Updates on kidnapped BBC correspondent

Alan Johnston, a correspondent for BBC News (the British Broadcasting Corp.), who abducted March 12 in Gaza, has been reported alive and in good health, although he is still being held, apparently by Palestinian militants.

The BBC has posted an online petition to its website and asks that weblogs consider demonstrating their support for Johnston, and the BBC, by linking to their website by pasting this button into their blogs:



I am more than happy to do so. And since The Mackerel Wrapper is a blog for journalism students, I highly recommend that you click on the button. It will take you to "a page on the BBC News website which has more information about Alan's situation and gives any of your blog's readers the chance to add their names to the petition."

COMM 209, 317: Newspaper ethics and child porn

Here's a riddle for you:

Q. What's worse than accusing a newspaper guy of downloading kiddie porn onto a newsroom computer?

A. Running a story about it without contacting him first to comment on the accusation.

Read all about it in Jim Romenesko's industry blog on the Poynter Insititute website. It's called -- what else? -- "Romenesko," and its "daily fix of media industry news, commentary, and memos" is must reading for news junkies.

Today's blog has several stories on the child pornography story, which apparently grows out of a longstanding labor dispute in Santa Barbara, Calif. Scroll down to the headline, and link, that says, "Roberts blasts News-Press' "defamatory" computer porn story." There are stories linked from The San Francisco Chronicle, The New York Times and local papers in Santa Barbara.

Open another window, go to the Society of Professional Journalists' website and see which canons of the SPJ Code of Ethics come into play here.

Here's another one. You won't find it in the SPJ code, but here's something working journalists have done for years and years. You can refuse to have your byline put on a story. Sometimes you have to. I wonder if that's what's happenening with the anonymous story in yesterday's paper.

COMM 209, 150: The future of newspapering?

Today's Washington Post has some letters to the editor about the future of the newspaper industry. Plus the paper's responses.

Tim Dudenhoefer, a reader in Silver Spring, Md., suggests:

... Stop publishing The Post.

First, it would save paper. Even recycled paper still needs to be processed, packaged and shipped; that costs money and puts cars on the road.

Second, quiet presses do not use fossil-fuel-generated electricity.

So it goes, for two more points. Dudenhoffer concludes: "So, when can we expect you all to shut your doors for the good of the planet?"

His reply comes in an Editor's Note: "We're giving your wisdom serious consideration. This may be your last newspaper.

Another reader, Cory Correll of Germantown, Md., says "you have a lot of nerve suggesting folks use less paper when you make a living printing on all the paper you do! Hypocrite! Why don't we just move back into caves, use candles and walk everywhere?"

Finally, Ellen McGee of Severna Park, Md., writes:

Newspapers can be a friend to the environment. When finished reading the paper, 10 pages of the paper, with hay over it, provide a very effective, organic and inexpensive mulch. Water is retained, and the weeds don't grow. Your feet lie on soft hay, and you don't get dirty.

Which led The Post to post (no pun intended) this note: Sorry, Mr. Dudenhoefer , Ms. McGee has persuaded us to continue publishing The Post.

COMM 209, 150: Those NBC videos of the Va. Tech slayer

This week's mass murder at Virginia Tech has raised some painful issues of journalism ethics, most recently the broadcasting Wednesday night of portions of a video made by Cho Seung-Hui, just before he shot and killed 30 people at Virginia Tech.

Media critic Jack Shafer of Slate.com, who in my opinion writes well and almost always displays good judgment (two traits not always found together in media critics), focuses not on the video clips but on TV's repeated airing of them:

NBC News needn't apologize to anybody for originally airing the Cho videos and pictures. The Virginia Tech slaughter is an ugly story, but the five W's of journalism—who, what, where, when, and why—demand that journalists ask the question "why?" even if they can't adequately answer it. If you're interested in knowing why Cho did what he did, you want to see the videos and photos and read from the transcripts. If you're not interested, you should feel free to avert your eyes.

The real story here is the odd restraint NBC News showed. Cho mailed NBC News about two dozen QuickTime videos, of which the network has aired only a handful. NBC anchor Brian Williams said last night that the network is also holding back Cho photos, as well as Cho writings it deems incoherent and obscene. It seems to think that it's protecting viewers by rationing Cho material while at the same time it reruns the already released video indiscriminately. (I wonder if Fox News would be so circumspect if it were sitting on a stockpile of fresh Cho. Actually, I don't really wonder.)

I suspect the networks stopped the Cho reruns in an effort to pre-empt criticisms that they are 1) needlessly upsetting people and 2) inspiring potential copycat killers. As a practical matter, I'll bet they were having a hard time getting the families of the murdered to talk to them as long as The Cho Show was running.

I find it hard not to agree with that. I also find it hard not to enjoy -- probably a little too much -- his digs at Fox News. Shafer adds:

Cable news reruns are usually defensible because nobody but invalids—and perhaps TVNewser—watches the stations around the clock. Viewers dip in for five minutes here, 15 or 30 minutes there, and then flit away. Few notice how much recycling goes on.

When a major story like Virginia Tech breaks, viewers linger, wanting to know more. There's nothing wrong with that expectation. But having committed to going wall-to-wall with the Cho murders, the networks are too cowardly to tell viewers that only 30 minutes of essential Cho story exists, and that viewers should feel free to turn their sets off after they watch that much. Instead, the networks added soy extender and sawdust to inflate 30 minutes of solid news into a six- or seven-hour marathon.

Another viewpoint was taken by the chief news editor of CBC, the Canadian Broadcasting Corp., who explained why he downplayed the killer to focus more on the people who were killed:

Overwhelmingly, the focus of our CBC coverage on radio, television and online has been on the victims and the many important issues which flow out of this tragedy.

