COMM 209: In class Monday

Following up on last week's review of the format for a news story -- i.e. how to make one look like a news story instead of a freshman English theme -- I'm going to link a couple or three more things.

One is a a feature story I wrote on a cedar flute demonstration at Springfield College. It isn't great literature. (If you're taking COMM 387 [Lit./Journ.], you'll notice it wasn't on that syllabus.) But I can share how I reported it, how I chose the quotes and how I put it together. Notice it has a standard soft lede that runs into a nut graf.

The nut graf isn't exactly standard ... there's a summary, that the guy I'm writing about loves the music, followed by a quote, followed by the second part of the nut graf, the announcement he's starting a flute circle in Springfield. But hey, this ain't rocket science.

POINTS TO REMEMBER: (1) The lede can be longer than one graf. Has to be, in fact. (2) The nut graf can be longer than one graf. Usually is, in fact. And (3) the higher up you can get a good quote, the better (even in the middle of the nut graf)!

On the Yahoo! news page is an Associated Press feature on Northern Illinois University's police chief and how he's dealing with the aftermath of the student shootings there. Is it a summary lede or a soft lede? I can't say. It has elements of both. But look how high the best quote is. Also: Look at how short the sentences are. Look at how short the grafs are. Look at how the reporter keeps out of the story.

A Reuters news service story from Yahoo! This one is written with a hard news lede. It's about a woman who was ordered to remove her nipple ring in an airport search. Notice how the story is organized: lede (2 grafs), followed by best quote (also two grafs because it's a long quote), transition, quote and so on.

Here's another one with a hard news style, summary lede. A drunk in Muncie, Ind., made the news when he woke up in a garbage truck just before, apparently, he was compacted with the garbage. Lede (two grafs), quote (one graf this time), and so on. By the way, notice how there's not an extra word in this story? It's really bare bones, just the facts. Try to hype it up even just a little, and it's too much.

COMM 209: Assignment for Monday

Take your notes from my "press conference" Monday, March 24, and the story you wrote to bring in Wednesday, and write the revised story for Monday, March 31. Consult the points we made in our class discussion Wednesday and today; the information box on organizing a story on page 47 in our textbook, and the "Kabob" story structure box on page 48. You can use my elaboration on, the one I call a "quote-kabob" story with the quote right after the lede; the rest strung along through the body like meat on a shishkabob and a "kicker" at the end. Think about saving your second best quote for last.

You can use the prototype we came up with in class Friday:

A crazed communications professor bored students to death Monday while defaming Bach.

Peter Ellertsen, of Benedictine University, compared writing for a newspaper to playing a ukulele. He feels that both are easy and difficult at the same time.

"If you expect too much out of a newspaper or a ukulele, you'll be disappointed," he said. "But you can do a lot with both."

Ellertsen was quoting media critic Ben Bagdikian, who said, "Trying to be a first-rate reporter on the average American newspaper is like trying to play Bach's 'St. Matthew Passion' on a ukulele."

Links to my article, Gov. Huckabee's TV interview

My opinion piece on the Rev. Jeremiah Wright is in Illinois Times this week, headlined "The prophet Jeremiah" ... I didn't write the head, but I think it's classy. It's about something that kind of got lost in all the uproar about Wright's sermons and their effect on Sen. Barack Obama's campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination, that I thought was important: Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, who ran in the Republican presidential primaries this year, was one of the few people calling on us all "cut [him] some slack."

That surprised me, coming from a prominent Republican as it did in the heat of a presidential year. Then I remembered Huckabee is a preacher, too.

Well, read it ...

(And as you read it, remember it is an opinion piece: It reflects my opinion and not the goals and objectives in the course, and you are not required to agree with it. In fact, one of my goals and objectives for you is to develop a skeptical attitude about everything I say.)

If you want to see Huckabee's interview on the Morning Joe show, it's on YouTube. It's a very interesting example of an journalist trying to get a politician on the record trying to say something confrontational when the politician doesn't want to go there.

COMM 317: A couple of blogposts on truth, "PoMo."

Why reinvent the wheel? Back in the fall, we got into this issue of the truth in one of my classes. A couple of them, in fact, since I find it impossible to make the real world conform to the neat little categories of 50-minute lectures. And here we are again, reading about truth. How do we really and truly know what's true? How do we find out? And what do we do for truth in the meantime, just in case we never do find out.

