Quotes and an article: Literature and journalism

Succinct.

This wisdom comes from a compilation of quotes by Ben Hecht, Chicago newspaper columnist and Hollywood screen writer, who therefore knew what he was talking about:

The rule in the art world is: you cater to the masses or you kowtow to the elite; you can't have both.

And this from Ernest Hemingway, the novelist and former Toronto Star correspondent:

Newspaper work will not harm a young writer and could help him if he gets out of it in time.

The quote, which comes from a Paris Review interview with George Plimpton, is cited in an article titled "Journalists with Literary Ambitions No Less Satisfied with Their Jobs." It appeared in 2006 in the Newspaper Research Journal.

COMM 209: Ho ho ho

Sometimes a headline just catches your eye. That's the way it was with this one, in The Los Angeles Times. It even had a seasonal theme, just perfect for Christmas morning.

Santa in a G-string gets a DUI

Doesn't that just make you want to read the story? Here's the lede, under a joint byline that went to LA Times staffers Richard Winton and Andrew Blankstein:

A famous Hollywood location had a seasonally appropriate visitor Sunday night. But when the man got out of his car in front of Grauman's Chinese Theater, it was clear this was anything but a standard visit from Santa Claus.

The driver -- 6-foot-4 and 280 pounds -- was arrested on suspicion of drunk driving, in this case a misdemeanor, police said. In addition to a red Santa hat, he wore a blond wig, red lace camisole, purple G-string, black leg warmers and black shoes.

"We are pretty sure this is not the Santa Claus," Deputy Chief Ken Garner said.

After giving the standard details -- name, age, blood alcohol count, charges, etc. -- Winton and Blankstein let the cop have the last word. And what a fine last word it was, especially for a metro page story in LA:

"There was no Mel Gibson treatment for him," Garner said, referring to the help the actor received from Los Angeles County sheriff's deputies after his drunk driving arrest last year. "He had to sober up and find his own reindeer."

Basic newswriting students take note how the story is organized around the quotes: (1) There's a lede playing up what a surprise it was to realize the guy with the Santa cap was a drag queen; (2) the best quote; (3) the basic facts of the case, which would be called a nut graf in a longer story; and (4) a pretty good little quote with a twist at at the end. That twist at the end is sometimes known as a kicker, and it's something you want in all but the most serious feature stories.

We'll use this format a lot. It's a variation on the inverted pyramid you may have learned in high school journalism -- basic facts up top, less important stuff lower down in the story -- and will use every day as long as you write news. It just has a little attention-getter in the lede.

Slate.com, the ezine that's part of the Microsoft-NBC-Newsweek-Washington Post media conglomorate, carries a daily feature called "Today's Papers" that summarizes and links to the top stories in the LA Times, the Post and the New York Times (you should get in the habit of reading it, by the way). Here's Slate's treatment of the LA Times' little gift from Santa:

Here comes Santa Claus. Over in the NYT's op-ed page, John Anthony McGuckin, a professor of religious history, briefly goes through the history of how the "super-saint" St. Nicholas went on to become the "Magic Santa." As the morphing began to take place, the new Santa dropped many of the symbolic characteristics of the old St. Nicholas and "the origin of Christmas almsgiving: gifts for the poor, not just gifts for our friends" began to be lost. "I like St. Nicholas," McGuckin writes. "You can keep chubby Santa." Particularly if he's the type of Santa that was arrested last night in front of Grauman's Chinese Theater in Hollywood. The LAT reports that a 6-foot-4, 280-pound, g-string-wearing Santa was arrested on suspicion of drunk driving on Sunday night.

[Link omitted.] The Santa piece, by the way, was at the end of the Slate feature. What would you call that?

A kicker, you guessed, right? Last graf. Little twist at the end of today's news, which was suitably high-minded and serious. Why of course it's a kicker.

Let's reverse the process. The New York Times' op-ed piece on St. Nicholas was actually high-minded, serious and interesting. McGuckin, who teaches at Union Theological Seminary, said our Santa Claus comes from an 1823 poem by Clement Clarke Moore titled “A Visit From St. Nicholas.” And our mental image of Santa -- wearing a red fur coat rather than a G-string -- comes from 19th-century political cartoonist Thomas Nast but also a series of Coca Cola ads from the 1930.

