A weblog for Pete Ellertsen's mass communications students at Benedictine University Springfield.

Wednesday, August 30, 2006

COM(M) 207, 221: Ethics, doctored pix

Here's a link to an Associated Press story about Katie Couric. It seems like somebody in the promotions department got a little carried away and Photoshopped about 20 pounds off a picture of the incoming CBS News anchor. Here's CBS' explanation:
Gil Schwartz, executive vice president of communications for CBS Corp., said Wednesday in a phone interview the photo alteration was done by someone in the CBS photo department who "got a little zealous."

But he dismissed any notion of heads rolling over the matter.

"I talked to my photo department, we had a discussion about it," Schwartz said. "I think photo understands this is not something we'd do in the future."
A couple of questions:

1. What are the ethical issues here?

2. What are the public relations issues for CBS News?

Print woes, Time Warner bottom line

There's an interesting story about Time Warner today in Slate.com, the online magazine launched by Microsoft Corp. and now part of the same group of media properties as The Washington Post, Newsweek and MSNBC. They're competitors of Time Warner's, so reading a Slate story about the competition is kind of like hearing what a Cardinals fan has to say about the Cubs. But it's still a good look at some of the bottom-line considerations of a media conglomerate.

As Slate's financial writer Daniel Gross explains it, Time Warner shows signs of being ready to sell off Time Inc. He says:
... Home to such powerhouses as Time, Sports Illustrated, People, Fortune, and InStyle, Time Inc. has always been regarded as a corporate crown jewel and probably America's greatest magazine publisher. But, while I can't claim inside knowledge, there are signs that the empire founded by Henry Luce—which began in 1923 as just a single magazine, Time—isn't exactly pinning its future on the periodicals business.

Time Warner is composed of five broad units, in descending order of size: cable, networks, filmed entertainment, AOL, and publishing. In a few of these units, the company has recently made bold long-term investments. The cable unit recently spent several billion dollars to acquire the assets and subscribers of bankrupt Adelphia. In early August, AOL announced it would offer free subscriptions to broadband users, sacrificing short-term cash flow from the dwindling core of dial-up customers in favor of potentially larger advertising revenues. Meanwhile, the networks business (TNT, HBO, etc.) in May spent $735 million to buy the half of CourtTV it didn't already own.

But publishing? That's another story. As the most recent earnings release shows, the magazine business accounts for less than 13 percent of revenues and operating income. In the first half of 2006, magazine revenues fell about 1.3 percent, while operating income fell 9.6 percent. Time Inc. is a monster business with truly impressive numbers. Its Web site notes that last year it had three of the top four grossing magazines, and seven of the top 25. Time Inc.'s properties (at least 145 magazines) alone account for about 23 percent of U.S. magazine advertising. Which is precisely the problem. The economy is slowing: Advertising for mass-market print publications is not going to soar in the coming year.

Friday, August 25, 2006

COM 150; Media convergence

Two interrelated trends we will follow in Introduction to Mass Communications are media convergence and the concentration of ownership of media outlets. To see how some of this plays out in the real world, go to the MSNBC.com website and take a look around. In another window, read the online Wikipedia encyclopedia's article "Concentration of Media Ownership". Then answer these questions. (Or try to. Some of them may now have good answers.) Post your answers to the Message Board. Here are some questions:

1. How does our textbook define "convergence?" Do you see examples of this on the website? Or does the website make you want to revise the definition a little?

2. How many different media or types of media -- e.g. newspapers, TV, magazines, etc. -- do you see represented on the website?

3. What is MSNBC's relationship to Microsoft Corp.?

4. Who owns MSNBC?

5. How many different editorial voices do you see represented? What do we mean by "editorial voice?"

6. Is this a good thing or a bad thing? For the different media? For the stockholders? For us as consumers?

We're not going to settle any of these issues today. In fact, I don't think we could even if we wanted to. Some of them we're going to keep coming back to all semester. I just wanted to pose them early, as we go over the introductory chapter in the text.

Wednesday, August 23, 2006

Trib gooses Chicago's foie gras ban

Chicago Mayor Richard Daley doesn't always talk in complete sentences. A trait that endears him to City Hall reporters in the Windy City, by the way. But does have a way with words. Which also endears him to reporters.

First, the quote from Daley. The issue: Chicago City Council's ordinance banning foie gras, a type of goose liver paste, on humanitarian grounds. Here's how today's Chicago Tribune set up the quote, about midway into the story:
Call it the City Council's foie gras faux pas.