(By the way, if you find out what the truth really and truly is (or even what that phrase "really and truly" really means, uff, there I'm doing it again!), please let me know. We can co-write a book and make a lot of money.)

A couple of blog posts from November may be helpful. Let's read them. The first is about "Journalism and capital-T truth posted Nov. 13 ... and the second is "Postmodernism and media posted Oct. 27. The second one is heavy reading. It's about a couple of French philosophers and media theorists named Jean Baudrillard (pronounced jahn Bo-dri-AR) and Jean-François Lyotard (pron. Lee-o-TAR). It brings out a couple of things that are discussed in today's reading. Besides, if you remember to use the French pronunciation you can drop their names over a pitcher of beer and wildly impress your friends. And "PoMo" is, of course, a trendy buzzword for postmodernism. Flourishing academic careers are begun with less than this.

COMM 209: In class Monday

Welcome back from spring break ... today we're going to write a story.

In class.

On deadline.

Here's how it'll work. I will deliver a few well chosen remarks on the aphorism by Ben Bagdikian, "Trying to be a first-rate reporter on the average American newspaper is like trying to play Bach's St. Matthew Passion on a ukulele: The instrument is too crude for the work, for the audience and for the performer." And I'll play you some sound clips from YouTube. They're linked below, in the March 16 post headlined "First-rate newspapering on a ukulele?"

Then I'll open the floor to questions. It will be your job to get a three- or four-graf story out of it and write it up in the remainder of the class period. So listen up and take notes. Use a blind summary lede and follow the "quote-kabob" format we talked about in class when we were covering Chapter 3.

If you want, we can talk our way through the story first. You can pair up and follow these steps: (1) figure out your summary lede and dictate it to me while I type it into Microsoft Word and project it on the screen; (2) then select a good quote that goes with the summary lede, and dictate it to me; (3) decide what comes next, and find a quote to go with it; and (4) keep repeating step 3 until you run out of quotes. But if people aren't paying attention or if discussion lags I will assume you'd rather write the story. Understood?

COMM 209, 317, 387: Sound bites

Posted to both my mass comm. blogs. -- pe

Trinity United Church of Christ, the predominantly black church on the South Side of Chicago that found itself in the news this month when church member (and Democratic presidential candidate) Barack Obama was attacked over sermons by its senior pastor, is trying to clear the air by posting video clips of the pastor's sermons to YouTube. The clips contrast the "sound bites" by the Rev. Jeremiah Wright that were shown on Fox News with longer excerpts, and they show them in context. In Communications 387 (Lit./Journ.), we will watch them, as we begin to explore how different journalists are covering the presidential campaign. They should be of interest to students of basic newswriting and media ethics as well, since they demonstrate the difficulty of taking a representative sound bite or actuality from a longer discourse.

The contrast is instructive. Here's a link to Trinity church's YouTube page. Click first on the Video Log 1 clip titled "WE ARE TRINITY." Compare the promotional video you see to the descriptions of the church you have read in the media. Click next on the video captioned "FOX Lies!! Irresponsible Media! Barack Obama Pastor Wright." (The caption lets you know where they're coming from, doesn't it? I'd be more charitable to Fox than that, but you can watch it for yourselves. "You decide," to coin a phrase.) What differences do you see between the sound bite aired on Fox news and the 10-minute excerpt? How accurately does it capture the essence of the sermon? What does it catch? What does it leave out?

First-rate newspapering on a ukulele?

"Trying to be a first-rate reporter on the average American newspaper is like trying to play Bach's St. Matthew Passion on a ukulele: The instrument is too crude for the work, for the audience and for the performer." -- Ben Bagdikian

Author of "The Media Monopoly" (1983) and emeritus dean of the journalism school at Berkley, Bagdikian has been a fierce critic of the corporate media for decades. Most local television news he characterizes as "giggle programs, where inane pleasantries bounced back and forth, in between which they say oh yes, there was an ax murder in San Jose." And overall, he told WGBH-TV in Boston, "what we're seeing in the media now is a decrease in hard reporting as a proportion of the whole, and an increase of soft entertainment features -- which are the least expensive to produce and the most revenue producing."

True enough about newspapers. But what about ukuleles? Let's see.