The original St. Nicholas, it turns out, was deeply commited to social justice -- something the modern corporate Santa lost rather quickly. Says McGuckin:

The new Santa ... acquired a host of Nordic elves to replace the small dark-skinned boy called Black Peter, who in Christian tradition so loved St. Nicholas that he traveled with him everywhere. But, some might say, wasn’t it better to lose this racially stereotyped relic? Actually, no, considering the real St. Nicholas first came into contact with Peter when he raided the slave market in his hometown and railed against the trade. The story tells us that when the slavers refused to take him seriously, he used the church’s funds to redeem Peter and gave the boy a job in the church.

Similarly, the story of St. Nicholas' giving presents to poor children comes out of opposition to child slavery. McGuckin says:

And what of the throwing of the bags of gold down the chimney, where they landed in the stockings and little shoes that had been hung up to dry by the fireplace? Charming though it sounds, it reflected the deplorable custom, still prevalent in late Roman society when the Byzantine church was struggling to establish the supremacy of its values, of selling surplus daughters into bondage. This was a euphemism for sexual slavery — a trade that still blights our world.

As the tale goes, Nicholas had heard that a father in the town planned to sell his three daughters because his debts had been called in by pitiless creditors. As he did for Black Peter, Nicholas raided his church funds to secure the redemption of the girls. He dropped the gold down the chimney to save face for the impoverished father.

McGuckin ends his op-ed piece with a kicker:

This tale was the origin of a whole subsequent series of efforts among the Christians who celebrated Nicholas to make some effort to redeem the lot of the poor — especially children, who always were, and still are, the world’s front-line victims. Such was the origin of Christmas almsgiving: gifts for the poor, not just gifts for our friends.

I like St. Nicholas. You can keep chubby Santa.

Which, if you think about it, proves a kicker can be serious and high-minded, too.

BBC newsman on genocide, war, a newborn baby

Please note: The linked material is linked to the assignments in my syllabus for COMM 387 (Lit./Journ.) and is required reading for students in that class. It won't do anybody else a bit of harm to read it, either.

Fergal Keane is a senior correspondent for the British Broadcasting Corp. He has covered wars, genocide, famine and the AIDS crisis, mostly in Africa, but he is best known worldwide, perhaps, for his "Letter to Daniel," a commentary aired on BBC on the birth of Keane's son in 1996. In it he stated some of his values as a reporter in perhaps an especially moving way.

Keane, who is Irish, has had a distinguished journalistic career. Some would say he displays a typically Irish awareness of the moral dimensions of social and political upheaval. His first job was on a small newspaper in Limerick, and he moved on to cover trouble spots in Northern Ireland, Africa and Asia. He now is able to pick and choose his assignments, having recently reported on the aftermath of the government crackdown in Mynamar (a country the Brits still call Burma). But his career was shaped by covering the 1994 genocide in Rwanda.

Keane was one of several BBC reporters in Rwanda in the spring of 1994, when government backed militias murdered hundreds of thousands of people. "For some of us," he said years later, "it has left an enduring mark, a sense that we failed, not so much as journalists, but as human beings, because we saw things we were powerless to stop." Ten years later he was interviewed for an American public television show on what he saw and how it changed him. Read it. Read also Keane's more recent commentary from Darfur where a similar holocaust is slowly playing out:

I have no doubt that in a few years time there will be investigations by the United Nations and the EU [European Union] and several others into why the world failed the people of Darfur.

We already know why, just as we did in Rwanda.

We cared, but we did not care enough.

But note also that Keane is still covering the tragedies and still speaking out. This month (December), for example, he helped the Disasters Emergency Committee, a British charity, raise more than £13 million for refugees in Darfur and Chad.

COMM 317 (Spring 08): Magna Carta / REQUIRED

A feature in The Independent, a London broadsheet that recently went to a slightly smaller format, about Magna Carta (Latin for "the Great Charter"). It explains why a copy of Magna Carta brought $21.3 million at auction this week ... and why the American Bar Association sometimes gathers at the spot in England where King John I was bullied by his high noblemen into signing it in 1215:

Clause 39 is possibly the best known. It has never been rescinded and is immediately relevant to the present government. It says that "No free man shall be seized or imprisoned, or stripped of his rights and possessions, or outlawed or exiled, or deprived of his standing in any other way, nor will we proceed with force against him, or send others to do so, except by the lawful judgement of his equals or by the law of the land." When MPs try to block the [British] Government's proposal to hold suspected terrorists for up to 42 days without charges, they will be, in effect, upholding a piece of law signed by King John 792 years ago.