Have we identified the killer? Yes, but not in a central way. In fact, on Tuesday, CBC.ca held back using the photograph of the killer for several hours because it would have displaced pictures of the victims. When it was used, it was in a secondary place. A similar restraint was evident on The National.

All of CBC’s news services avoided use of speculation and any coverage that could be interpreted as ‘glorifying’ the act. And overall, the quantity of the coverage on CBC Newsworld and elsewhere was reduced after the initial hours.

COM 150: Branding, NBC News and a mass murderer

A very thought-provoking piece in today's Chicago Tribune by media columnist Phil Rosenthal. I think he's overstating the case a little, but here's what he says about NBC's airing of the video of the Virginia Tech slayer who shot 30 people to death this week:

NEW YORK -- So now when the world thinks of Virginia Tech gunman Cho Seung Hui, armed and glaring at the camera, forever embedded in the gruesome memory will be the NBC News logo.

Complete with the NBC peacock, in all its multicolored glory.

I'm not sure the American public has that great an attention span. But Rosenthal has a legitimate case to make. Here's his case:

While NBC News on Thursday withstood a furious backlash from viewers incensed that it would give a platform to a mass murderer, others in journalism circles say they, too, would have presented some of the same materials if Cho had sent his package to them. Accordingly, Cho's video and images ran elsewhere on the air and cable, in print and on the Internet.

But at NBC's request, the rantings and Travis Bickle poses of Cho's "multimedia manifesto," as "NBC Nightly News" anchor Brian Williams dubbed it Wednesday, had NBC's logo slapped on them. On other networks, it was Cho and NBC News. On cable, it was Cho and NBC News. On the front page of The New York Times, it was Cho and NBC News.

What an odd thing to want to have associated with one's brand.

And that's why I'm posting Rosenthal's story to the blog for COMM 150. The issues raised by broadcasting the video have been ably discussed elsewhere. But Rosenthal raises the issue of branding.

Was it good brand management for NBC News to slap its logo on the segments it released to other media?

I don't know. (Although I think if it were me, I would ask the other nets to use the logo and hope they had the good taste to pull the image when it crossed a line between news and gee-whiz graphic arts.) It's a hard call to make.

Here's how the networks -- including NBC's anchor Williams -- reacted to the controversy over airing the video. Followed by Rosenthal's reaction to their reaction.

All three network newscasts Thursday night prominently reported the backlash against coverage of the Cho video that they all had aired the night before. But, by midday Thursday, NBC and the others had begun judiciously scaling back their use of the material.

John Moody, Fox News Channel executive vice president for editorial, for example, issued a statement saying there was "no reason to continue assaulting the public with these disturbing and demented images," but he also reserved the right to run the footage again if events warranted.

"It was a new and newsworthy element of the biggest story of the day, the week and, I hope, month," Moody said in an interview. "I think it was legitimate to run it for a while, while it added new information to the story."

And CBS News boss Sean McManus said it would have been unsound journalistically not to air the video excerpts initially, but his network intended to back off in a hurry.

"The news organizations have an obligation to do it, but also have an obligation to be sensitive to what it does to the victims' families," he said. "The one thing that I do think is important is to not overuse it. … We're not going to air it unless it's absolutely necessary to advance the story."

Williams, in his Thursday blog, said he understood why people might be upset with NBC News.

And in truth, NBC is no more responsible than any other media outlet that carried Cho's video and pictures. But putting its peacock on those images binds the messenger to the message.

I still don't know. You decide.

COMM 209: Va. Tech links

Just a couple of links here to stories on the shootings at Virginia Tech. Just a samp[ling to facilitate class discussion.

Read this first. Jack Shafer, media critic for Slate.com, tells why reporters have to ask those inhumane, unfeeling questions when tragedy strikes. Then hit the back key or follow the link below for another insightful piece in Slate.

Online communication and tragedy. How students at Virginia Tech -- and elsewhere -- used interactive social networking sites to stay up with the news, and more importantly, communicate with people affected by the massacre.

Link here to the website of The Collegiate Times, the school paper at Virginia Tech. An excellent collection of preofessional caliber deadline writing.

Also a couple of stories from Editor & Publisher, the trade magazine for (well, the title says it, doesn't it?) editors and publishers in the newspaper business.

A feature of a nearby daily's social networking site in Blacksburg, Va., home of Virginia Tech. The website, called BickLickU.com, is a project of The Roanoke Times. Interesting in its own right as an example of a newspaper reaching out to a younger demographic.

An E&P interview with the editor of The Collegiate Times. The kids not only kept up with the major media but ran circles around them in covering a very difficult story.

An E&P story on blog coverage by The Roanoke Times and the Virginia Tech school paper. It also mentions blogs put up by The New York Times and the Washington Post.

COMM 317 -- final exam -- first part

In class tonight (Tuesday), I gave out copies of the first part of the final exam as I said I would. For those who failed to attend class, I have posted the final to the message board linked to my faculty page at http://www.sci.edu/classes/ellertsen/facultypage.html ...

Part 1 of the final is due in class Tuesday, April 24, and I will give you five short-answer questions in which you identify a term and tell its significance to journalism, mass communications or your future career. The final and all late class work are must be turned in Tuesday, April 24. There will be no exceptions to this requirement.

Ethics -- good story in the Trib today

Today's Chicago Tribune has a story about an ethics prof at Chicago's DePaul University who writes a column for not-for-profit agency professionals. He's Woods Bowman, who teaches at DePaul and writes a column called "The Nonprofit Ethicist" for The Nonprofit Quarterly magazine. Bowman, who used to be an Illinois state legislator, know about ethics where the rubber hits the road in the real world, and I think he's got some interesting things to say about it.

