Journalism: June 2008 Archive Page

Fantastic narrated slide show on the impact of drugs on a community. Striking black and white images, with an equally powerful interface. (Brenda Ann Kenneally.)

Editor and Publisher:

The newest version of the Associated Press Stylebook is available, and if you follow it, "WMD," "iPhone" and "anti-virus" are in, while "barmaid," "blue blood" and "malarkey" are out. Those are just some of the changes to its rules for certain often-used phrases and words. There are also new acceptable forms of describing the Sept. 11 attacks, and a different rule for use for "African-American."

Via the Reeves Library weblog, which recently also announced the discovery of a bit of journalism history and a letter found on what should have been a dark and stormy night.

This one makes the o'l head spin... here's the background. NBC journalist Tim Russert dies at work; NBC holds off on reporting the news until the family can be notified.  Someone who works for the company that supplies internet access to NBC updates the Wikipedia entry for Russert before NBC breaks the story. Scandal? Innocent mistake? Just cause for termination? (Silicon Alley Insider)

According to the NYT, the person who updated the Wikipedia entry 40 minutes before NBC reported it worked at Internet Broadcasting Services, a company that provides web services to TV stations including NBC affiliates. IBS says a "junior-level employee" changed the Wikipedia entry to reflect Russert's death because he or she thought it was common knowledge. When NBC discovered the entry--and freaked out about it--someone else at IBS deleted the date of Russert's death and changed all of the verb tenses back. And then IBS took care of the employee. NYT:

An I.B.S. spokeswoman...added that the company had "taken the necessary measures with the employee and apologized to NBC." NBC News said it was told the employee was fired."

Fired?

If the employee learned the news because NBC was officially distributing it to affiliates under embargo, that's one thing (the firing would be appropriate). If the employee heard about it unofficially, however, from friends at NBC or I.B.S., then the firing was outrageous.* UPDATE: An NBC exec disputes the NYT report, and says the IBS employee was merely suspended, temporarily. We'll update if we can confirm.

It's one thing for a news organization to decide to delay reporting news of a staffer's death out of deference to his or her family (this makes sense). It's another for the organization to expect other organizations to follow the same policy. And it is yet another thing for someone to deliberately strike accurate facts from a collective record to appease an upset client, which is what someone at IBS apparently did.

NYT:

For newspapers, the news has swiftly gone from bad to worse. This year is taking shape as their worst on record, with a double-digit drop in advertising revenue, raising serious questions about the survival of some papers and the solvency of their parent companies.

Ad revenue, the primary source of newspaper income, began sliding two years ago, and as hiring freezes turned to buyouts and then to layoffs, the decline has only accelerated.

In contrast to the way things are going in the outside world, our print newspaper has been growing steadily since I arrived.  The quality of the articles, the physical size of the paper, and the number of issuses per year have all increased.  The traditional journalism skills the students learn while producing the print paper translate well into academic studies, but the end result is that they're being prepared for the jobs that are disappearing as journalism continues to move online.

That's not to say that students aren't exposed to new media. They blog in every one of my English/journalism classes, we've had students interning with web CMS and video production,  and I teach at least the basics of Flash.  But so far, each time I have presented students with the opportunity to expand either the print or the online publication, the momentum has ended up favoring the print side. 

I'm hoping to be more active in the online paper this fall, tying more class assignments into the technical and conceptual work that goes into maintaining the online paper, so that the small online staff can focus on innovation and quality improvement, rather than simply duplicating the print paper online.

New media skills continue to be in demand, there's a strong market for editors and technical writers, and journalism is not disappearing.  I'm hoping this fall to make the Setonian Online more central to the students' perception of what counts as valuable professional development.

Wish me luck!

Inside Higher Ed:

Student newspaper advisers are something of an endangered species these days. They often get caught in the middle when administrators and student journalists clash over content, and in more than a few cases on college campuses in recent years, advisers -- sometimes faculty members with tenure or tenurelike protections, but often vulnerable staff members -- have found themselves losing their jobs. (High school newspaper advisers are even more vulnerable.)