Roy Smeck, a vaudville artist known as the "wizard of strings," demonstrates here what a virtuoso ukulele player sounds like in an old film clip. Now, it is possible to play Bach on the uke. Here's a guy with the screen name "wookiefatcat" playing a Bach prelude in G on the uke. I admire wookiefatcat's, uh, showmanship and decication, so I won't say what I think of the performance, other than to say the ukulele is a very simple instrument. Bach's music isn't simple, though. A clip of the Thomaskirke boys' choir (the same choir Bach directed choir in Leipzig) singing an excerpt from the St. Matthew Passion gives you a better idea of what Leibling was trying to get at.

Later: A blogger named Howlin' Hobbit sends "a little something that might stop the snickering" ... links to YouTube clips of a ukulele player named John King playing "The Washington Post March" (a John Phillip Sousa standard) and, yes, Bach. King's rendition of the Prelude from the Cello Suite, No. 1 (BWV 1007). He made a believer out of me. King's playing is as intricate, to my ears, as classical guitar. Howlin' Hobbit, by the way, has a blog called Ukelele & All That Jazz

Guide for free-lancers (which is every one of us who doesn't have a fulltime writing job at the moment) HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

Found -- or rediscovered -- while I was looking for a free-lance writers' how-to book for advanced journalistic writing (Communications 337) in the fall: Moira Allen's Writing-World.com website for free-lance writers, people who think they might like to be free-lance writers and/or -- I would strongly suggest -- college students who are thinking about writing and editing careers.

Allen, of Chesapeake, Va., is author of "Starting Your Career as a Freelance Writer," one of the books I'm considering for COMM 337. Her website has categories for writers of all skill and experience levels, from a "Beginner's World" to sections on screenwriting, self-publishing books, promotion and business angles including accounting, taxes, conracts, publication rights, plagiarism, copyright infringement and what to do if your intellectual property is stolen.

It's for journalistis, non-fiction writers, essayists (now called "creative non-fiction" writers for reasons that largely escape me), poets, mid-list novelists and fiction writers who specialize in genre categories like romance, mystery, children's lit, science fiction and fantasy. Also hard-headed, market-driven realists who write greeting card verse. A little something for everyone ... especially those of us who have bills to pay!

I'd begin at the beginning, with (flourish of trumpets) ... the "Beginner's World." Obvious enough? Easy-to-read articles on everything from commas to queries (sales letters), interviewing and time management tips, networking, article ideas and tips for finding markets (i.e. people to publish your articles). One day you're going to want to run with the big dogs, and this website will help you get out from under the porch.

COMM 317: Now this ...

Some numbers, and a question below that relates to your term papers ...

Here's a report in today's Washington Post on a recent Pew Research Center poll that shows little public knowledge of U.S. casualties in Iraq and less coverage of the ongoing war there:

Twenty-eight percent of the public is aware that nearly 4,000 U.S. personnel have died in Iraq over the past five years, while nearly half thinks the death tally is 3,000 or fewer and 23 percent think it is higher, according to an opinion survey released yesterday.

The survey, by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, found that public awareness of developments in the Iraq war has dropped precipitously since last summer, as the news media have paid less attention to the conflict. In earlier surveys, about half of those asked about the death tally responded correctly.

There's a real chicken-and-egg question here. Has awareness dropped because coverage slacked off? Or did coverage fall off because interest in the story was slipping in readership surveys? Some more numbers:

Related Pew surveys have found that the number of news stories devoted to the war has sharply declined this year, along with professed public interest. "Coverage of the war has been virtually absent," said Pew survey research director Scott Keeter, totaling about 1 percent of the news hole between Feb. 17 and 23.

The Iraq-associated median for 2007, he said, was 15 percent of all news stories, with major spikes when President Bush announced a "surge" in forces in January of that year and when Gen. David H. Petraeus, the U.S. commander in Iraq, testified before Congress in September.

And a few more numbers (which I think I'd better give to you without any comment on my part):

Compared with those Americans surveyed who correctly identified U.S. casualties at around 4,000 (3,975 as of yesterday morning, according to the Pentagon), 84 percent identified Oprah Winfrey as the talk-show host supporting Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.) for the Democratic presidential nomination, and 50 percent knew that Hugo Ch¿vez is president of Venezuela.

And now, the question:

What does all this have to do with our term papers? Which came first: The chicken or the egg? What would Jeremy Bentham think of this situation? What might the media do to serve the greatest good for the greatest number? What, if anything, would Kant counsel? What would Aristotle say?