The ban began with the outrage of animal rights activists, who cited the cruelty of force-feeding ducks and geese with tubes until their livers swelled to 10 times normal size.

But Tuesday brought an opportunity to goose the ban's proponents.

"Why would they pick this and not anything else?" Daley asked. "How about veal? How about chicken? How about steak? Beef? How about fish?"

If a foie gras ban is OK, Daley said, "all of a sudden, you can question any type, basically, anything that can be served in a restaurant. The poor snails and the mussels and the shrimp. I could go on and on. The lobsters."
Daley's quote was "billboarded" on page 1 (which means it was set in 16 - or 18-point type as an eye-catcher). But the Trib went all-out on the story. Starting with the byline, which shows how many reporters went fanning out from the Tribune Tower to talk to diners:
By Josh Noel, Brendan McCarthy and James Janega, Tribune staff reporters. Tribune staff reporters Michael Higgins, Gerry Doyle and Mickey Ciokajlo contributed to this report
Published August 23, 2006

Foie gras appeared on pizza on Archer Avenue Tuesday, complemented cornbread and catfish at a South Side soul food place, and was stacked on sausages like pats of butter at a gourmet hot dog joint on the North Side.

Chicago's immediate reaction to a city ordinance banning foie gras--the French dish made from the livers of force-fed ducks and geese--was to embrace the gray goo like never before, in flights of culinary imagination.

Rhetoric and pate abounded on the first day of the City Council's ban, as restaurateurs and gourmands openly flouted the prohibition -- cultured, giddy, goose-liver-fueled acts of defiance.

On Tuesday morning the Illinois Restaurant Association filed a lawsuit in Cook County Circuit Court seeking to overturn the ban, accusing the City Council of overstepping its authority.
All in all, it's a cute story. And I think Daley's quote is one of the best from a public figure since former President George H.W. "Poppy" Bush banned broccoli from the White House and Air Force One: "I'm President of the United States, and I'm not going to eat any more broccoli!"

Tuesday, August 22, 2006

COM 150: Comics on 9/11

Can a comic book do justice to a serious -- very serious -- government report on the 9/11 tragedy? Well, the electronic magazine Slate.com is excerpting The 9/11 Report: A Graphic Adaptation by Sid Jacobson and Ernie Colóna this week. Follow the link, read it and decide for yourself.

Questions to think about as you read it:

1. An NBC News reporter took exception to the comic book treatment of the tragedy, conventions like writing "POW!" in big letters to indicate an explosion, for example, and said it was insensitive. I'm not sure I agree, but it is an issue worth debating. Is the comic book format intrinsically sensationalized, insensitive and incapable of dealing with serious issues?

2. Isn't it kind of ironic for TV guys to complain about another visual medium for being too visual? Is the TV format intrinsically sensationalized and insensitive, too?

3. Are newspapers intrinsically ... etc., etc., etc. ... can you see where I'm headed with this?

4. Can we ever write up events in the media without being sensationalized and insensitive? The old police reporter in me says no. The old police reporter in me also says we need to lean over backwards to be sensitive to the victims of any crime, though. So in the end, I don't have a good answer to the question(s). I just think it's important to ask them.

LATER: The "Public Eye" blog put up by CBS News has a pretty good post on the issue today, with some of its own commentary and a link to an excellent story in USA Today. Here's the quote from USA Today:
Neither author nor illustrator calls the work a comic book, even if it uses a comic-book format, including sound effects: R-RUMBLE when the South Tower of the World Trade Center collapses, or BLAMM! when American Airlines Flight 77 crashes into the Pentagon.

It pictures scenes aboard the doomed planes and towers. But, [artist Sid] Jacobson says, "it's not a dramatization," unlike the movies World Trade Center and United 93. "It's the story of an investigation. ... It's graphic journalism."

Like the original 9/11 Report, the graphic version is less about one day in September 2001 than about what led up to it and the inner workings of government agencies, often at cross-purposes. When the report, by a bipartisan commission, was released two years ago, it was published in three paperback editions. It was praised for its criticism of government failures and nominated for a National Book Award.
And here's what CBS has to say about it:
Some people will never take this sort of effort very seriously and that’s fine because those are the people who have probably read the original 9/11 report. But if this graphic version reaches those who won’t pick up a seemingly dense, 500-plus page book and helps them understand the content, isn’t that worth it? As long as it provides an accurate version of the report, and the [9/11] commissioners seem to think it does, then more power to this “comic” effort.
Follow the links, and see the originals on the CBS Newswebsite and USA Today. Go to the Google News search engine, too, and see what other people have to say about it. Then make up your own mind.