In a previous incarnation, I knew him as state Rep. "Woody" Bowman, D-Evanston. He once sat down with me and told me exactly how lawmakers' higher ed appropriations get divvied out. He's the only guy who ever explained it to me so it made sense. He left the legislature 15 years ago. Says reporter Charles Storch of the Trib:

"The Nonprofit Ethicist" has fielded questions on matters such as donated art kept in an ex-director's home; jobs doled out to relatives or pals; spouses on the same board; donations used for staff parties; charity auction conflicts; and church thrift shop volunteers who set aside the good clothes for themselves.

"When it comes to ethics, nothing is penny ante," Bowman replied to that thrift shop's overseer in a 2006 column. "You never know where small ethical lapses might lead."

When he is not being a moral compass, Bowman teaches graduate students in a DePaul program that prepares them for careers in non-profits or government. In his office in the Loop, the lean, bald and bearded Bowman explained his approach to the advice column.

"A lot of it is just basic logic, understanding what people's obligations are in particular situations and being true to those obligations," he said.

He added, "Very often, ethical problems are choices between two things that are good in and of themselves, but they conflict and you can't do both at the same time. Right versus right, or the lesser of two evils. The situation shouldn't have occurred in the first place, but you have to make a decision."

After he left the legislature, Bowman worked for then-Cook County Board President Richard Phelan during the early 90s and joined DePaul in 1996. He also paid his dues working with Chicago's Goodwill Industries, trying to straighten out financial irregularities. He wasn't successful, but it taught him a lot about non-profit agencies:

Bowman's Goodwill experience confirmed many of his beliefs about non-profit governance: Problems often can be traced to boards that do not have much turnover and put too much faith in a chairman or executive director. Bad boards often put the needs of individuals above those of the community the charity serves.

As for executive directors, he observed, "Good management requires technical skill as well as ethics. You can fail to be a good manager because you are incompetent. But if you are ethically incompetent, you are almost always a bad manager."

So in the end, it gets back to ethics. In fact, I think that's where the rubber hits the road.

COMM 209 -- Iraq parliament bomb -- color story

A gripping story by Sudarsan Raghavan of The Washington Post on the bomb blast in an Iraqi parliament cafeteria yesterday. Read it carefully for the way it's put together. The lede puts us as readers right at the scene:

BAGHDAD, April 12 The bomber blew himself up no more than a few yards away. First, a brilliant flash of orange light like a starburst, then a giant popping sound. A gust of debris, flesh and blood threw me from my chair as if I were made of cardboard.

I was lying on a bed of shattered glass on the floor of the cafeteria in the Iraqi parliament building, covered with ashes and dust. Small pieces of flesh clung to my bluejeans. Blood, someone else's, speckled the left lens of my silver-rimmed glasses. Blood, mine, oozed from my left hand, punctured by a tiny shard of glass.

"Are you okay? Are you okay?" asked Saad al-Izzi, one of The Post's Iraqi correspondents, standing over me, his face framed by an eerie yellowish glow, his voice distant. I did not reply.

It's a model piece of deadline writing.

Note the use of descriptive detail. Instead of saying people left half-eaten lunches on their trays, Raghavan notes a lot of them were eating chicken. Look for images that appeal to the physical senses, the sound of people stepping on glass, the feel of dust in your mouth. Not a lot of adjectives. (More than I like, but still not a whole lot too many!) Direct quotes. As you read down, Raghavan will quote from the tape recorder he inadvertently left running during the blast.

Raghavan's story is a sidebar, a story that runs to the side of the main story and throws more light on a related angle. In this case, what it was like to be there. The main story, by the way, is called the mainbar. What else would you call it? To see how the sidebar and mainbar fit together, follow this link to the front page of The Post's website. The sidebar is off to the left (or was at 7:34 a.m. Eastern time*), under a picture that shows people running from the cafeteria. The mainbar, headlined Attack Is Worst Strike in Protective Green Zone," is on the right, the first of four Iraq war stories stacked in what is traditionally the slot for the most important story in a daily newspaper. A "tease" (summary of what's inside) under the head gives the news:

Iraqi legislator says new Baghdad security plan is "dead" after apparent breach leads to bombing that kills eight, injures 23 in parliament cafeteria.

The sidebar only supplements it by giving color. But the color story tells what it was like to be there. That's important.

_________________
* By the time we look at these stories in class at noon today, The Post's website will have gone through at least a partial redesign. So the links, photos and page layout may or may not still be there.

COM 209, 317: Ethics, libraries and Katie Couric

In the news this week is an online essay by CBS News anchor Katie Couric. Well, uh, let's make that attributed to CBS anchor Katie Couric. Turns out the essay was plagiarized, and CBS has egg all over its face. The essay was about kids and libraries, and much of it was taken word for word from The Wall Street Journal.

Nice timing, huh? Just as we're reading the Missouri Group's chapter on ethics.

Here's Howard Kurtz, media columnist for The Washington Post:

In an Editor's Note posted online and distributed to CBS stations, the network said "much of the material" in the library commentary came from Journal columnist Jeffrey Zaslow, "and we should have acknowledged that at the top of our piece. We offer our sincere apologies for the omission."

What made the ripoff especially striking was the personal flavor of a video -- now removed from the CBS Web site -- that began, "I still remember when I got my first library card, browsing through the stacks for my favorite books."

Kurtz is a good reporter. If you're interested in the news media, you ought to get in the habit of reading him anyway. He doesn't tell us about plagiarism. He shows us plagiarism:

Much of the rest of the script was stolen from the Journal. Couric said: "For kids today, the library is more removed from their lives. It's a last-ditch place to go if they need to find something out."