COMM 317: Link to Bill Moyers show

A copy of the assignment sheet for your term papers -- due Tuesday, April 1 -- is posted below. (Don't let the date unduly influence your creativity!) We'll talk about it between now and then. Here are some links to help you

Here's a link to the Bill Moyers show "Buying the War" we watched Tuesday:

http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/btw/watch.html

The show originally aired on Bill Moyers' Journal April 25, 2007. In class today, we watched all of Chapters 1, 2 and 3 and the first 15 minutes or so of Chapter 4. We'll discuss it in class Thursday, and screen the last part of it Tuesday, March 25 (we have to do it that way, because we can only get the lab in UA4 on Tuesdays). For continuity, start at 12:42 in Chapter 4 if you're screening it yourself over spring break.

"How did the mainstream press get it so wrong?" asks the tease to Moyers' show. "How did the evidence disputing the existence of weapons of mass destruction and the link between Saddam Hussein to 9-11 continue to go largely unreported?"

A better question might be: How did a second-rank bureau like Knight-Ridder get it right?

Interviewed prominently are Washington bureau chief John Walcott and reporters Jonathan Landay and Warren Strobel of Knight-Ridder, who went against the grain and presented a fairly balanced account of the evidence for and against the Bush administration's rationale for invading Iraq.

About the only review I found was in Variety, the show-biz magazine, which praised Moyers' brand of "provocative, high-IQ TV" but also noted his standing as a "long-time liberal advocate." Variety said the show was a "methodical, devastating, pull-no-punches recap" of pre-war coverage. Similarly, a story in USA Today notes the "media-White House dance is familiar to Moyers, who once spun the Vietnam War as a special assistant to President Johnson," but offers no opinion on the show.

COMM 317: Term paper due April 1

Communications 317: Media Law
Benedictine University at Springfield
Spring Semester 2008

"So as grave and learned men may doubt, without any imputation to them; for the most learned doubteth most, and the more ignorant for the most part are the more bold and peremptory." Section 338a. -- Sir Edward Coke, Institutes of the Lawes of England (1628) Sect 338a.

Term paper – Spring 2008

On Tuesday, March 11, we will watch “Buying the War,” a Bill Moyers’ Journal program available at http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/btw/watch.html (and linked to our blog, The Mackerel Wrapper). In the words of its creators, “The program analyzes the stream of unchecked information from administration sources and Iraqi defectors to the mainstream print and broadcast press, which was then seized upon and amplified by an army of pundits. While almost all the claims would eventually prove to be false, the drumbeat of misinformation … went virtually unchallenged by the media.” Your assignment: Write a 2,500-word (10-page) paper exploring the legal and ethical implications of the mainstream media’s coverage of the run-up to the Iraq war. If you use academic documentation, you may choose either MLA or APA style; you may also write journalistically, following standard rules of attribution in the “AP Stylebook.” While you should consider both questions below (one on law and one on ethics), you should formulate one overall thesis and support it with evidence from the video, our textbook(s) and your own reading. Be specific! Show me how much you read. Due in class Tuesday, April 1 (no foolin’).

Law. In “Make No Law,” Anthony Lewis suggests the media have a duty to report all the facts because “debate on public issues should be uninhibited, robust, and wide-open” (quoting from Justice William Brennan’s opinion in Times v. Sullivan). How well, in your opinion, did the elite media, i.e. the New York Times, the Washington Post and television networks, live up to that responsibility during the run-up to the invasion of Iraq in March 2003? How well did reporters for the former Knight-Ridder group (now part of McClatchy Co.) live up to it? Would reporting all the facts have presented a danger or served the cause of democracy under Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes’ dissent in Abrams v. United States? Or under Justice Louis Brandeis’ concurrence in Whitney v. California?

Ethics. While individual media outlets typically are not specifically bound by the code of ethics of the Society of Professional Journalists, it is generally regarded as stating the aspirations of the profession. How well did the national, or “mainstream,” media live up to those canons? If Aristotle had come back to life in the spring of 2003, what advice might he have been able to give to reporters covering the White House, the Pentagon, Congress and/or peace demonstrations during the run-up to the war? Would his doctrine of the “golden mean” have offered guidance to reporters who didn’t know which version(s) of the truth to believe and to report?