"All you have to do is look around the country to see how many conflicts there are," said Mark Goodman, the Knight Chair of Scholastic Journalism at Kent State University and former executive director of the Student Press Law Center. "This has really gained steam."

It was with several recent such controversies in mind, and numerous instances of censorship at high schools in California, that the state's Legislature overwhelmingly approved legislation this month that would prohibit a college or school district from firing, suspending or otherwise retaliating against an employee for acting to protect a student's free speech. Last week, with the measure, SB 1370, sailing for passage and a trip to the governor's office for Arnold Schwarzenegger's hoped-for signature, the University of California quietly revealed its opposition to the bill.

In a letter to State Sen. Leland Yee, the legislation's sponsor, a lobbyist for the university system "respectfully" warned Yee that the university did not expect to abide by the requirement if it was enacted.

Although the First Amendment doesn't apply to Seton Hill because we are a private institution, I'm happy to work under an administration that upholds the principle of academic freedom.

I was busy at the Hypertext '08 conference these past few days, so only now am I following up on the AP vs. Bloggers story. According to NYT blogger Saul Hansell:

one key issue is the A.P. wants to protect the headline and first paragraph of its articles. He suggested that this will put The Associated Press in direct conflict with bloggers. "If AP's guidelines end up like the ones they shared with me, we're headed for a Napster-style battle on the issue of fair use," Mr. Cadenhead wrote on his blog.

Although The A.P. wouldn't talk to me, several people I interviewed who have spoken to A.P. executives this week said the organization appears to be internally conflicted and has not yet been able to come up with a clear fair-use position.

But unless something changes, Mr. Cadenhead's experience indicates that The A.P. is going to assert a much stricter interpretation of fair use than most people on the Internet are used to.

Inside Higher Ed raises an interesting question. If a student paper learns that sensitive information in an unprotected computer file, and then writes a story about it, how should the administration react after learning the paper still has a copy of that protected information? Here's what happened at Western Oregon University:

In a letter sent to university officials late last week, the College Media Advisers Board of Directors condemned the university's response to a student newspaper article published in September. The story revealed that sensitive information about student applicants, including their Social Security numbers and grade point averages, had been left unprotected from public view.

In response to the article, university officials rifled through the newsroom in search of a copy of the computer file containing the sensitive student information. The paper's adviser also lost her job amid the furor, and a student was disciplined for copying the file and violating university policies designed to protect private information.

The board, which represents student newspaper advisers, denounced the university's "lack of understanding of basic journalism principles and ethics." But in detailing its dissatisfaction with the university's actions, the board also offered help.

The university punished the student reporter for making a copy of the file that the university was responsible for protecting, which sounds like shooting the messenger. Was it necessary to copy the entire file in order to write the story?  Hm... I might have taken a few screenshots -- just enough to back up the story. The interim adviser blames the fired adviser:

"Her firing was entirely justified," said Yehnert, an English professor. "She was a terrible media adviser all the way around."

Want to quote 5-25 words from an AP story? That'll be $12.50.  ($7.50 for non-profit or educational use.)  The AP has published a form that details the cost of an "Excerpt for Web Use" license.

The AP has a right to discourage people from posting the full content of articles online, just as you or I retain the copyright to our own writing (unless we explicitly give those rights away).  But to charge money even for brief quotations is to reject the Section 107 of the Copyright Act -- known as the "Fair Use Exception." 

§ 107. Limitations on exclusive rights: Fair use

Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 106 and 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright. In determining whether the use made of a work in any particular case is a fair use the factors to be considered shall include--

(1) the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
(2) the nature of the copyrighted work;
(3) the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and
(4) the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.

The fact that a work is unpublished shall not itself bar a finding of fair use if such finding is made upon consideration of all the above factors.

Note that copying an entire book (or song, or movie) in order to avoid purchasing it is not "fair use."  Showing a clip from a movie in class, or posting quotations from a novel to back up a review or literary research paper, are all covered by "fair use."

