The vast majority of Americans remember it as the day that an American president was assassinated. Only a few also remember it as the day that television news grew up. One of them was the young reporter seen carrying the camera on rare videotaped footage of the Channel 8 newsroom just minutes after the president…
It was a new, shocking, traumatic thing for Americans — who were used to getting their bad news from kindly gentlemen who filtered it for them and helped them digest the worst bits — to watch reporters, live on air, learning new details and reacting as they happened. First CBS Bulletin (at 10:45 into a…
Rather than permit photojournalists to shoot in the White House, the Obama administration prefers to issue official pictures taken by its own photographers. News organizations looking to illustrate events of national and global importance usually have no choice but to use the official photos, but the Associated Press says those photos are so staged and…
The New York Times reported “Many Flee Homes to Escape `Gas Raid From Mars’–Phone Calls Swamp Police at Broadcast of Wells Fantasy” and the story of the hoax is firmly embedded in the history books. But the reports of streets full of panicked citizens don’t hold up to scrutiny. There’s only one problem: The supposed…
What can parents do to minimize their children’s risk of being hurt or killed by poison or sharp objects in Halloween candy? How many children would you say die each year from eating poisoned candy (or candy with razor blades and such) each Halloween? Just two or three? Maybe only one every few years? In…
It: nailed. xkcd: Headlines. Similar:Waiting for a talk on preserving artifacts from NASA’s Apollo programVoiceover artist Gayanne Potter urging ScotRail to remove her voice from new AI announceme…Why Even Try if You Have A.I.? Now that machines can think for us, we have to choose wheth…The Missing Will, by Agatha Christie (WAOB Audio Theatre)'Most Transparent’…
Back in my grad school days, I was called a “run-of-the-mill programmer” by a brilliant IT genius. For a guy whose only computer coursework consists of a Pascal class in high school (“taught” by a math teacher who didn’t know the language, and checked my answers against those in the teacher’s manual), I still consider…
Have you heard the story about the lady who spilled coffee on herself and won millions of dollars from McDonald’s? Have you looked up the details on the story, or do you just know the story as a TV show punch line? Stella became a symbol for frivolous lawsuits and fodder for talk show hosts,…
Reporters have been sometimes fired for willful misconduct, such as repeated instances of plagiarism or fabrication. Reporters who’ve suffered that fate, such as the New York Times’ Jayson Blair and The Washington Post’s Janet Cooke, were guilty of gross journalistic malpractice. But firing a reporter over an unintentional mistake is “extremely rare,” said Scott Maier,…
In the Nightly Noodle Monthly, former North Adams Transcript journalist Isaac Avilucea posts this passage, which he says was removed from a sports feature that got him fired. But there’s a reason she’s not at MountGreylock anymore, choosing to transfer to a school with somewhat inferior academics and athletics. Part of it has to do with the stuffy social atmosphere that…
Similar:Waiting for a talk on preserving artifacts from NASA’s Apollo programWhy Even Try if You Have A.I.? Now that machines can think for us, we have to choose wheth…'Most Transparent’ White House In History Keeps Majority Of Trump’s Remarks SecretMicrosoft Publishes Garbled AI Article Calling Tragically Deceased NBA Player "Useless"The Big Boy GraveyardStop sharing those…
Beautiful, beautiful science writing by Dennis Overbye. The “God particle” became the Prize particle on Tuesday. Two theoretical physicists who suggested that an invisible ocean of energy suffusing space is responsible for the mass and diversity of the particles in the universe won the Nobel Prize in Physics on Tuesday morning. They are Peter Higgs,…
So what if every reader survey ranked international news coverage near the bottom of what people wanted to read? Didn’t they know our Africa correspondent had just won a Pulitzer Prize for international reporting? People needed international reporting even if they were too ignorant to recognize it, and we were determined to give it to…
The tweets in question were pretty mild. In my journalism class, we’ve been talking a bit about the value of having a thick skin and taking the high road. Here’s an example of what can happen in the real world. Stand-up comic Dan Nainan, a comedy club road warrior whose credits include performing for President…
Is it a violation of journalistic integrity to participate in an event you’re covering, or is it a powerful, creative technique for reporting an experience from the inside? I spend most of my time as a journalism instructor getting students to pick up the habits of objective reporting (including the convention of the reporter functioning…
As my own tenure decision loomed, in my darkest moments I consoled myself by noting that, even if I had been denied tenure, I would have spent most of my 20s studying what I love and most of my 30s drawing a steady salary teaching and researching what I loved, along the way managing, by…
The headline made me click the link, and the lead made me blog it. (I confess I didn’t actually read the story, because I doubt anything could live up to that kind of an introduction.) A crackpot Times Square performer who was once busted making anti-Semitic slurs while dressed as Elmo admitted Wednesday he tried…
Powerful, painful essay. Worth revisiting. In the picture, he departs from this earth like an arrow. Although he has not chosen his fate, he appears to have, in his last instants of life, embraced it. If he were not falling, he might very well be flying. He appears relaxed, hurtling through the air. He appears…
On October 2001, this thoughtful article appeared in the journal First Monday. This is a fascinating glimpse of the world before YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, before most people carried around digital cameras, when the home pages of Fox and CNN advised readers to turn on their TV sets for the latest news. Just as the assassination…
Brilliant. The combination of a looks-too-good-to-be-true video, the patina of respectability that comes when a TV talking head introduces the clip, and the internet as a means for spreading links illustrates just how easy it is to fool lots of people — including professionals who should know better. I did show the original video to…