Please note: President Bush and other architects of the 2003 invasion claim they acted in good faith but on faulty intelligence. If you share that belief, I will not penalize you for expressing it in your paper. However, you still need to address the question of how well the media balanced competing versions of the truth regarding the reasons for invading Iraq.

COMM 317: Another, pro-invasion viewpoint on Iraq

One of the architects of the Iraq war is coming out with a book in which he claims the Bush administration was right about invading Iraq, and the failure of its Iraq policy was essentially caused by Washington politicians who sabotaged the effort. A draft copy of Douglas Feith's book, which is due to come out next month, was obtained by The Washington Post, which ran a story on it Sunday.

Feith's book serves as a reminder the Bill Moyers video we watch this week, on the selling of the Iraq invasion to the American people, does not reflect a consensus. Many of the people Moyers interviewed believe the Bush administration deliberately overstated the case for invasion. Feith, who served as undersecretary of defense for policy under former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, would deny that.

Instead Feith's book, according to the Post, is a "massive score-settling work" that "portrays an intelligence community and a State Department that repeatedly undermined [Rumsfeld's] plans" and suggests the invasion would have succeeded if his plans had been followed. Staff writers Thomas E. Ricks and Karen DeYoung say:

Although he acknowledges "serious errors" in intelligence, policy and operational plans surrounding the invasion, Feith blames them on others outside the Pentagon and notes that "even the best planning" cannot avoid all problems in wartime. While he says the decision to invade was correct, he judges that the task of creating a viable and stable Iraqi government was poorly executed and remains "grimly incomplete."

It is fair to point out that Feith's opinion is not widely shared. Others say Bush, Rumsfeld and Feith himself ignored the advice of experts on the Middle East and bungled the invasion and subsequent occupation. Ricks and DeYoung add:

In summarizing his view of what went wrong in Iraq, Feith writes that it was a mistake for the administration to rely so heavily on intelligence reports of Hussein's alleged stockpiles of biological and chemical weapons and a nuclear weapons program, not only because they turned out to be wrong but also because secret information was not necessary to understand the threat Hussein posed.

Hussein's history of aggression and disregard of U.N. resolutions, his past use of weapons of mass destruction and the fact that he was "a bloodthirsty megalomaniac" were enough, Feith maintains.

He blames both the CIA and Powell, who outlined the weapons case in a February 2003 speech at the United Nations, for overemphasizing the threat. But Feith appears to ignore the crucial role that statements from Cheney and Rice, about the imminence of "mushroom clouds" emanating from Iraqi nuclear weapons, played in the case the administration made for war.

Each of us will have to come to our own judgment on Feith's assertions. I am not sure they have much bearing on Moyers' main points: (1) that the media reported the Bush administration's message on Iraq to the exclusion of other Middle East experts (mostly outside the administration) who did not believe it to reflect the truth; and (2) the media had an ethical duty to report both points of view during the run-up to the 2003 invasion. But as we watch the video, we should keep in mind that the wisdom of invading Iraq is a subject on which reasonable people can and still do disagree.

COMM 317: Bong hits 4 free speech

Is this why they call it the high court?

I'd forgotten it till I found this political cartoon, but the "BONG HiTS 4 JESUS" case decision was handed down the same day as two other decisions involving the freedom of speech. One of the others involved the use of corporate money to pay for political ads. Hence cartoonist Dan Wasserman's take on the decisions. Wasserman works for The Boston Globe.

COMM 317: Bong hits 4 ethics (& announcement)

What would Aristotle have thought of *Morse v. Frederick? It's the U.S. Supreme Court case about a student who unfurled a banner saying "BONG HiTS 4 JESUS" (students who have had COMM 207, or who will take it in future, please notice lower-case "i") across the street from Juneau High School on national television?

What would Immanuel Kant have thought of it?

And Jeremy Bentham? What's the greatest good for the greatest number here?

We all know what the Supreme Court thought about it . Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for the court, held: "Because schools may take steps to safeguard those entrusted to their care from speech that can reasonably be regarded as encouraging illegal drug use, the school officials in this case did not violate the First Amendment by confiscating the pro-drug banner and suspending Frederick [who unfurled the banner and made, literally, a federal case of it]." We'll discuss that in class today, and we'll discuss the ethical implications, if any, of unfurling banners that may or may not advocate illegal drug use at what may or may not be school events.