Clause 38 is almost as important. It said: "No official shall place a man on trial upon his own unsupported statement, without producing credible witnesses to the truth of it." Most of the worst injustices in recent legal history have occurred when people have been convicted on no real evidence other than confessions made under interrogation. Clause 40 promised to end the system by which rich offenders could simply buy their way out of trouble. For a medieval monarch to make promises like these, even with his fingers figuratively crossed, was an extraordinary moment in history.

A reminder that some of this arcane stuff we read about in Communications 317 isn't as arcane as we think it is.

A perfect no-news lede?

Sometimes the best rule is to break the rules ...

Check this lede from a story on Sen Barack Obma's visit to an Iowa church in today's Mason City Globe Gazette by staff writer Mary Pieper. It's a perfect example of a no-news lede:

MASON CITY — Today was a big day at the First Congregational United Church of Christ in Mason City.

During the 10 a.m. service the Sunday School and confirmation students presented their annual Christmas program, and the congregation participated in the 40-year-old tradition of putting mittens on the Mitten Tree.

And Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama was in the house.

Obama, a member of a UCC church in Chicago, sat in a pew near the front of the church during the service and got up to speak briefly to the congregation.

The rest of it is a fairly standard speech story. Short. Seven grafs summarizing Obama's homily. Not much to it.

No news, in fact. Hence the no-news lede? I'll bet Pieper used on on purpose.

Compare the lede on this Associated Press writeup of Obama's visit to the church in Mason City:

MASON CITY, Iowa (AP) — Democrat Barack Obama on Sunday confronted one of the persistent falsehoods circulating about him on the Internet.

He went to church.

His attendance here at the First Congregational United Church of Christ, with the news media in tow, was as much an observation of faith as it was a rejoinder to baseless e-mailed rumors that he is a Muslim and poses a threat to the security of the United States.

Obama did not address the rumors, but described how he joined Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago two decades ago while working as a community organizer.

"What I found during the course of this work was, one, that ordinary people can do extraordinary things when they come together and find common ground," he told the congregation. "The other thing I discovered was that values of honesty, hard work, empathy, compassion were values that were spoken about in church .... I realized that Scripture and the words of God fit into the values I was raised in."

And so it went. Introduced by what was, in my opinion, a no-news lede.

Main difference: The AP story is written for a national readership, so the emphasis is -- quite properly -- on the presidential campaign.

No much news in either account, though.

Another term that's commonly used for the kind of account is a "non-story." Jim Kuhnhenn, the AP reporter, chose to peg it on the persistent right-wing nattering about Obama's persumed ties to Islam ... even as he carefully pointed out the nattering had nothing to do with Obama's visit to the church in Mason City. The technical term for this kind of thing is trying to have it both ways.

Mike Royko

Mike Royko wrote a column for the Chicago Daily News, the Sun-Times and, finally, the Trib. I can't classify this column. It was just, well, it was Royko. CNN came close in its obituary of Royko, when it said he was "known for his sarcastic wit and colorful stories of life in Chicago." And the New York Times' obit called him, accurately, the "Voice of the Working Class." Won the Pulitzer Prize, too. Oh, and he was a lifelong diehard Cub fan.

Here are some sample columns. The tribute to Jackie Robinson is widely considered a classic. And the column on the Picasso statue in Daley Plaza, the square next to City Hall, the Thompson state office building and the federal courthouse in the Loop, is pure Chicago. Another sampling of columns has observations on kissing the Blarney Stone and Mayor Daley's ass (the father of the current Mayor Daley) and a meditation on what does and doesn't belong on a Chicago hot dog. Finally, Royko's obituary piece on Mayor Daley captured both the man and the city.

John Simpson and Kathy Gannon in Kabul

John Simpson, longtime foreign correspondent for BBC News sometimes considered the dean of British war correspondents, famously "liberated" Kabul in 2001 when he entered the city with Northern Alliance troops as the Taliban government and militias fled ... before all the shooting was even over.

But he wasn't the first correspondent in the capital of Afghanistan. Reporting from Kabul through the 2001 war, and, as a matter of daily routine, under the Taliban regime before it, was Kathy Gannon of The Associated Press.

No fanfare. No trumpet blasts about "liberating" anything. Just good solid reporting. In my opinion, she's simply one of the best reporters in the business. Anywhere.