Access to the words of public officials, as reported from various news sources, is an important part of the democratic process.  A candidate being interviewed on ABC should be able to quote from what an opponent said on NBC, and someone who calls in on a CBS show should be able to quote from what a guest said on CNN. The Fair Use Exception recognizes that anyone engaging in "criticism" or "comment" should have the same the ability to quote brief passages from published materials.

This morning in my mail I found an attractive printing of the proceedings from a January summit on journalism. All in all, this is a good print document that suffered when it was shoveled online.

I have no idea what kind of time constraints or "it came to the boss in a dream so do it that way or else" loopiness might have been facing the webmaster at carnegie.org or whoever else was charged with putting this document online.

Nevertheless, the journalists who shared their experience and insights with the Carnegie Corporation deserve an online venue that avoids the n00b mistakes that I teach my college freshmen to recognize.

Here's an excerpt from the introduction, by Vartan Gregorian.

Perhaps now more than ever, in this "age of anxiety," of globalization, conflict, non-stop opinion and an overwhelming info-glut, we need objective observers and reporters to help us distill the onslaught of events, data and information into knowledge and wisdom. It is in that connection that we should be able to look to the press to assist us in answering the telling questions asked by T.S. Eliot: "Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?"

Eliot's query speaks to the "Home Depot-ization" of so much of the news that we interact with these days. The proliferation of online sources of news and opinion along with cable stations and an extraordinary, seemingly depthless supply of print and electronic sources of specialized, compartmentalized information means that one can pick and choose among the issues one wishes to be exposed to. That may be fine, up to a point and certainly, it is everyone's right to pursue their individual interests and concerns, but if all an individual chooses to know about or understand is tailored around his or her particular notions or points of view, such narrow vision may well leave them seriously under-informed about national and international affairs that deserve their attention in order to be a knowledgeable and active member of our participatory democracy.

I didn't attend the summit, but its focus -- on the relationship between journalism and democracy, on the value of journalism as a vocation that benefits society -- is one of my favorites.  I was very pleased last year when on the final exam, my journalism students were able to recite four of the five rights guaranteed by the First Amendment. (Yes, five out of five would have been better, but they only got an average of 3.5 of the five passengers on Gilligan's Island.)

The website that goes along with the printed report is a good example of what happens when the information in a print document is shoveled online, without appropriate consideration of how differently people approach knowledge acquisition online.

The website was obviously put together as an afterthought -- it's clear that the "real" document is, in the mind of the organizers, the print document.  As an institution, journalism -- and the knowledge it contains and the wisdom it hopes to impart -- won't last long if that mode of thinking prevails.

The line between blogging and journalism is fuzzy, and bloggers have been sued for making statements that a trained journalist would know not to make. The Society of Professional Journalists offers training sessions for bloggers who want to know what journalists know.

People are practicing journalism through blogs, Web site production and interaction with sites maintained by mainstream news organizations. They are contributing to the world's 24/7 news cycle, making it easy and accessible for more of us to be in the know.

The Society of Professional Journalists believes the world benefits from more news coverage, not less. Through its Citizen Journalism Academy, SPJ seeks to help everyone wanting to practice journalism to do so accurately, ethically and fairly. The Society aims to help participants understand how responsible practices could increase their reach and help them have strong journalistic reputations within their communities and around the world.

"Florida, Florida, Florida," wrote Tim Russert on his famous whiteboard during the 2000 presidential election.  In know the news cycle is moving on to other stories by now, but it's a shame we'll never know what he would have done for Election 2008. (Previously.)

An excerpt from the book Grand Theft Childhood, which is being marketed as a message to parents that video games aren't the problem. As one of several supporting points, the artists argue in the following passage that it's not videogames that teach teenagers to think of the world as a place where violence and fear are normal:

Parents don't generally think about news as harmful to children, or that children even watch news programs. But surveys show that children and teens watch TV news regularly; sometimes, they just happen to be in the room when an adult turns the news on.  A child who sees a lot of violence on television, whether it's Law & Order reruns or news programs, is more likely to see the world as a scary place with lurking dangers far out of proportion to reality. But realistic depictions of violence, such as those on the news, are thought to be more likely to scare or desensitize children. As one child told us, "In video games, you know it's fake."