You'll get the opportunity to blog about it, too. Try to have some fun with it. (Yeah, yeah. I know what that must sound like.) But Aristotle lived 2,400 years ago. Kant was a German "Herr professor" at the University of Königsberg (now Kaliningrad, in Russia) during the late 1700s. Bentham was an English magazine editor of the early 1800s (whose body is still on display in a wooden cabinet at the University of London where he still has a tie-breaking vote on the College Council, and, no, I am not making any of this up). Find out a little bit about them. (I just checked Wikipedia, so you may want to verify, especially on Jeremy Bentham.) Try to imagine: How would these guys have reacted to the 21st century in general? But do lead back to this question: How do their systems of ethics address the facts and principles of "BONG HiTS 4 JESUS?"

I want us to use a simplified version of each of the three ethical systems as we look at case studies throughout the rest of the semester. Think of "BH4J" as our first case study.

But first, this message.

On Tuesday, March 11, we will meet in UA4 the computer lab in the Ursuline Academy annex building on 6th Street. To get there from Dawson, go out the south door and follow the sidewalk to the old Ursuline campus. The 6th Street annex is the first building on your left. Go through the gym, where "Declare a Major Day" and the chicken dinners of yore were held, and up the ramp on the south side of the room to the main hallway. Our classroom is on your left facing 6th Street.

We will watch Public Broadcasting System host Bill Moyers' "Buying the War," a show that aired April 25, 2007, on the role the Washington Post, the New York Times and American television networks played in selling the March 2003 invasion of Iraq to the American people. Think of this as our second case study. The invasion was based on faulty information, as we now know, and Moyers suggests the media fell down on their job because it was well known in 2002 and 2003 that at least some of the information was faulty.

As you watch, be thinking of the same three questions: (1) What would Aristotle think of this spectacle? What Kant think of it? (3) What would Bentham think? I'll bet they would have loved the technology, but all three might have wondered to what purpose it was being used. American media coverage of the runup to the invasion of Iraq raised plenty of issues of professional ethics defined more strictly, too. But for the time being I want us to focus on Aristotle, Kant and Bentham.

______________________________
* Full style of Morse v. Frederick (in case you ever wondered): Deborah Morse and the Juneau School Board, et al., Petitioners v. Joseph Frederick.

COMM 317: Snow day quiz

Sometimes when attendance is down, I give quizzes that are designed in part to reward you for coming to class. I try to make them not too intellectually challenging, so everybody can get credit. There are two questions on today's quiz.

1. Pick a number between 1 and 3. That's it. That's the question. That's all there is.

2. In what large East Coast city is The New York Times located? (a) Pawnee (b) New Berlin (c) Williamsville (d) Illiopolis (e) New York.

Post your answers to comments to this message. And be sure to tell your classmates who aren't here today what you did to collect 50 points of extra credit.

COMM 317: Libel in a nutshell

Just what we've all been waiting for -- a simple explanation of what libel is. This one, by attorney Aaron Larson of Ann Arbor, Mich., defines libel in layperson's language:

Typically, the elements of a cause of action for defamation include:

1. A false and defamatory statement concerning another;


2. The unprivileged publication of the statement to a third party (that is, somebody other than the person defamed by the statement);


3. If the defamatory matter is of public concern, fault amounting at least to negligence on the part of the publisher; and


4. Damage to the plaintiff.

In the context of defamation law, a statement is "published" when it is made to the third party. That term does not mean that the statement has to be in print.

He also lists the defenses against a libel suit, starting with truth.

With that background in mind, read the article on journalism ethics by David Krajicek of The New York Daily News in the website Covering Crime and Justice put up by the Institute for Justice and Journalism, Annenberg School for Communication, University of Southern California. It's specialized, but it's the best thing you'll read on libel.

COMM 317: Ethics 'lab' at Northwestern

An ethics controversy has been simmering along at Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism, and it doesn't look like it's going away. It arose when John Lavine, dean of the school, was accused of fabricating quotes in an alumni magazine. You don't make up quotes. Period. That's a basic law of journalistic ethics.

If you get caught, you get fired. Period. Paragraph. End of story.

Well, that's the way it ought to be.

At Northwestern, the story has taken a different bounce. Lavine denies wrong-doing, but he acknowledges he can't document the quotes. The student paper, The Daily Northwestern, has interviewed students in the class where Lavine says he got the quotes, and they all deny giving him the quotes. Faculty and students are divided on the issue, and it has turned into one of those "he-said, she-said" stories where one side charges the other with something and the other side denies the charges.