Since then Gannon has written a book. Titled "I is for Infidel" (an apt self-description since Gannon is both the "I" and the "Infidel" of the title). She even has a a website touting the book and linking to several articles she's written. Read "Road Rage," a PDF-format reprint from The New Yorker.

Same story, two reporters
Simpson's account of the liberation of Kabul is in the tradition of war correspondents since William Russell covered the Charge of the Light Brigade (later the subject of a poem by Alfred, Lord Tennyson) in the 1850s. One of many highlights:

The small BBC team decided to head on into the city, on our own, and on foot - so no-one would think we were soldiers.

We ploughed on - radio side-by-side with television.

As we walked into Kabul city we found no problems around us, only people that were friendly and, I am afraid, chanting "kill the Taleban" - although as we understand it there are not going to be that many Taleban around.

It felt extraordinarily exhilarating - to be liberating a city which had suffered so much under a cruel and stifling regime.

It was 0753 local time (0323 GMT) and Kabul was a free city, after five years of perhaps the most extreme religious system anywhere on earth.

And here's how ">Gannon covered the same story. Notice how the focus is different. But, of course, she was already inside the city:

Groups of five to 10 men huddled in the streets, wrapped in woollen shawls. Northern Alliance fighters sped through the streets in vehicles camouflaged with mud that had been left behind by Taliban troops.

In the northern Khair Khana district, inhabited largely by ethnic Tajiks who fled the earlier fighting north of the city, some people shouted: "Congratulations. Oh my God, they are here." Some men hugged each other.

"We leave everything to God. We don't know what will happen. We pray only for peace," said Sheer Agha, an elderly man wrapped in a striped shawl, his grey beard reaching almost to his chest.

"We are happy. Now I have to go to the barber to shave my beard," said Zabiullah, an ethnic Tajik. "Today is a happy day."

Two men on a bicycle looked at each other. "Do you think I can shave now?" one asked. The Taliban required men to grow long beards and failure to do so invited harsh punishment.

Read both and decide which one you like better. (I know which one I like.) Be ready to compare and contrast the two.

Time magazine's coverage of Hiroshima

A portal page with articles from 1945 and several anniversary pieces. Including the famous James Agee piece in the Aug. 20, 1945, issue ...

William Russell of The London Times

Article about British war correspondent William Russell in Harper's Weekly June 22, 1861. A brief quotation by William Russell describing his meeting with President Lincoln on a historical website.

Addison & Steele -- link

For COMM 387 syllabus for Spring 08 --

Good article in History magazine on The Spectator, a kind of daily literary journal that ran in 1711 and 1712, "'To Enliven Morality with Wit': The Spectator" by Jamie Pratt.

How a band uses 'sticky' website

A band mixing the sound of Afropop, hip hop, soul and, yes, I can hear a little gospel, Soulfège is based in Boston, now doing a Sweet Mother Africa tour. Infectious music.

Also an awesome example of a band using new media. You've read about "sticky" websites? (If you're not sure, see below.) Well, this is how a sticky website works. Here's the band, in their own words:

So what is Soulfège? Glad you asked. Put it like this - if Fela Kuti, Bob Marley, Lenny Kravitz and Gwen Stefani were all jammin' with the same band, it would be this one.

Fusing funk, reggae, hip-hop, and highlife, Soulfège is more than a band...it's a big FUNKY band.

Electrifying audiences, from Boston to Ghana and beyond, with its positive vibe and relentless groove, the members of Soulfège have performed with and for some of the world's most talented artists and distinguished dignitaries, including Debbie Allen, Janet Jackson, Steven Spielberg, Bobby McFerrin, Nelson Mandela, the Reverend Al Sharpton, Dr. Cornell West, and Al Gore.

The group is known for building sonic bridges that fuse the influences of the African Diaspora into a musical vision all its own. Soulfège not only shines with creativity, it thrills audiences with a golden foundation in rhythm and harmony.

In general, the band tries to present a positive view of life and of culture, both American and African. Frontman Derrick N. Ashong, who is from Ghana, told The Boston Globe the band "was in a position to help change misperceptions on both sides." Says Daniel T. Swann of the Globe:

Soulfege has one foot in Africa, one in America. Its core members -- Ashong, Jonathan M. Gramling, and Kelley Nicole Johnson -- were brought together by their alma mater, Harvard, where all had been in the Kuumba Singers, a gospel choir. But Ashong was born in Ghana, and many of the band's lyrics reflect a connection to the African diaspora. "Yaa (dis be fo radio)," for example, includes lyrics in Ga (spoken in Ghana), as well as in Portuguese and English.