Zaslow wrote in March: "The library is more removed from their lives. It's a last-ditch place to go if they need to find something out."

Couric said: "Sure, children still like libraries, but books aren't the draw."

Zaslow wrote: "Sure, there are still library-loving children, but books aren't necessarily the draw."

And so on, and so on. Enough to make the point crystal clear.

A later story by the Reuters news agency explained how it happened:

Although the text for the minutelong video was written in first person -- introduced by Couric with the line "I still remember when I got my first library card" -- Couric did not compose the piece herself and was unaware that much of it was plagiarized, Genelius said.

"She was stunned and very upset," Genelius said Wednesday. "It's the same reaction we all had."

* * *

Genelius said Couric met with a group of producers weekly to discuss upcoming topics for her "Notebook" video essays, and "she does write some of them herself."

"Sometimes the text is written by the producer," she added. "That's the way television generally works. It's a very collaborative medium."

Maybe a little too collaborative.

What are the ethics of plagiarism? That's easy. There aren't any. But what are the ethics of having anonymous staffers write stuff for a news anchor? (Disclaimer: When I was doing public relations for an elected state official, I wrote "by-liner" pieces that went out over his signature.) What are the ethics of anybody's writing anything under somebody else's name?

COMM 317: Oral presentations April 17

Here are the guidelines I gave you Tuesday night in class.

Your presentation will be 3-5 minutes long. It can be very informal. I do not want a summary of your term paper. Instead, briefly address the following points:

1. What did you expect to find out when you started your research? In other words, what was your research question and/or preliminary hypothesis?

2. What did you find out? What was your final thesis? How did you modify your hypothesis in light of the evidence you found?

3. What surprised you? I mean really surprised you? If research is a cut-and-dried academic exercise, it isn't worth doing.

4. Tell us something interesting that will wake us up. If it relates to the main point(s) of your research -- or to No. 3 above -- so much the better!

I'm serious about this business of surprise.

This emphasis on surprise I got from the late Donald Murray, Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial writer for The Boston Herald and longtime writing teacher at the University of New Hampshire. In 1984 he wrote in College English (link is to excerpt in the online JSTOR archive): "My students become writers at that moment when they first write what they do not expect to write. ... Writers value the gun that does not hit the target at which it is aimed." Murray liked to explain that cultivating the ability to be surprised is linked to discovery and to creativity. He's right. It is. But there's another reason, as well. Life is just too short to waste your time on what you already know.

Here's a link to BenU course descriptions

Here, just to save us from those lengthy, agonizing and all-too-often unsuccessful efforts of mine to find communication arts course descriptions in Benedictine University's online catalog, I'm posting a link to my blog. I plan to also link the communications course list to my blue faculty page.

COMM 317: Philosophers -- links

Here's a good summary of utilitarianism, Jeremy Bentham's and John Stuart Mill's philosophy of ethics that calculates whether an action does the greatest good for the most people or not.

COMM 317: Questions for April 10

Read the articles, etc., linked below on plagiarism and copyright. Then answer these questions ... post them as comments to this blog entry.

1. How is plagiarism in school different from plagiarism in the workplace? How is it the same?

2. How is plagiarism similar to copyright infringement? How is it different? What ethical issues are raised by plagiarism that are not by copyright infringement?

3. How would Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill have analyzed the case of former business columnist Stephen H. Dunphy of The Seattle Times? How would Immanuel Kant have analyzed it?

4. What specific steps can you take to ensure against inadvertent plagiarism in your own writing?

COMM 317: Plagiarism for grownups

Plagiarism isn't just for schoolkids! Professional writers can do it, too. And without meaning to. In fact, usually they don't mean to when they do it. Just like in school, huh? Here are some links to bring you up to speed on how it happens, why it happens and what it leads to. Firing, typically. But not always.

Here are some links to fill you in on the basics.

Roy Peter Clark, senior writing coach at the Poynter Institute, a newspaper think tank in St. Petersburg, Fla., has an overview of plagiarism. Clark says the consequences are serious, "with malefactors suffering all kinds of fates, from suicide to firing to, strangest of all, consignment to the copy desk."

To the copy desk? That's where news stories are checked for errors. Last place in the newsroom I'd want someone who can't keep his sources straight.

"Thank you, Mr. Fox, you are now in charge of the henhouse," says Clark.

Clark links to a 2004 story in The Seattle Times, about how alert readers tipped the paper on a plagiarized business column and how management smoked out the writer (who is no longer working for The Times). It should be pointed out he was a 37-year veteran of the news business, and his plagiarism does not appear to have been intentionally dishonest.

Clark's piece on plagiarism is a survey titled "The Unoriginal Sin." (Great title!) And it appeared in Washington Journalism Review in 1983. After citing several examples, Clark wrote:

Almost every newspaper I have consulted offers an anecdote about serious plagiarism. I have heard of editorials copied word for word from The New York Times and government handouts. I have heard, but have not been able to verify, stories about a managing editor at a small paper who routinely plagiarized stories from newsmagazines, stole a whole series from a larger newspaper and even stuck his name over the work of his own reporters. Such a man might have inspired Samuel Johnson's famous piece of sarcasm: "Your manuscript is both good and original; but the part that is good is not original, and the part that is original is not good."

Plagiarism in newspapers (ethical plagiarism, that is, not the violation of copyright, which is a legal question) is more common than imagined and in many cases escapes detection. Most cases are cloudier and less spectacular than the ones cited above. Like defensive pass interference in football, they may be blatant or accidental, but they always deserve the yellow flag.

Two important points here. One is that plagiarism is a question of ethics -- some would say moral values -- rather than law. If the words involved are under copyright, then it becomes a legal question too. But the basic problem is one of ethics.