Sunday, August 20, 2006

COM 150, COMM 207 -- good news-feature story

This one is about good reporting more than anything else ... but at least in newspapering, good reporting is good writing is good journalism is good reporting. It's a story in The Anchorage Daily News about flooding in Alaska's Matanuska-Susitna Valley. Look at all the details you just don't get unless you're at the scene, from the smell of wet dogs to the different kinds of boots the guys were wearing as they hustled their way out of the flood.

The story is by Joseph Ditzler, the ADN's Mat-Su editor. Here's his lede. See how it sets the scene and draws you in:
MOOSE CREEK -- The floodwaters had crested by midafternoon Saturday, but amazement ran at full surge.

A knot of locals clad in Carhartt pants, camouflage hunting jackets, ball caps and knee-high gumboots gathered on the plank-topped bridge where Petersville Road crosses Moose Creek. The creek tumbled and rolled beneath their feet, the color of wine mixed with rust, fast and angry.

The bridge was closed to wheeled traffic, barred by a flimsy screen of perforated orange plastic of the type common at construction sites.

There, pointed Ron Robbins, 64, who lives in a house atop a knoll nearby -- that's where the creek ran so hard and fast it washed the earth away from the piling, the very bridge foundation. A smell of creosote wafted up from the northeast piling, a stout piece of railroad tie surrounded by rushing water.

Don't know how they'll fix that, Robbins said.
I would have used quotation marks. But after reading the way the ADN handled it, I'm glad they didn't.

Throughout this passage, Ditzler captures the tone and cadence of common speech. But I doubt he was taking notes on that bridge. Here's my guess (and it's only a guess): It's a paraphrase, reconstructed from the reporter's memory. Hence no quotation marks. But it's an awfully good paraphrase.

Reporters move around a lot to get a story like a flood, which affects a lot of people over a wide area. Later, Ditzler interviewed several people at an emergency evacuation center. Here's how he handles one of the interviews:
At the Willow Community Center, 13 people had checked in as evacuees. Red Cross volunteer Rainey Miller said people started showing up at 1 a.m. Saturday.

Jerry Greschke, 62, arrived sometime after 7 a.m. He told his story in the center parking lot, still wearing the soggy snowmachine boots in which he beat a hurried retreat from his flooded home, a travel trailer. He steadied himself with one hand while standing in a pickup bed. With the other hand he grappled to slip a harness over his dog, Queen. A steady rain fell. The aroma of wet dog hung heavy.

"A million thumbs up for the Willow Fire Department," he said.

Members of the local fire station waded chest-deep through the backwaters of nearby Willow Creek to pull Greschke and two of his neighbors on Stinson Road to safety in an inflatable raft, along with their six dogs and a cockatiel named Dusty Rose.

"They had to make three trips," Greschke said.

The water was five feet deep and rising, he said. One volunteer firefighter, noticing Greschke lacked a life vest, gave Greschke his own.

"He gave me the life vest right off his back. Now, that's a hero," Greschke said.
Now, that's good writing. And good journalism.

Monday, August 07, 2006

Of WMDs, an IED and the Tooth Fairy

Half of adult Americans still believe Sadam Hussein's Iraq had weapons of mass destruction in 2003, according to an Associated Press story that's making the rounds in today's papers. Not reported was how many adult Americans believe in the Tooth Fairy, the Easter Bunny or all the different reasons, whatever they may be, advanced for the latest spikes in crude oil prices on world futures markets.

Said The AP's Charles J. Hanley, reporting on a public opinion poll taken last month:
The reality in this case is that after a 16-month, $900 million- plus investigation, the U.S. weapons hunters known as the Iraq Survey Group declared that Iraq had dismantled its chemical, biological and nuclear arms programs in 1991 under U.N. oversight. That finding in 2004 reaffirmed the work of U.N. inspectors who in 2002-03 found no trace of banned arsenals in Iraq.

Despite this, a Harris Poll released July 21 found that a full 50 percent of U.S. respondents -- up from 36 percent last year -- said they believe Iraq did have the forbidden arms when U.S. troops invaded in March 2003, an attack whose stated purpose was elimination of supposed WMD. Other polls also have found an enduring American faith in the WMD story.
Hardly surprising. Consider well more than half of adult Americans believed, equally erroneously, Hussein was somehow linked to the 9-11 terrorist strikes in America.

