The center of gravity has shifted

The web has pretty much rendered obsolete the adage that says you should never pick a fight with a man who buys ink by the barrel and newsprint by the ton. Today there is less fear and frustration with the news media on the part of those outside the profession, and there is more willingness to take issue with the decisions of reporters and editors. The web has given those who believe they have been mistreated a forum and a voice -- and it is forcing the redefiniton of the relationship between reporter and source. Katharine Seelye has an excellent article about that this week in the New York Times.

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Want it to last? Draw, don't write

A review of Clifford Connor’s A People History of Science in the New York Times this past weekend has this observation:

A great moment in the history of science was the publication of Andreas Vesalius's anatomy book, De Humani Corporis Fabrica, in 1543. What made the book a triumph wasn't the Latin text Vesalius wrote but the 420 illustrations. He never took the trouble to name the artists he'd hired to draw them. Nobody has ever translated the whole of Vesalius's text into a modern Western language; the illustrations have stayed in print from that year to this.

The review was written by Jonathan Weiner.

Illustrators, even anonymous ones, can have a great impact on their audience – and this is a prime example of just that.

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Censorship, pure and simple

It is sad, frustrating and infuriating when you see people who should know better acting in ways that are just not very intelligent. That was the case this past week with the high school principal and school superintendent in Oak Ridge, Tenn. The principal confiscated copies of the school newspaper before they could be distributed because she objected to the subject of a couple of the articles in the current issue. She did not point to any errors the articles had made. She simply didn't think her students needed to know about birth control.

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Staying in the background

That's where reporters like to be when they are covering the news. Becoming part of a story inevitably changes the story and destroys the reporter's position as an independent observer. Michael Bamberger, golf writer for Sport Illustrated, found himself in the untenable position of becoming part of the story when he was covering golf phenom Michelle Wie at a golf tournament this weekend. A columnist for the Washington Post says he should not have done what he did; a columnist for the Los Angeles Times says he should have done it earlier. And there might be a third option.

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Miller, New York Times finally open up

Judith Miller and the New York Times have finally published accounts of the controversy that landed Miller in jail for 85 days this summer. A careful reading of them leads you to believe that Miller went to jail because of a misunderstanding between her lawyers and those of Lewis Libby, chief aide to Vice President Dick Chaney.

But there are other questions that the accounts raise. This one, for instance:

Why was Judith Miller parsing the quality (voluntary, not voluntary, etc.) of the release of the confidentiality pledge that she received from her source? Obviously, it wasn't voluntary. Think about it.

Matthew Cooper did not have any problem with whether or not Lewis Libby's release had been "voluntary."

Miller's stance on this question adds an undue burden on a reporter. Reporters are not responsible for the situations sources may find themselves in. And how are they to tell is a release is "voluntary"?

Miller's decision to protect her source was the right one. She had pledged confidentiality, and she needed to honor that. When she was released from that pledge, that should have ended it.

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The odd odyssey of Judith Miller

New York Times reporter Judith Miller got her Get Out of Jail card last week, but her release wasn't exactly free. She had come to an agreement to testify after being released from her confidentiality obligation by her source. And she has had to endure some pretty stinging criticism from fellow journalists who have questioned her motives. The bigger question -- and one that David Ignatius raises in his column in the Washington Post -- is where were the Times editors in all of this?

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Notes: accuracy, wordiness, clichés, etc.

Looking for ideas for lectures or discussions with your classes? JPROF has plenty. For introductory classes in mass media or journalism, you will find lecture notes on the following topics: news, newspapers, books, magazines, radio and television. There are also a variety of discussion starters and notes for some of your other journalism classes, including

• Simple words
• Wordiness
• Clichés
• Verbs of attribution
• Accuracy

There's lots more on JPROF.com. If you can't find what you want, use the search function, or drop us an email and tell us what you need.



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NOLA.com saves lives

Hurricane Katrina and the flooding of New Orleans has produced many fascinating stories, one of which is chronicled in an Online Journalism Review article by Mark Glaser on NOLA.com, the companion web site of the New Orleans Times-Picayune. It is a "companion web site" because Newhouse Newspapers, which owns the T-P, made the corporate decision a number of years ago to develop web sites as separate entities from their newspapers. It is a system that has drawn much criticism, but in this situation it may have produced at least one advantage. NOLA.com editors had developed an expertise in creating and operating public forums -- something that other newspaper-run web sites have lagged far behind in doing. That expertise is being credited with saving the lives of many people trapped by the flood in New Orleans.

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What's wrong with TV news?

The aftermath of Hurricane Katrina has given the 24-hour cable news channels just what they need – lots of pictures and storylines to follow. But the story has also exposed the weaknesses of cable news, and Jack Shafer, media critic for Slate.com, has taken the opportunity to make a list of some of the things he hates the most.

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Shafer and Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post have written good summaries of how some reporters dropped their cloaks of objectivity and became advocates for the victims during their coverage of Hurricane Katrina last week.

• Shafer, The Rebellion of the Talking Heads
• Kurtz, At Last, Reporters’ Feelings Rise to the Surface



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Daily Egyptian hoax

Just a few minutes on the telephone -- that's all it would have taken in 2003 on the part of a reporter for the Daily Egyptian, the student newspaper at Southern Illinois University, to save himself hours of work and some major professional embarrassment for himself and his colleagues two years later. The student newspaper has been the victim of a hoax. It could have been prevented had somebody on the staff followed the simple reporter's dictum: Check it out.

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Ben Franklin, printer

Because of several recent excellent biographies and a PBS series, America is being re-educated about the most remarkable of all the Founding Fathers, Benjamin Franklin. The man was many things during his long life: inventor, scientist, civic innovator, diplomat. What he wanted to be known as, however, was "printer." His Apology for Printers, written in 1731, is an eloquent statement of the role printer should play in disseminating information and ideas. It makes excellent reading even today. (The entire apology can be found on this web site.)

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John Roberts, grammarian

He may be a conservative ideologue or a moderate (or even a liberal!) in right-wing clothing, but U.S. Supreme Court nominee John Roberts has been outed as grammarian. An article in the New York Times this week (In Re Grammar, Roberts's Stance is Crystal Clear) says that after a review of thousands of pages of Roberts' briefs and memos, one thing is certain: he is a precise user of the language and demands the same precision of others.

The article describes his obsession as wryly humorous and occasionally sarcastic. Grammarians everywhere (conservative, moderate and liberal) can take comfort. More




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