Ethics: July 2007 Archive Page

Until the eigth school in the list, they've only included schools with a few students which means that any large percentage drops or gains are not strange at all, but expected. To put them on the "Biggest Metro Math Losers" (what kind of name for a table is that anyway?!) is simply poor reporting.

I'm sure the editors would think a reporter insane for doing the same thing for the baseball box scores: "Mauer was 2 for 4 on Tuesday, but only 1 for 5 on Wednesday. That's a 30% drop!" --IB --Newspaper Reporting (Three Standard Deviations to the Left)

The big problem here, as IB notes, is that the article in question deals with a very small pool of students, so that normal fluctuations in the numbers look like huge drops and gains. (Thanks for the suggestion, Josh.)

First Amendment lawsuits by student journalists at public universities become moot when the plaintiffs graduate, according to a decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit. --Scott Jaschik --Loss for the Student Press (Inside Higher Ed)

That sounds very disturbing.

The power class was buzzing around in the sky, watching the ruination of someone's life way down below - making buckets of cash by broadcasting someone else's tragedy, then - WHAM - the real bursts into their own life, they become the live tragedy - but we're still viewing the whole thing through the lens of a t.v. camera. How tragic and fascinating. --Baby_Balrog

I'm sad for the deceased. I'm sad for their families. I wish someone had used some good judgment at some point to prevent such a tragedy. | I'm also hoping it leads to less of this kind of "content" on the news, but recognise how futile that hope is even as I type it. --batmonkey --''This may be the end of this thing...'' (MetaFilter)

From comments posted on MetaFilter's coverage of today's midair helicopter crash in Phoenix.

A string of publishers failed to spot blatant plagiarism of one of English literature's most famous authors, in a cheeky test to see if she would have secured a book deal today, a report said Thursday.

David Lassman, head of the Jane Austen Festival in Bath, sent manuscripts to 18 editors seeking a publishing contract, using only slightly disguised versions of chapters from the iconic novelist's most famous works.

But only one publisher spotted the fakes, which included perhaps the most famous line in all English literature, the opening sentence of her 1813 work "Pride and Prejudice".... which he renamed "First Impressions".

"Thank you for your recent letter and chapters from your book 'First Impressions'. It seems like a really original and interesting read," wrote Penguin. Harry Potter author J. K. Rowling's agents Christopher Little said they were "not confident" of being able to place the work.

The only editor to spot the ruse was apparently Alex Bowler of Jonathan Cape. --AFP (Yahoo | AFP (will expire))

This story illustrates the level of attention paid to the "slush pile" -- the flood of unsolicited manuscripts that entry-level editors sift through. The editors would have had to take the extra time to write a personalized rejection letter, and my guess is that even the editors who noticed the prank didn't feel motivated to take that extra time.

Interest in ombudsmen has increased in response to all the polls showing that readers do not hold newspapers in particularly high regard. This problem is hardly a novel one. Similar circumstances led Ralph Pulitzer to establish a Bureau of Accuracy and Fair Play at his New York World in 1913. According to a 1916 issue of American Magazine, Pulitzer had become concerned about the increasing blurriness between "that which is true and that which is false" in the paper. He had reason for concern. One of the questionable practices uncovered by the bureau's first director, Isaac D. White, was the routine embellishment of stories about shipwrecks with fictional reports about the rescue of a ship's cat. After asking the maritime reporter why a cat had been rescued in each of a half-dozen accounts of shipwrecks, White was told, "One of those wrecked ships had a cat, and the crew went back to save it. I made the cat the feature of my story, while the other reporters failed to mention the cat, and were called down by their city editors for being beaten. The next time there was a shipwreck there was no cat but the other ship news reporters did not wish to take chances, and put the cat in. I wrote the report, leaving out the cat, and then I was severely chided for being beaten. Now when there is a shipwreck all of us always put in a cat." --Cassandra Tate --What do ombudsmen do? (Organization of News Ombudsmen)

The Goldmans own the copyright, media rights and movie rights. They also acquired Simpson's name, likeness, life story and right of publicity in connection with the book, according to court documents.

The Goldmans want to rename the book "Confessions of a Double Murderer" and plan to shop it around, Cook said. --Victim's family buys rights to O.J. Simpson book (CNN | AP)

An interesting twist in the story. This is the book that had been titled If I Did It.

While the Internet still retains some of the "wild wild west" feel, increasingly Internet activity, and particular blogging, is being shaped and governed by state and federal laws. For US bloggers in particular, blogging has become a veritable land mine of potential legal issues, and the situation isn't helped by the fact that the law in this area is constantly in flux. In this article we highlight twelve of the most important US laws when it comes to blogging and provide some simple and straightforward tips for safely navigating them. --12 Important U.S. Laws Every Blogger Needs to Know (Aviva Directory)

Via Steven Krause.