The other important point is that plagiarism by professional writers is not usually intentional. Clark said it grows out of the way journalists go about their business, the way we do research:

Part of the problem is that all good reporters compile, borrow and assimilate. "Writers do not read for fun," writes T. S. Garp. They read for work. They borrow juxtapositions, images, metaphors, rhythms, puns, emphases, structures, word orders, alliterations and startling facts. They store these in their memory banks and in their commonplace books [notebooks of quotations that people used to keep as sort of a writer's journal]. Months later these words emerge in a new context and with personal meaning, having become their own.

Journalists, like scholars, write within a climate of ideas, ideas that fly from newspaper to newspaper like migrating birds. The hardworking and curious reporter explores each new idea and collects everything on the landscape. But embedded in these good habits are dangers, for both the unprincipled and the undisciplined.

There is a lot in Clark's description that I recognize in my own writing. I don't keep an old-fashioned commonplace book. Instead, like many professional writers, I clip stories, or print them out, and put them in what I call a "swipe file." Clark speaks of "ethically ambiguous practices that go on each day in newsrooms." He doesn't mention swipe files. But doesn't that name speak volumes? Why do I call it a "swipe" file and not an "inspiration" file or even a "commonplace" file? There are plenty of other ambiguous practices, too.

And there are some good ways to guard against them. One, Clark says, is to check out what you see in the clips. Always. Even your own clips. Says Clark:

Plagiarism is a substitute for reporting [I would say a poor substitute]. A reporter who assumes the accuracy of information in the clips or in wire stories or in textbooks is living in Cloud Cuckoo Land. Of course, reporters consider the source of information and are always fighting the clock. But to the extent that they depend upon the work and words of others, they distance themselves from events and people and create an environment for inaccuracy. Important mistakes, especially when they turn up in usually reliable sources of information, become fossilized in the clips. ...

COMM 150: Let's make a hypertext link

Are you Web savvy? Or for all you know, do you think HTML might be a short-order cook's abbreviation for a ham sandwich with letuce and tomato? Here's an exercise designed to give you a taste of HTML. (OK, OK, you read the assigned chapter, and you already know HTML stands for hypertext markup language. Right?) Anyway, today we'll create a hypertext link on The Mackerelwrapper blog, taking advantage of a feature of Blogger that lets you use simple HTML tags in the comments field.

First a little backrgound:

HTML tags come in pairs. There are a few exceptions to this rule, but 99 percent of the time you have to use them in pairs. The first consists of angle brackets -- the "less than" (<) and "greater than" (>) signs you remember from math class -- around a code. And the second consists of a "less than" angle bracket and a slash -- which looks like </ -- and a "more than" angle bracket > around the same code. It tells the computer to stop doing whatever the first tag told it to do. For example, the first sentence of this paragaph would look like this in HTML: <b>HTML tags come in pairs.</b> The first tag tells the computer to start setting in boldface type, and the second tag tells it to stop.

OK, let's get started.

What I want you to do is to choose something to write a brief paragraph about, and post it as a comment to this blog post. Something you won't be embarrassed to publish to the World Wide Web. Cats, dogs, ferrets, the Cubs, the Cardinals, quadratic equations, dumb in-class assignments, whatever. For demonstration purposes, I'll choose butterflies.

Write something about your subject. It doesn't matter what. But here's what does matter: I want you to find a website that explains something about your subject, and create a hypertext link to that website.

Here's how it might work: As I surf the Web looking for stuff on butterflies, I come across the legend of the Chinese philosopher Chuang Chou (or Zhuangzi), who once dreamed he was a butterfly. But, according to the legend, when he woke up "he didn't know if he was Chuang Chou who had dreamt he was a butterfly, or a butterfly dreaming he was Chuang Chou." Great story, huh? Really gets you thinking about the nature of reality. I found it in the online encyclopedia Wikipedia, so I'll create a hypertext link to it.

The HTML tag for a hypertext link starts with <a href=" and the address or URL (which stands for Uniform Resource Locater, right?) followed by "> ... so I highlight the Wikipedia page's address and copy it, then paste it into the tags so it looks like this: <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhuangzi"> ... then I'll write a few words that I want in the link and I close it with </a> (see how it picks up the "a" from the opening tag)?

Here's what my text might look like in HTML: "Butterflies don't make butter, but they do fly. And sometimes they make philosophy. The ancient Chinese philosopher Chuang Chou <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhuangzi">once dreamed he was a butterfly.</a> When he woke up ..." And so on.

Here's what it looks like when it's published to the blog:

Butterflies don't make butter, but they do fly. And sometimes they make philosophy. The ancient Chinese philosopher Chuang Chou once dreamed he was a butterfly. When he woke up ...

See how the words "once dreamed he was a butterfly" are converted by the HTML tag into hypertext? There are quite a few other tags to learn in HTML (although most of us get started by pasting them in from a list of tags we find through a Google search). But this <a href=" hypertext tag is the basic building block of the World Wide Web.

Now it's your turn. Think of something to write about. Find a Web page about it. And post a hypertext link to it. Please post as a comment to this blog post. It's easier to do it than it is to read the explanation!

COM 150: Last word on Web 2.0?

This from an article in this month's Harper's magazine on "Web 2.0," the catchy name (a little too catchy, in my opinion) for interactive features on the World Wide Web like YouTube and MySpace, which rely on content generated by users. They're trendy, they generate a lot of hype and my God does the money roll in. At least for the innovators. At least in the beginning. The article is by Michael Hirschorn, executive vice president of original programming and production at the MTV spinoff VH1, so he should know what he's talking about. Says Hirschorn:

Thanks to the inexorable process of Web invention, such stuff goes from "OMG" to "Whatever" in no time flat. (137)

Source: Michael Hirschorn. "The Web 2.0 Bubble." Harper's April 2007: 134-38.