Plenty of YouTube clips and other eye candy -- ear candy? -- on their website. Quotes from and links to the Globe's laudatory story on the band and the SMA tour.

Here's how Erin Jansen's NetLingo.com website defines sticky content:

Information or features on a Web site that gives users a compelling reason to revisit it frequently. Stickiness is also gauged by the amount of time spent at a Web site over a given period of time. This is often maximized by getting the user to leave some information behind on the site, such as a personal profile, an investment portfolio, a resume, a list of preferred cities for weather reports, personal horoscopes, birthday reminders, and the like.

How many sticky features do you see on the Soulfège website? How many do you see on NetLingo, for that matter?

COMM 150: Final exam - Fall 07

COM 150: Intro to Mass Comm.
Springfield College/Benedictine University
Fall Semester 2007

www.sci.edu/classes/ellertsen/com150syl
[Television] is not a tool by which the networks conspire to dumb us down. TV is a tool by which the networks give us exactly what we want. That's a far more depressing thought. -- "The Vent," The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Jan. 19, 1999.

Final Exam – Fall 2007

Below are three essay questions – one worth fifty (50) points out of a hundred, and two shorter essays worth 25 points each. Please write at least two pages (500 words) on the 50-point essay and page (250 words) on each of the 25-point short essays. This means you write on all three essays. Use plenty of detail from your reading in the textbook, the Internet and handouts I have given you, as well as class discussion, to back up the points you make. Your grade will depend on your analysis of broad trends and the specific detail you cite in support of the points you make. Exam is Mon., Dec. 3, at 1:30 p.m., in D220.

1. Main essay (50 points). Joseph Straubhaar and Robert LaRose, authors of our textbook "Media Now," say postmodernists believe “there is no universal truth, that what you think depends on your own experience, which depends on what groups you belong to, what media you pay attention to, what your family taught you.” On the one hand, the postmodern attitude allows us to experience scientific discovery in what Michelle Thaller of the California Institute of Technology, in an article headlined “A Dinosaur Named Sue, and the Way Science Really Works,” calls “the drama and wonder” of questioning and experimentation “when we admit we aren’t sure what the facts really are.” On the other hand, postmodernism erodes commonly accepted standards, and French philosopher Jean Baudrillard says we are bombarded with so many conflicting messages that “We are not … in danger of lacking meaning; quite the contrary, we are gorged with meaning and it is killing us.” How do you define postmodernism? How has the communications industry contributed to this diversity of messages, especially on the Internet? How do new media like the Internet allow writers, artists, musicians and other creative types to exercise creative control? How do they allow anti-social expressions like pornography, hate speech and deceptive advertising to flourish? Are these effects balanced by the pro-social effects of 21st-century media? Is postmodern diversity and freedom a good thing or a bad thing? Cite specific evidence in your answers.

2a. Self-reflective essay (25 points). What have you learned in Communications 150 that surprised you the most? How, specifically, did it surprise you? What was your overall impression of the media before you took the course? How has that changed as a result of your reading, class discussion and research for the course? Consider it in the context of what you knew at the beginning of the course and what you know now. In grading this essay, I will evaluate the relevance of your discussion to the main goals and objectives of the course; the detail you cite to support or illustrate your points; and the connections you make. Be specific.

2b. Short essay (25 points). Brands, branding and brand management are increasingly important concepts in integrated marketing communications. How does a mission statement fit into a well-designed IMC program? How can effective brand management and a well thought-out Integrated Marketing Communications plan help advertisers and public relations practitioners deal with competing messages? Be specific. Always be specific. Remember: An unsupported generalization is sudden death in college-level writing.

Pow, Right in the Kisser! Quote within a quote within a quote

Posted to my mass communications blogs. --pe

The CNN story was headlined "Why bad kissers don't get to second base." Cute enough. Worth a look. But what I really liked about it was the punctuation in the last 'graph! Take a look:

"The best kisses are always the ones that happen accidentally," observes New York City resident Benjamin Kayne, 25, a digital media sales director. "(Planned kisses) are just tedious, and I'm sitting there thinking, 'Is this over yet? The commercial is over and I'm missing "CSI".' "

That's a quote within a quote within a quote. That you don't see every day.