Learning HTML

Instructors of web journalism classes face a dilemma in how much HTML they should teach or require that their students should know, especially since many of us use web editors (Dreamweaver, GoLive, etc.) or content management systems to produce web sites. There are occasions, of course, when some use of HTML is required even when you are using these tools. My approach is that students should be comfortable with the basics of HTML so they can begin to figure out the tags if it is necessary. To that end, I have developed a couple of exercises (exercise 1, exercise 2) designed to help student get inside HTML and understand what is going on with tags. Anyone teaching web journalism is welcome to use them. Let me know how they work.



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GoogleMaps mania

The ability of web site developers to put a customized GoogleMap on their web sites is creating quiet a stir these days, including a story this week on National Public Radio that includes an interview with Mike Pegg, creator of a GoogleMapsMania, weblog that tracks the use of GoogleMaps. The implications and possibilities of using GoogleMaps for web journalism are enormous. (Check out a GoogleMap of all the murders in Rochester, N.Y., in 2005 that was built by the folks at the Rochester Democrat & Chronicle.) Still, at present, GoogleMaps is intimidating because a knowledge of javascript is require. A beacon of hope has begun to shine, however. Mapbuilder.net, developed by Andriy Bidochko, gives us javascript-challenged users an easier way to get our custom-built maps onto our web sites.

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Academics, start your engines

It's that time of year again when we in academia have to gear up for the coming semester. If you're one of those, maybe JPROF.com can help.

The syllabus for the course I am teaching in web journalism this semester at Emory & Henry College is located on this site. Anyone who is interested can take a look. A few supplemental materials are there now, and I will be developing some other materials -- tutorials, handouts and the like -- as the course continues, and I will be putting those on this site as well. (If you have any suggestions or materials that you would like to share, please let me know.).

In addition, if you are looking for ideas for lectures or discussions with your classes, JPROF has plenty. For introductory classes in mass media or journalism, go to the syllabus for this course and you will find links to lecture notes on the following topics: news, newspapers, books, magazines, radio and television.

There are also discussion starters and notes for some of your other journalism classes, including
• Simple words
• Wordiness
• Clichés
• Verbs of attribution
• Accuracy

There is also the ever-popular Rules for Using Commas in both HTML and PDF form. 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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Inside a cartoonist's mind

Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Jim Borgman is giving us a fascinating peek inside the mind of the editorial cartoonist with his new weblog, BorgBlog. Borgman is posting not just some of his cartoons but some of his sketches and his thoughts about how particular cartoons develop. The site currently has three versions of the cartoon he drew about the West Virginia coal mining tragedy, showing how he decided on where to place the miner's wife. In addition, Borgman includes a variety of sketches, some of which turn into cartoons and some of which remain as half-formed ideas. This is a wonderful site for those of us who envy the skill and the power of the editorial cartoonist.

(Thanks to Jonathan Dube at Cyberjournalist.net for pointing usin the the direction of Borgman's weblog.)

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Another aspect of immediacy

One of the five characteristics of the web -- identified and explained in Web Journalism -- is immediacy, the ability to post information quickly. With the growth of the blogosphere, this charactertistic has taken on another aspect: the ability of people to pass information around quickly, even if it isn't true and doesn't make sense. Frank Ahrens, in his Washington Post Web Watch column, has a good example. He cites the case of what happened to Wal-Mart last week.

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The First Amendment -- it protects lobbyists, too

With the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal story dominating Washington, one of the cable news shows earlier this asked its viewers to go online and vote on the question of whether or not "all lobbying should be banned." The question was both silly and stupid -- and maybe even a little dangerous. Nobody likes "lobbyists" or the amounts of money that go along with their modern activities, but lobbying is what the Founding Fathers meant when they wrote a protection in the First Amendment for the right to "petition the government for redress of grievances." This right of petition is one five the First Amendment gives us (religion, speech, assembly, and press are the others), and it's a pretty important one because it is a right extended to everyone, not just lobbyists. We should remember that before we go tossing it away.

Update. Washington lawyer Jan Baran has an excellent piece about this topic in today's Washington Post. The article has a bit about this history of lobbying in Washington. (Posted Jan. 8. 2006)

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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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