COMM 317: Copyright / REQUIRED READING

Since the discussion of copyright in the AP Stylebook is much too brief, I went looking on the Internet this week for a good basic introduction to copyright law. And I found one! It's the online version of a brochure by, of all people, the U.S. Copyright Office. And it gives you all the basics of copyright. I'm not usually big on memorizing stuff, but I think you should commit to memory the following sections of the brochure: "What Is Copyright?"; "Who Can Claim Copyright?"; "What Is Not Protected by Copyright?"; How to Secure Copyright"; Publication"; and the bit about the "visually perceptible" c-in-a-circle dingbat that costitutes "Notice of Copyright." In other words, almost all the first part of the brochure (although you can safely skip over the part on international treaties if you promise to stay in Springfield between now and finals)!

See also the section on "Who Owns What?" in the University of Texas system's Crash Course in Copyright. It's a little more technical, but it's written specifically for people who are using copyrighted information in their own publications and therefore need to know.

Why should you know all this stuff? Two reasons: (1) it will be on the final exam; and (2) you will deal with copyrighted material every day of your working life. Most of what you produce on the job, by the way, will be considered "work for hire" unless you own your own business.

Copyright is grounded in a wider class of intellectual property law. It's well explained on the "WEX" website put up by by the Legal Information Institute of Cornell University. It's concise. It's clear. And it's easy to understand and remember. Here's how WEX defines intellectual property: "Intellectual Property is a broad class of property, similar to 'real estate' (land), and 'chattels' (movable physical goods)." That's important. People's words have value, just like any other property. So do pictures, songs or other products of the mind. But not ideas. It can be tricky.

But the basic principle couldn't be clearer. Words are property, which means they can be stolen. That means using somebody's copyrighted property without permission is treated as a form of theft.

The upshot: To use copyrighted information, you need written permission. The University of Texas' Crash Course in Copyright explains how to get the copyright holder's permission. Its content is licensed, by the way, under a Creative Commons license. It's a little beyond the scope of COMM 317, but Creative Commons is an interesting development, especially if you're interested in publication on the World Wide Web.

A footnote. Not sure what a dingbat is? Think it's another word for a journalism teacher? A journalism student? Well, maybe the former but certainly not the latter. But there's another meaning the word you ought to know.

COM 150, 209, 317: New owner of Tribune Co.

Sam Zell, the Chicago enterpreneur who is buying landmark local media conglomorate Tribune Co., was interviewed by Trib business reporters and editors for today's paper. It's interesting reading. Not only interesting. I'd say it's "must" reading for people who want careers in the newspaper business ... or who plan to go on reading newspapers in a changing economy.

Some of Zell's thoughts on the future of newspapering:

"If you are relevant, people are going to buy the newspaper," he said. "If you're not relevant, then people will stop buying the newspaper and stop advertising and we'll all be in a stew of trouble.

"I use that word 'relevant' and I'll be the first to tell you I don't know what it means other than, in effect, ultimately just like anybody, you have customers, and some way or another we have to find a way how to service them. I don't have an opinion as to what you write, believe it or not, other than what you write has to be truthful and relevant. And if it is, then I think the customer is there for you, and that translates into viable businesses."

He is investing in Tribune because he sees it as "a great challenge. … Everything I do is motivated by doing it best, doing it different, answering the questions that no one else could."

And on newspapering in general:

Asked about the relationship between editorial excellence and profit, Zell said quality matters. But he noted: "I really believe you can be relevant and editorially spectacular. And I think you can be irrelevant and editorially spectacular. The name of the game is to be the former and not the latter."

Zell said his favorite columnists are Charles Krauthammer, whose syndicated column runs in the Chicago Tribune, and the New York Times' Thomas Friedman and David Brooks.

"I don't pay much attention to the LA Times editorial page," he said.

Zell said he does not intend to influence the editorial policies and reporting of Tribune Co. newspapers.

"Do I look naive enough to think I have any influence about what people write?" he asked. "In fact, I will accept that your writing on me is gong to be, hard to believe, worse than it has been."

Asked what he would do if the newspaper were preparing an unflattering profile of him, Zell cut in: "You already did, you already did."

COMM 317: Libel, ethics on the blogosphere

Some of these questions are easier than others. All of them are based on your reading assignment for tonight. Answer them all as comments to this blog post:

1. What does Glenn Reynolds (allegedly) put in blenders? What does he (allegedly) make of the resulting concoction?

2. What does that have to do with the topic of his paper?

3. How do the standards regarding defamation that are evolving for the blogosphere differ from those of print journalism? Why? Do you think that's appropriate? Why (or why not)?

4. What are the ethical standards of the blogosphere? How do they compare to the SPJ canons of ethics for print and broadcast journalists? How are they the same? How are they different?

5. What can you take from these different standards to use in your own writing? Be specific, and explain why you say what you say.

I urge you to read each other's posts and say something different ... agree or disagree with each other (as long as you don't flame anybody), but think for yourself.

COM 150, 209: Today's news, more topics

An interesting story in today's Trib ... about an apparently successful buyer for the Tribune Co. A lot of very good background on the financial health of newspapers ... kinda sickly, with competition from the Internet.

Which reminds me of a couple of good COM 150 term paper topics:

Why are newspapers losing readership? Comptetition from the Internet? Too much news about old men wearing suits and not enough about anything that anybody cares about? Or: Too much fluff about celebrities and not enough about the substantive issues of the day? You hear both argued, and they're diametrically opposed.

"Info-tainment." That's a word of Neil Postman's. How much do the media -- especially TV but really all of them -- blur the line between serious information and entertainment?