Given that older children and teens believe that news represents reality, and that TV news programs increasingly show graphic or sensationalized violence, there is a real risk of harm. Parents can help by keeping track of their kids' exposure to TV news, and helping them put it into context--for example, that stories get on the news because they are rare, and that events on the news--whether it's losing your house to a tornado or winning the lottery--are not likely to happen to them.

Research on television coverage of war shows that children of different ages are upset by different aspects, with younger ones more bothered by the visual images and teens by the complex issues, such as morality and justice, that are raised by news events.

In the business of journalism, there's a saying -- "If it bleeds, it leads."  That's a somewhat cynical recognition of the attention that people play to unusual things -- car crashes, school shootings, and plane wrecks. And visuals -- such as security camera footage, a chase seen through a police officer's dashboard camera, a journalist clinging to a telephone pole as a hurricane blows in from the ocean -- make good TV, because the images speak to our emotions.

TV is all about making an emotional connection with the viewer, but it's so one-sided.

Is too much weather bad for our children?  Coming up, we'll have a LIVE report from our own Slick Goodhair, who is outside, facing the weather, so that you can stay safe in your homes. He'll tell you the three simple ways you can save your family from the effects of too much weather. We'll also have a preview of a made-for-TV movie about a family that didn't trust their local TV journalists enough, went out into the weather completely unprepared, AND DIED! But first, these messages from our sponsors, who also don't want you to die. Have we mentioned lately that the internet is scary, that TV and movie stars are your only true friends, and that because we love you so much, and you've been so obedient good to us, we'll show you footage of adorable puppies!  Tonight! Live footage of yellow police tape at a completely deserted site where some event ended 12 hours ago!  Anchors infusing even the most routine story with tension and drama! Verbs disappearing from TV newscasts!  Present participles taking their place! Grammarians continuing to investigate!

Okay, I'm exaggerating. Television projects a distorted image of the world, in which the only thing that matters is being on TV... but there's a significant sliver of good, in that today's young people who watch The Daily Show or the Colbert Report, are at least familiar with comic riffs on the news.  And they can post their own opinions on blogs or on YouTube.

Now, much of this self-published material is dreck, but I'd rather my students create drek -- and learn from the process -- than passively absorb only what the media elite decide is worthy of attention.

I watch less and less TV these days, and more and more YouTube.  Of course, much of the content of YouTube is excerpts of footage from TV shows, or DVDs... when I heard the news that Harvey Korman had died, it was great to view some of my favorite clips of his performances on the Carol Burnett show and Blazing Saddles. The availability of archival material on YouTube let me put together my own retrospective clips show, drawing from material that fans of Harvey Korman had already decided to post online.  Composing my own personal playlist is an exercise in interpreting, evaluating, and re-contextualizing material that was created for a business model that favors linear distribution and passive consumption.

George Lucas, who recognized how much Star Wars fans wanted to participate in the universe he created, organized a short film contest.  Joe Straczynski, creator of Babylon 5, posted on the internet every step of his creative journey towards building a science fiction series that played a huge part in revolutionizing the way science fiction stories are told. Now, practically every SF series works each individual episodes into a season-long arc, giving hints and planting clues that online fan clubs dissect and argue about. Of course, the soap operas have been doing this for decades. And even Paramount Pictures, which has a reputation for not being nearly as welcoming of fan interest in Star Trek, has in recent years given the OK for fan-produced amateur shows (some of them even involving the orignial actors).  I'm far more interested in what online communities do with TV than in the TV itself. 

Gonzalo Frasca touched on a crucial difference between video games and linear drama when he pointed out "Hamlet's dilemma would be irrelevant in a videogame, simply because he would be able 'to be' and 'not to be'" ("Ephemeral Games")  The creators of Peacemaker took useful advantage of this feature of the medium, encouraging players to role-play the leadership decision of both Israel and Palestine, in order to explore the depths of a complex and multifaceted environment. 

