Journalism: October 2008 Archive Page

The Christian Science Monitor plans major changes in April 2009 that are expected to make it the first newspaper with a national audience to shift from a daily print format to an online publication that is updated continuously each day. CSM

This paper doesn't offer the typical flighty, bloggy online chatter that tends to dilute the value of online journalism. The print world's loss is the online world's gain.

Some award-winning sports journalism. Filing it away for future reference.

Blogging this to assign for my students to read when the current unit is over.

Not surprisingly, the Web serves the first function of a local paper exceptionally well. They deliver information instantly, and articles can be updated and corrected in real time. What is surprising, though, is the unfortunate and neglected condition of most student papers' Web sites. The average site has a clunky layout, sloppy design and little-to-no attention to color schemes or aesthetics. Many sites are a muddled array of hyperlinks, with uncategorized articles strewn every which way. Graphics are poorly sized. Fonts are dull. Multimedia is ignored.

All of these flaws are shocking when one realizes that Generation Y, the most tech-savvy ever born, maintains and codes these sites. Yet their designs are, excuse my snarkiness, very 1990s. But worse than my aesthetic objections is my philosophical gripe: Most student papers' online content essentially mirrors the print content. They are updated daily or weekly, only in conjunction with the print paper. Such an organization suggests a clear prioritizing of the physical newspaper -- a mistake that the professional news media, by and large, began to correct a decade ago. -- Brian Farkas, Inside Higher Ed

A few weeks ago, my editors were bummed when I pointed out that an unusually large number of typos had slipped through the proofreading net and popped up in the headlines.  For the most recent issue, the headlines were fine, but I found three typos in bylines.

So the student paper isn't perfect. Even Homer nods, and sometimes, so does The Gray Lady.

In this NYT article, the focus is on Cindy McCain's relationship to congress, not her wealth, so shouldn't that be "Capitol"?
I asked the student editor not to try to place the blame on any one person, but rather to work towards a culture where more people take responsibility for checking the paper for errors. 

We've added an extra issue each semester, so the students are under more pressure, yet the quality of their journalism has remained high. 

I'll just keep asking them to work on polish and AP style. (We'll be fine.)

I'm saving this for the next time I talk to my journalism students about surveys. Language Log.

Do you think surveys asking for people's opinions about the way things are, rather than verifiable things they have done, are an even more extreme form of stupidity, resulting in nonsense like "43% of employees believe managers may be snooping on them" being passed off as news or even social science?

__ strongly agree __ sort of agree __ utterly undecided __ hardly care __ sort of disagree __ strongly disagree

Does it sometimes occur to you to just refuse to do any more surveys until the morons who make them up show some signs of getting their act together?

__ strongly agree __ sort of agree __ utterly undecided __ hardly care __ sort of disagree __ strongly disagree

A journalism student at NYU published a Generation Y-ney piece on PBS's MediaShift.

The first thing I notice when I walk into the class is that there are 14 girls and two boys. Already NYU is dominated by females, but the journalism department is exceptionally estrogen-infested. Professor Quigley begins by explaining how blogs are becoming more imprtant and asks if any of us have a blog.

One hand slowly rises. It's mine. (Alana Taylor)

It's certainly... interesting to have a student publicly evaluate a class in this manner, after the class has been in session for a few weeks.   While she is careful to distance her essay from a personal attack on her professor, she complains about the old-media stance of the course, and the program as a whole. Based on the scarcity of student bloggers in this particular classroom, it seems to me that the professor is pitching the class at the right level -- though the generic term "blog" is far less familiar to today's teens than branded bloglike entities "Facebook" or "MySpace." 

My former student, Amanda Cochran, now a grad student at NYU, reacts to Taylor's piece.

Like Taylor, I am one of the only bloggers in my graduate school class, and I'm looked upon as a novelty. As many of my readers know, blogging was an important part of my undergrad experience. We were on the cutting edge of journalism (and still are) at Seton Hill -- as it would seem in light of this report. I know about blogging. I know what I need to do to write a good blog. This ability has enhanced my resume and, more importantly, my understanding of online media and its direction. However, it is true that few other students do know about blogging and its ramifications on their future careers.

Okay, so Taylor made a point. So what? She has done much more harm than good to her career by this stunt. Taylor, looking oh-so-Facebookish in the picture posted with the piece, did invade her classroom, as cited by NYU professor Quigley. However, more importantly, no matter if she isn't a traditional journalist or not, she violated a journalistic tenet of disclosure to her subjects for a completely unworthy assignment. If I were an employer, I would think twice before hiring her -- and that's enough in this competitive business to stay unemployed. (Amanda Cochran)

Taylor had planned to write a follow-up for MediaShift, but editor Mark Glaser did so instead.