How can newspapers win back readers? Especially your generation, the 18-24 demographic. Fluff? Music reviews? Local news? School lunch menus?

COM 150, 209: Brit blog broadcasts 'bear facts'

Channel 4, an independent television network in Great Britain, has published what it bills as "The truth about Knut the cute polar bear" on its newsroom blog.

(Brits being Brits, the blog also features what has to be the most remarkable necktie I've ever seen in the graphic at top.)

It's what we used to call a "non-story" when I was in the newspaper business, but it's a cleverly written one:

If you were watching Channel 4 News last week, you can't fail to have been charmed by Knut the polar bear cub. The adorable infant is so unbelievably cute that many people who saw that footage still haven't recovered their full composure.

He was seen playing with a life-size cuddly toy of a brown bear, listening to Elvis Presley songs, and walking unsteadily towards the camera with mournful little eyes - because animal rights activists are apparently calling for him to be put to death.

The argument, supposedly, is that since Knut is a zoo-born bear, and has been rejected by his mother (how COULD SHE!?!?!), he will never grow up to be real polar bear, gamboling on the ice floes, and should therefore start his career as a fur coat as early as possible.

When the news broke, pictures of Knut were flashed across the world's TV screens. The Chinese panda cubs, those shameless media tarts (and defending world champions of cute) had some new footage out that day, but editors didn't bat an eyelid. No-one wanted anything but Knut.

Some translation may be needed. "Tarts," to the Brits, are what "ho's" and "sluts" are to American high schoolers. The rest is quite clear, and, I think, cleverly written.

The story includes a link to blog called Knut, das Eisbärbaby (Knut the ice-bear baby) with lots of pix, audio and video files. The text and audio are in German, but the pictures aren't. So here we have an example of cross-platform convergence. Channel 4 concludes:

Now you could almost believe that all the media outlets that covered the Knut story weren't interested in the actual truth, and just wanted to run some pictures of an unfeasibly cute little cub. I'm sure that's not the case. But we're glad to be able to bring you the bear facts.

And of course that's what Channel 4 is doing. It may be all I'm doing, too, by posting the item to our class blog. But I wouldn't want to say that on April Fool's Day.

COM 150: Term paper topics

By now I think most of you have topics for your term papers. We mentioned several in class last week, and I posted a list to the blog last semester. Most of the suggestions there are similar to what I suggested in class.

But I promised to have some more suggestions in class Monday. Here are a few that have worked well for students in the past:

What's it like to work for Google? Like other Silicon Valley firms, Google puts a premium on creativity. (Including April Fool's Day pranks. Their theory is high-tech workers thrive on it, and they try to create working conditions that stimulate creativity. How do they go about it? How well does it work?

Robert Fisk and Osama bin Laden. Robert Fisk, a controversial Middle East correspondent for the British newspaper The Independent, interviewed bin Laden in 1997. Fisk's account of the interview is long, but it's well worth reading. How did he get the interview? What is his attitude as a journalist? How does he practice the craft -- i.e. what does he do to get a story? What are his professional ethical values? What did he learn from bin Laden?

Is the Billy Goat Curse a money-maker? Everyone -- at least Cubs fans -- knows about the "curse" when a goat was denied admission to Wrigley Field in 1945. How does it contribute to the Cubbies' image? How does it make money for the Billy Goat Tavern in downtown Chicago? Is it really a curse, or a brilliant marketing gimmick? You'll be surprised.

How does ________________ (*insert name of celebrity here) practice brand management? A brand is the image a corporation or a product has with the public. Is Brittney Spears a brand? Beyonce? P-Diddy? Name the artist or celebrity. Some are very good at it. Others aren't. Some might get better at it if they paid attention in rehab and keep the plug in the jug. Look at how they do -- or don't -- keep a consistent image with the public.

COM 150: Of bears and brands in Berlin

Here's a different marketing ploy from Germany, where a three-month-old polar bear cub at the Berlin Zoo has captured the hearts of children, adults, the media ... and practically everyone who wants to make a Euro. Reports the magazine Der Spiegel (which means "the mirror" in English):

Hundreds of journalists from all over the world came to see the little bear make his first appearance in public last Friday, and 58 percent of Germans are following his progress as he grows up, according to a new survey conducted for the German television station N24. It's safe to say he's one of the most famous living Germans.

And, like many superstars, he is rapidly becoming a brand. But, unlike say J-Lo or Madonna, the three-month-old bear is not in control of how his image is being marketed. Is the tiny star being exploited for commercial and political gain?

Der Spiegel's answer, dated March 28, you bet he is. But first the backstory.

Knut was born Dec. 5 to an East German circus bear who had been rescued by the zoo. But she showed no interest in him (not unusual with animals in captivity). So he was bottle-fed through infancy by zookeeper Thomas Dörflein, and in recent weeks he's been shown to the public -- and the media. Der Spiegel reported March 23:

Berlin's favorite polar baby has finally made his first appearance for the public. Cute Knut wooed an excited audience of children, zoo visitors and journalists at Berlin Zoo Friday. Unfazed by the attention, he explored the outdoor enclosure and displayed his affection for his carer.

At ten in the morning, anticipation was running high. "Knut come out! Knut come out!", a group of children chanted impatiently.

Hundreds of Knut fans had made their way to Berlin Zoo on Friday morning to witness the polar bear cub's first public appearance. Children, journalists and normal zoo visitors alike were gripped by excitement as Berlin's favourite bear finally emerged in the outdoor bear enclosure.

The little fluffball was escorted by his carer Thomas Dörflein, zoo director Bernhard Blaszkiewitz and Germany's Environment Minister Sigmar Gabriel.