In games in general, I really appreciate that illusion of player agency -- when I know the PC so well that I willingly choose options that I might not necessarily choose myself, but which I know are likely to advance the story in a direction that supports the goals of my PC.

But I'm really blogging all this in order to point out how important it is to cast your net widely when you do research.

The prevalence of TV, and the prominence of TV journalism in the construction of a network's public identity has also burned into my memory some events that would have had little impact on my life if I hadn't happened to be watching them on TV, such as the US Federal assault on the Branch Davidian compound, the OJ Simpson verdict. And whenever I'm back in the Washington D.C. area and catch some of the local news, I'm reminded of how easy it is to tire of hearing about yet another drug-related shooting, yet another protest on the Mall, and yet another example of incompetence or scandal in the D.C. local government.

But my criticism of shallow local TV news shouldn't be extended to the international gravitas associated with the power of TV to provide an emotional message that unites.  I'm thinking of the American coverage of the JFK assassination and funeral, the Apollo 11 moon landing (my mother took a photo of the TV set, and I grew up looking at it in my photo album) and my own memory of watching the launch of the first space shuttle, scuds being fired in the first Gulf War, and footage of the World Trade Center's demise.  Someone has to be out there covering routine events, filling the airwaves with something or other in between the momentous occasions that make TV journalism really shine, and the reporters who can manage to tell a good story while also maintaining their credibility as journalists have my respect and admiration.

I haven't read Grand Theft Childhood yet, and I'm not confident that a few isolated quotes are sufficient to counter the findings of researchers who identified correlations between playing violent games and increased displays of aggression. I welcome the introduction into the memestream a popular discussion of videogames that challenges assumptions that I often see perpetuated in TV journalism.  Yet I note with some distress that the book is so usefully organized to supply "So there!" soundbites to defenders of videogames.

Schneier on Security:

Since 9/11, there has been an increasing war on photography. Photographers have been harrassed, questioned, detained, arrested or worse, and declared to be unwelcome. We've been repeatedly told to watch out for photographers, especially suspicious ones. Clearly any terrorist is going to first photograph his target, so vigilance is required.

Except that it's nonsense. The 9/11 terrorists didn't photograph anything. Nor did the London transport bombers, the Madrid subway bombers, or the liquid bombers arrested in 2006. Timothy McVeigh didn't photograph the Oklahoma City Federal Building. The Unabomber didn't photograph anything; neither did shoe-bomber Richard Reid. Photographs aren't being found amongst the papers of Palestinian suicide bombers. The IRA wasn't known for its photography. Even those manufactured terrorist plots that the US government likes to talk about -- the Ft. Dix terrorists, the JFK airport bombers, the Miami 7, the Lackawanna 6 -- no photography.

Here's a great idea to annoy your online readers while generating ad impressions.  Take a random idea, come up with about 10 examples, find random stock images to illustrate the examples, and put one idea on each page, to force readers to click through each one.

Boston.com has a collection posted under the title "Business Galleries."  The advice in one, "Saving for College," is interesting, but the random stock photos of people using laptop computers added exactly nothing to the value of the article, and splitting it across multiple pages is just insulting. I feel exactly the same way when the TV news uses two 15-second "teases" ("Coming up after the break: Are America's children learning enough about what celebrities wear to their parole hearings?") for a 60-second story.  TV is about making an emotional impact, and when the news is trivial, you can get more bang for your buck by making the same shocking point three times, rather than putting all that time together to explore the issue in more depth.

Someone must feel that sprinkling tiny nuggets of content across multiple pages is worthwhile, though I'm always angry at the designer for making a deliberate choice that forces me to click, click, click.  I have ad-blocking software installed, so I never even see the ads anyway.

I can understand putting one photo per page if the photos are compelling enough to keep the reader clicking through the whole narrative, but come on. I'd rather see a random Flickr image than a generic stock photo.