In today's Chicago Tribune, columnist and blogger Eric Zorn reports he has evidence at least one quote was fabricated. Says Zorn:

That quote is a 63-word discursion Lavine attributed to “a Medill junior” who took a particular course in the winter quarter of 2007.

Daily Northwestern columnist David Spett said he interviewed all 29 students in the class, and all 29 denied ever speaking or writing the words in quotes.

Northwestern journalism professor David Protess conducted interviews with all five Medill juniors from that class and found what I found when I re-interviewed them: They denied being the source of the 63 words.

I contacted each of them again Monday to ask if anyone from the provost’s office or the committee investigating the issue had interviewed them: Each said no.

This is odd.

Or maybe, adds Zorn, it's not so odd at all. Maybe, he says, somebody is covering up. Or maybe the dean and the professors are right. Maybe it will turn out Lavine's reporting was ethical. So far, one thing appears certain: The controversy isn't going away.

Medill is one of the top journalism schools in the Midwest, in the entire country. It has a model student ethics policy on plagiarism, fabrication and other issues. Now it looks like students there are getting a lab course in the ins and outs of academic integrity.

COMM 209: Story assignment, 'Declare Your Major Day'

The following announcement appears on the http://www.sci.edu/ home page:

March 5, DECLARE YOUR MAJOR DAY
11:00 AM – 1:00 PM, 6th Street Annex Gym
Play the Game of Life, win prizes (gas cards, etc), refreshments, work with admission representatives from Lisle and Springfield Campus.

I'll bet you've already guessed what I want you to do with it!

March 5 is Wednesday, so we'll spend the class time covering the event. There should be more to write about this time, what with all the breathless excitement about majors! So I want you to give me 750 to 1,000 words. At least three live interviews. Find a way to make it hang together. Due in class Friday.

How do you write up something like this that may, just maybe, lack focus? Here's a hint: Pick an angle. Focus on it. Don't just say "SCI/Benedictine had a 'declare your major day' Wednesday." That's boring! Focus on a student, on one of the people staffing card tables, something, anything. Ask them some questions. Write down the answers. "Work the edges of the crowd," as somebody likes to say in class (what does he mean by that)? Find something everybody else isn't writing about. It's a perfect occasion for the "Newsweek lede." Focus on one detail, write it up and let that writeup lead into your nut graf. (And the nut graf is where you mention "Declare Your Major Day.") See if you can find one of the event sponsors, faculty, administration, anybody who can give you some background on DYMD. Ask them some questions. Write down the answers. Got the pattern? By now it should be second nature to you.

COMM 209: 'Actualities' or radio sound bites

Editor's note. Since we're covering the chapter in our textbook on reporting ... and since I'm offering extra credit for students who contribute to SCI's podcast (as well as the student newspaper), I'm linking to a couple of effective uses of audio as a reporting tool.

In radio, the equivalent of quotes are known as "sound bites" or "actualities." They're the audio clips that feature somebody else's voice -- usually the first-person voice of an eyewitness or somebody who's actually taking part in the news -- and they serve the same purpose as quotes in a print story. They give you that sense of immediacy, that sense of what it's like to be there.

National Public Radio is famous for its actualities. From the Central Asian republic of Tajikistan (formerly part of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics), where "weddings are traditionally long, loud and expensive," Ivan Watson of NPR reports on a new austerity measure. Listen for a cook sharpening his knives, sound bites in the Tajik language and the bride and groom getting out of a car to the acompaniment of street music and cheers. Closer to home, reporter Nancy Cook reports on the New Hampshire primary campaign. Listen for the sound of children, footsteps, traffic noises in the background ... but most of all sound bites of people in their own voices.

You can find other NPR stories -- and sound bites -- at http://www.npr.org/. Better yet, get in the habit of listening to NPR's shows "All Things Considered" in the evening and "Morning Edition" in, well, in the morning. You can hear them on WUIS-FM at 91.9 kHz.

While we're at it: Print reporters can get out the recorder and tape actualities, too. Here's a link to ... another item in this blog featuring a tape-recorded interview with a teenage sled dog racer. It appeared, with pictures, on the website of The Anchorage Daily News. Listen for when the racer goes out in the yard where the kennels are. Not a bad use of audio for a print reporter.