Hanley's lede is a classic feature treatment. He begins:
Do you believe in Iraqi WMD?

Did Saddam Hussein's government have weapons of mass destruction in 2003?

Half of Americans apparently still think so, a new poll finds, and experts see a raft of reasons why: a drumbeat of voices from talk radio to die-hard bloggers to the Oval Office, a surprise headline here or there, a rallying around a partisan flag, and a growing need for people, in their own minds, to justify the war in Iraq.

People tend to become "independent of reality" in these circumstances, says opinion analyst Steven Kull.

The reality in this case ...
Nice lede. It sums up the information, and it establishes a light tone that I think is appropriate for the subject matter. The often reported facts are as Hanley states them, and the reality is the Bush administration's claim of WMDs in Iraq was used as a pretext for invasion.

What's more interesting than the AP story, which I read on The Seattle Post-Intelligencer's website, was the array of opinions posted to the PI's "SoundOff" forum on the story. The first was posted by "Swiftsure" at 4 p.m. yesterday:
It just goes to show that people are easily deluded by propaganda against all evidence to the contrary.

The next, posted three minutes later by "High Desert Coug," took an opposite point of view:
He DID have WMD. This poll only shows that 50% of the people don't understand the news.

Remember when the insurgents used that VX shell as an IED?

Oops...VX is a WMD. You know, the WMD's that Saddam supposedly destroyed.

The 100% truth is that he had WMD's. He said he destroyed them all, and he didn't.

It's undisputed. The fact that 50% of the public DOESN'T believe it is to the credit of the liberal smear machine.
I'd forgotten about the VX shell, if I was ever aware of it, but a web search turned up a May 2004 story in Chemical & Engineering News, an organ of the American Chemical Society, about a leftover artillery shell used in an improvised explosive device that contained sarin, a nerve agent similar to VX. It was thought to date from before the 1991 Persian Gulf war.

At exactly the same time as "High Desert Coug" mentioned the old artillery shell, at 4:03 p.m., "theedge98074" weighed in with a blast at the mainstream media:
this is just another excuse to encite more anti-Bush retroic from everyone. Why don't you write what you want to write: "There are idiots out there who still believe that there were WMD's". Getting tired of this crap, we all know where you stand and you do not need to keep pressing it into our heads. And, in doing so, you are basically called people who do not agree with your view stupid.
I'd like to say the tone of debate in the PI's forum got more civil from there.

But it didn't.

Typical, perhaps, of one side was "Chantel," who posted at 4:20 p.m.:
Poor Coug. A shell, child, is not a WMD. See, it would have to have a rocket or some means of propulsion, plus the ability to affect a wide area (that's the meaning of "mass" in the phrase 'weapons of mass destruction') in order to qualify as a WMD.

Still, son, if it helps you - just keep believing. There is a Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy loves you, and there were WMD in Iraq. Believe, child, believe!
And so on in that vein, on both sides, through the night. Here's part of the thread posted in the wee hours:
Posted by vette_demon at 8/7/06 4:22 a.m.

I can't believe how hateful and arrogant you people are...it's sad.

Posted by Sirrider at 8/7/06 5:37 a.m.

I have to agree with vette_demon--you folks are generating a lot of heat, but very little light.
And that, I'd say, pretty well sums up the whole thread.

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About Me

Springfield (Ill.), United States
I'm a retired English, journalism and cultural studies teacher at Springfield College in Illinois (acquired by Benedictine University and subsequently closed). I coordinate jam sessions for the "Clayville Pioneer Academy of Music" at Clayville Historic Site and the Prairieland Strings dulcimer club, and I sing in the choir and the contemporary praise team at Peace Lutheran Church in Springfield. On Hogfiddle I post links and video clips for our sessions and workshops on the mountain dulcimer (a.k.a. "hog fiddle"), as well as research notes on folklore and cultural studies, hymnody and traditional Anglo-Celtic and Scandinavian music. I also posted assignments and readings in my interdisciplinary humanities classes. The Mackerel Wrapper (now on hiatus), carried assignments and readings for my mass comm. students. I started teaching b/log when I chaired SCI-Benedictine's assessment committee, and reopened it as the privatization of public schools grew increasingly troubling and closer to home.