Gabriel called Knut a political symbol in the climate change debate: "Hardly any animal symbolizes the consequences of climate change as clearly as the polar bear," he said. "No ice, no polar bear."

Gabriel, who has recently became Knut's "godfather," said that the little cub would be the mascot of the United Nations' Convention on Biological Diversity conference in Bonn in May 2008.

Notice how the bear cub will be used to symbolize the UN biodiversity conference -- in much the same way the same way as the "swoosh" logo on Nike shoes, a sports mascot or the golden arches on a McDonald's fast food restaurant. That's called branding.

All kinds of businesses are getting in on the act, and Berlin Zoo stands to make a bundle off the bear cub. Der Spiegel in its March 28 story, headlined "Fur trade -- Cashing in on Cute Knut" (the name is pronounced like kun-oot), wonders if it's going too far:

Few would bear a grudge with Berlin Zoo making a bit of money out of the cub. The zoo is expecting record visitor numbers this year with 300,000 extra animal-lovers expected due to the new-found publicity -- 30,000 people came to see Knut this weekend alone.. Fair return, perhaps, for raising the polar bear by hand after his mother rejected him.

But what about Greenpeace using Knut as a poster cub for its campaign on global warming? The environmental lobby group demonstrated outside the Ministry of Economics and Technology in Berlin Tuesday, protesting about plans to build new power stations powered by brown coal, which produce high levels of CO2. Their banner, which referred to the plight of polar bears whose habitat is endangered by global warming, featured an image of a pensive-looking Knut standing in a pool of water, next to the slogan "Coal Kills Knut's Chums."

The German government has likewise begun using Knut for political gain. Environment Minister Sigmar Gabriel accompanied Knut for a photo shoot on the bear's public debut, and has said he will use Knut as a mascot for a United Nations conference on bio-diversity to be held in Bonn in May 2008 -- even though Knut will not be quite so small and cuddly by then.

My opinion, for whatever its worth, is the zoo has a right to use Knut's image in any way that helps the zoo -- especially its educational mission -- but the zoo also has the obligation to register the brand and thus to control how it's used by others.

Here's how our textbook, Media Now by Joseph Straubhaar and Robert LaRose, defines brand identification: "... a product's name, design and symbols, which distinguish it from other products." So whatever else he may represent, "Cute Knut" is becoming part of the zoo's identity. And, according to Der Spiegel, he's making them some money:

Ironically, the Berlin Zoo itself was tardy to cash in on Knut's potential. The 2,400 Knut soft toys which went on sale Friday were already sold out by Monday, and the first Knut postcards didn't go on sale until Tuesday. The souvenirs weren't ready in time because the zoo was expecting Knut to go on show a week later than he did, the zoo's sales director Gerald Uhlich admitted Wednesday to the newspaper Berliner Zeitung.

Where all of this can lead is suggested by this story with a headline that tells it all -- "Companies cash in on Knut the German polar bear."-- It moved March 28 on the Reuters wire service. Here's the lede and the nut graf:

BERLIN, March 28 (Reuters Life!) - The euphoria around Berlin Zoos celebrity polar bear cub showed no sign of abating on Wednesday as a music label released a single called "Knut is Cute."

Pool Music has already sold 3,000 CDs priced at just under 6 euros ($8.01) each but faces tough competition from up to twelve competitors who have been circulating bear-related songs on the Internet.

"I know the number of other songs is growing but we were first," said a spokesman for Pool Music who said demand had far outstripped expectations and that the label had received orders from as far afield as the United States and Japan.

"Our song is different because it is sung by the polar bear himself, whereas the other songs are only about him," said the spokesman who declined to divulge the identity of the artist referred to as "Polar Bear."

The company has paid an agreed sum to Berlin Zoo, which registered the celebrity cub as an official brand this week.

The Reuters story also lays out some of the ethical considerations:

But the zoo says Knut should not be seen in financial terms.

"The zoo isn't a commercial enterprise but a cultural and scientific institution," said a Berlin Zoo spokesman.

"What is most important is the correct raising of the bear" a zoo spokesman said, adding it had ruled out selling Knut despite a deluge of offers from across the globe.

However, companies are keen to cash in on the cuddly character who has such a wide appeal.

On the one hand, the bear is a living creature. Is it right to exploit it for profit? On the other hand, the zoo has a message to get out to the public. Plenty of messages, in fact. About genetics and breeding endangered species, to name one thing. About global warming, to name another. So why not make a bundle on licensing Knut the polar bear's name and image, if it helps the zoo get those messages out.

In the meantime, Knut the bear is taking it all in stride. When he made his debut, Der Spiegel reported:

Despite the hordes of visitors, photographers, and camera crews, Knut the polar bear showed some real cool. Unfazed by all the attention, he leisurely explored the outside enclosure, running across the grass area, climbing up the rocks and dipping his paws into the water.

He also openly showed his affection for Thomas Dörflein. Just like a son with his father, Knut followed his carer around everywhere he went. Every now and then the two smooched or cuddled up together. Knut, who was born in December, has been raised on a bottle by Dörflein after the cub was rejected by his mother Tosca.

The close relationship between the two had been subject to criticism from animal rights activists, who claimed that Knut was being too "human," but that negative attitude seemed to have evaporated on Friday morning.

"Knut is incredibly cute," nine-year-old Christopher told SPIEGEL ONLINE, "I particularly like his white fur because it's so fluffy." His friend Selen, also aged nine, agreed and added: "But his face is really cute, too!" Selen was so taken by Knut that she even bought one of the Knut teddy bears which were on sale at the zoo.

Maybe the bear and the kids have the right attitude. But don't fail to notice one of them bought a teddy bear.