issues facing the profession at JPROF.com.
Red light and green light ethics
Most discussions of journalistic ethics, according to a recent article by Roy Peter Clark of the Poynter Institute, stem from an examination of the mistakes that journalists have made.
These discussions are likely to result in what he calls �red light ethics� - rules that tell the journalist to stop, be cautious, be careful, and when in doubt, back off. Clark argues instead for a set of �green light ethics� that encourages journalists to be bold, brave and find ways to tell the truth rather than to keep it hidden.
The kind of ethical approach that Clark describes is exemplified by the way the Spokane Spokesman-Review exposed the nefarious behavior of its mayor. It is also the kind that would attract young people into the profession.
More
Read more about journalism and issues facing the profession at JPROF.com.
These discussions are likely to result in what he calls �red light ethics� - rules that tell the journalist to stop, be cautious, be careful, and when in doubt, back off. Clark argues instead for a set of �green light ethics� that encourages journalists to be bold, brave and find ways to tell the truth rather than to keep it hidden.
The kind of ethical approach that Clark describes is exemplified by the way the Spokane Spokesman-Review exposed the nefarious behavior of its mayor. It is also the kind that would attract young people into the profession.
More
Read more about journalism and issues facing the profession at JPROF.com.
NYT to begin charging
The New York Times announced this week that in September it would begin charging for part of its website content. While much of the NYTimes.com site would remain free to registered users, the Times will begin offering its columnists and opinion section to viewers for $49.95 a year.
Subscribers to this service, TimesSelect, will also get an “early look” at certain feature articles. But, most importantly, subscribers will have access to the Times archive, which heretofore has not been available except on a payment-per-article basis. Subscribers to the print edition of the Times will automatically have access to the TimesSelect service.
Steve Outing, editor of E-Media Tidbits on Poynter.org, has described the overall strategy as sound but has criticized the Times for putting its opinion section behind this wall. He predicts that the Times may not be able to sustain this.
Steve Yelvington, another contributor to E-Media Tidbits, has noted the petulancy of bloggers to this announcement but points out that including print subscribers automatically in this service seems to be the point. “By giving TimesSelect access to existing print subscribers, the New York Times clearly is undertaking a defensive maneuver targeted at shoring up the daily newspaper's circulation against defections to the Internet,” he says.
Whether or not the Times is successful with this move will be a signal to other newspapers as to what they might try in charging for their content.
Read more about journalism and issues facing the profession at JPROF.com.
Subscribers to this service, TimesSelect, will also get an “early look” at certain feature articles. But, most importantly, subscribers will have access to the Times archive, which heretofore has not been available except on a payment-per-article basis. Subscribers to the print edition of the Times will automatically have access to the TimesSelect service.
Steve Outing, editor of E-Media Tidbits on Poynter.org, has described the overall strategy as sound but has criticized the Times for putting its opinion section behind this wall. He predicts that the Times may not be able to sustain this.
Steve Yelvington, another contributor to E-Media Tidbits, has noted the petulancy of bloggers to this announcement but points out that including print subscribers automatically in this service seems to be the point. “By giving TimesSelect access to existing print subscribers, the New York Times clearly is undertaking a defensive maneuver targeted at shoring up the daily newspaper's circulation against defections to the Internet,” he says.
Whether or not the Times is successful with this move will be a signal to other newspapers as to what they might try in charging for their content.
Read more about journalism and issues facing the profession at JPROF.com.
Mitch Albom's 'essentially accurate' standard
Abraham Lincoln began the Gettysburg Address with the words, "About a century ago, the dudes that started it all . . ."
Well, ok.
Those weren't exactly the words, but they are "essentially accurate." That's the standard that Detroit Free Press sportswriter Mitch Albom imposed upon himself in handling direct quotations for his column. Apparently, some of the editors at the newspaper were willing to live with that standard, too.
But that is not the standard that those of us who teach journalism want to pass on to our students. What we want is for our students to be meticulous in their pursuit of accuracy.More.
Read more about journalism and issues facing the profession at JPROF.com.
Well, ok.
Those weren't exactly the words, but they are "essentially accurate." That's the standard that Detroit Free Press sportswriter Mitch Albom imposed upon himself in handling direct quotations for his column. Apparently, some of the editors at the newspaper were willing to live with that standard, too.
But that is not the standard that those of us who teach journalism want to pass on to our students. What we want is for our students to be meticulous in their pursuit of accuracy.More.
Read more about journalism and issues facing the profession at JPROF.com.
The question of deception
When the Spokane Spokesman-Review recently exposed nefarious behavior on the part of Spokane's mayor, the newspaper used some deception in its reporting. The reaction of many editors would lead you to believe that "Thou shalt never deceive" is one of the most sacred of Journalist Commandments. But it's not. Deception isn't always a good idea, but it has a good history and support from one of the profession's major codes of ethics. More.
Read more about journalism and issues facing the profession at JPROF.com.
Read more about journalism and issues facing the profession at JPROF.com.
Grammar, Spelling, Punctuation and Dicton exam
When I taught at the University of Alabama, I would give a 100-question grammar, spelling, punctuation and diction exam to beginning writing students. The test was a difficult one, but students had to make at least a 75 on the exam to pass the beginning writing course offered by the College of Communication and Information Sciences. That exam is not available on JPROF.com, but the study guide developed for it is. This is an excellent primer on the basic grammar and spelling rules and concepts that a student should know.Read more about journalism and issues facing the profession at JPROF.com.
Web Journalism goes Chinese
Word came yesterday from publisher Allyn and Bacon that Web Journalism: Practice and Promise of a New Medium will be published in Chinese. The book has been in print for about a year and a half now and has been adopted as a text by more than 40 colleges and universities around the country. The Chinese publisher is Wunan Books of Taiwan, which describes itself as "Taiwan's leading publisher in the social sciences and humanities."Read more about journalism and issues facing the profession at JPROF.com.
Ethical lapses
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