Mount St. Mary’s president fires two faculty members, one with tenure

Mount St. Mary’s fires two faculty members. One was tenured professor charged with lack of loyalty. The other advised student newspaper that recently exposed president’s quotes about “drowning bunnies.” […] Last month The Mountain Echo, the student newspaper, revealed the debate over retention strategies and Newman’s quote about needing to view students as bunnies to…

When Asking the Question is Part of the News Story (New Example: Clinton Supporters)

I ask my journalism students to avoid using the phrase “When asked about…” as a default transition in news stories. While they are taught in freshman comp classes to introduce their quotes and then explain the significance of the quotes, to a journalist that’s just filler. This story from the Daily Mail (a UK publication…

The Chronicle of Higher Education Announces Plan to Limit, Curate Comments

By 2016, the terrain has shifted. Publications of all stripes are re-examining what it means to engage with their audiences and to encourage productive conversations. Quite a few of those conversations — including ones about our work — have already moved to social media. Many publications have played down comments or eliminated them altogether; others…

Is There a Santa Claus?

Update, Dec 2020:   We take pleasure in answering thus prominently the communication below, expressing at the same time our great gratification that its faithful author is numbered among the friends of The Sun: Dear Editor— I am 8 years old. Some of my little friends say there is no Santa Claus. Papa says, “If…

CNN Holds Morning Meeting To Decide What Viewers Should Panic About For Rest Of Day

Kicking around ideas ranging from an uptick in child kidnappings to a new link between laptops and cancer, senior CNN staffers held their regular daily meeting this morning to decide which topic viewers should panic about for the rest of the day.  —The Onion Similar:AP wins reinstatement to White House events after judge rules government…

The Post drops the ‘mike’ — and the hyphen in ‘e-mail’

When I announced these style changes, another Twitter user wrote, “wait, it’s 2015 and there are still people who write e-mail?” Not everyone is on Twitter, of course. For every online Post reader snickering at mike, there might be a longtime print subscriber baffled by mic. Because it would be impractical to edit each article separately…

Smith College Protesters Bar Journalists From Covering Sit-In Unless They Support the Cause

Reporters planning to cover the sit-in arrived at the Massachusetts college’s student center on Wednesday only to find that the protesters intended to keep them out. Alyssa Mata-Flores, a Smith senior and a sit-in organizer, elaborated on the decision to The Republican: “We are asking that any journalists or press that cover our story participate and articulate…

Most Christians don’t actually care about Starbucks cups. Here’s what we do know.

No Christians in my social media feed care about the design of that cup. Lots of people in my social media feed have reposted stories critical of the silly Christians who get all worked up about the design of the cup. Full disclosure: I don’t drink coffee. [C]ontrary to a few breathless media reports, most Christians…

Every Post-Game Press Conference (Weird Al)

Similar:AP wins reinstatement to White House events after judge rules government can’t bar its jou…By Inferno's Light #StarTrek #DS9 Rewatch (Season 5, Episode 15) Dominion / Cardassian edg…In Purgatory's Shadow #StarTrek #DS9 Rewatch (Season 5, Episode 14) Garak's answers a code…My crowd simulation handles 2000 capsule NPCs at 130fps. I’m really pushing my coding skil…The…

‘NPR Voice’ Has Taken Over the Airwaves

  In literary circles, the practice of poets reciting verse in singsong registers and unnatural cadences is known, derogatorily, as “poet voice.” I propose calling this phenomenon “NPR voice” (which is distinct from the supple baritones we normally associate with radio voices). This plague of pregnant pauses and off-kilter pronunciations must have come from someplace.…

Journalism students guiltily ignoring the “no electronic devices” note in the program during Fall Convocation

That moment when you see a dozen or more of your own journalism students guiltily ignoring the “no electronic devices” note in the program so that they can livetweet Honors Convocation. Similar:AP wins reinstatement to White House events after judge rules government can’t bar its jou…This morning I awoke to YouTube’s live footage of crowds…

Details matter in journalism.

Get the brand of the beer, the make, model and year of the car and the name and breed of the dog. Here’s a great story that suggests journalists also “get the brand of the bra.” Similar:AP wins reinstatement to White House events after judge rules government can’t bar its jou…The Dog and the Oyster…

When Is Asking the Question Part of the News? (Rarely.) 

We mostly only encounter the phrase “when asked about” in reporting, so when students start writing news reports, they tend to gravitate towards that phrase in order to signal to the world, “I am doing journalism now.” In truth, journalists use that phrase only in very specific circumstances, when omitting it would give a distorted impression of the truth.…