Alaska papers: Nuanced picture of Palin

Over the weekend, newspapers in Alaska have continued to offer perspective on Gov. Sarah Palin, now tapped as Republican John McCain's vice-presidential candidate and the beneficiary of breathlessly superficial reporting in the national media of what Alaskans call the "lower 48" (states) or, perhaps more tellingly, "Outside." Since it's second nature in the news business to consult with local reporters for background on a story, the trade magazine Editor & Publisher has been running excerpts from the papers in Anchorage and Fairbanks.

Among the most interesting stories are these:

• Tom Kizzia of for The Anchorage Daily News, has a balanced assessment of Palin's fiscal record as governor and mayor of Wasilla (pop. 9,000), the other elective she has held.
  
• The Juneau Empire in Alaska's state capital interviewed legislative leaders in both parties about her "sometimes rocky relationship with the Legislature" and got decidedly mixed reviews.

The upshot: Reporters from Alaska so far have been able to give a more nuanced, balanced picture of their governor. That's hardly surprising, since they know who to talk to. And they've hardly even mentioned Hillary Clinton!

(Kizzia, whose stories in the ADN I've been linking to the last couple of days, wrote a book on Alaska Natives based on his reporting for a series on rural Alaska and Native villages in 1990. He has been reporting for the ADN since 1982. His stuff is a model of good journalistic writing.)

COMM 337, 386: Sarah Palin bio in Anchorage paper

When Republican presidential candidate John McCain announced his selection of Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate today, The Anchorage Daily News
linked a two-part series from her gubernatorial campaign in 2006.

Written by senior reporter Tom Kizzia, it gets into such details as why she earned the nickname "Sarah Barracuda" as a high school basketball player at the same time she was named "Miss Congeniality" in a beauty contest in her hometown of Wasilla, Alaska. A good reporter with an expert eye for detail, Kizzia also explains her success in overthrowing established Republican officeholders that has earned her a reputation as a GOP maverick.

Upshot: There's more to her than you'd think, and Kizzia's series explains where it came from.

I'm linking here because the ADN has taken off the links from its front page. The first part ran Oct. 23, 2006; and the second part ran a day later.

More 'prepared remarks' before a political speech

Posted to a blog on The Denver Post's website an advance copy of Democratic nominee Barack Obama's acceptance speech. I'll cross my fingers, give you the link and hope they're still archiving the speech when class meets tomorrow.

But I'll copy and paste the heading and the first few grafs, too. Here's the header:

Excerpts of the Remarks of Senator Barack Obama
"The American Promise"
Democratic National Convention
August 28, 2008
Denver, Colorado
As prepared for delivery

Compare the tag in the AP pre-story on vice presidential candidate Joe Bidens' speech that I posted last night -- "Biden said in excerpts of his prepared remarks." It's basically the same formula as the one used here -- "As prepared for delivery." Whenever you see something about "prepared remarks," it means an advance copy of the speech that likely will be changed, at least a little, as the speaker ad libs during delivery.

Obama's speech, the one he'll give tonight, was posted to the Post's blog at 4:54 p.m. Mountain time (which was 5:54 our time), and Obama isn't scheduled to speak till 8 MDT (or 9 our time). Here's his opening:

"Four years ago, I stood before you and told you my story of the brief union between a young man from Kenya and a young woman from Kansas who weren't well-off or well-known, but shared a belief that in America, their son could achieve whatever he put his mind to.

"It is that promise that has always set this country apart that through hard work and sacrifice, each of us can pursue our individual dreams but still come together as one American family, to ensure that the next generation can pursue their dreams as well.

"It is why I stand here tonight. Because for two hundred and thirty two years, at each moment when that promise was in jeopardy, ordinary men and women students and soldiers, farmers and teachers, nurses and janitors -- found the courage to keep it alive.

"We meet at one of those defining moments a moment when our nation is at war, our economy is in turmoil, and the American promise has been threatened once more.

"Tonight, more Americans are out of work and more are working harder for less. More of you have lost your homes and more are watching your home values plummet. More of you have cars you can't afford to drive, credit card bills you can't afford to pay and tuition that is beyond your reach.

"These challenges are not all of government's making. But the failure to respond is a direct result of a broken politics in Washington and the failed presidency of George W. Bush.

"America, we are better than these last eight years. We are a better country than this."

The rest, I guess, is history. Or will be. But in the meantime, the guys who have to write something intelligent about the speech can get a running head start on it.

And that in a nutshell is why public officials give the media pre-written copies of their speeches, or "prepared remarks," before they give the speeches.

Sharp-eyed readers will no doubt notice Obama's speechwriters -- or the candidate himself, since he typically drafts his own speeches -- weren't using AP style when they mentioned the 232 years of American history. (You did notice that, didn't you? Right. Of course you did.) But when you're writing a speech, you write it to be read aloud. It's like broadcast writing, and you write out the numbers.

COMM 207: The 'Six Reading Myths' I mentioned in class (won't hurt other COMM students to know it too)

This is worth the price of this semester's tuition --

It's a handout from the Academic Skills Center at Dartmouth College titled "Six Reading Myths." It makes the point that we read most effectively if we take it in two stages:

• Skim once as rapidly as possible to determine the main idea and to identify those parts that need careful reading.
  
• Reread more carefully to plug the gaps in your knowledge.

If I had to boil it down to one word, that one word would be: "Skim!" You're playing a sucker's game if you read every word. Here, in MYTH 5: IF I SKIM OR READ TOO RAPIDLY MY COMPREHENSION WILL DROP, is the money graf:

Many people refuse to push themselves faster in reading for fear that they will lose comprehension. However, research shows that there is little relationship between rate and comprehension. Some students read rapidly and comprehend well, others read slowly and comprehend poorly. Whether you have good comprehension depends on whether you can extract and retain the important ideas from your reading, not on how fast you read. If you can do this, you can also increase your speed. If you "clutch up" when trying to read fast or skim and worry about your comprehension, it will drop because your mind is occupied with your fears and you are not paying attention to the ideas that you are reading.

If you concentrate on your purpose for reading -- e.g. locating main ideas and details, and forcing yourself to stick to the task of finding them quickly -- both your speed and comprehension could increase. Your concern should be not with how fast you can get through a chapter, but with how quickly you can locate the facts and ideas that you need.

Well, OK, two grafs. Calling something a "money graf," by the way, is another way of saying it's the key paragraph, the point that sums up all the rest of it.

A note for COMM 207 students (and a refresher for everybody else): Follow the link above and go back to the Dartmouth College handout. You'll note that they typed in two spaces after each period. Just like Miss Thistlebottom told you in high school English class, right? Well, I don't want you to ever do that! In an age of computerized typesetting, obeying Miss Thistlebottom's rule will only mess up the justification. It took me a couple of years before I trained my thumb to not hit the space bar, but you'll have to do it sooner or later if you're going to be a professional writer. Might as well start now!

COMM 207, 337, 386: Prepared speeches

In class (I forget which) the other day, a student asked how reporters get the text of a public official's speech -- or a candidate's speech (the techniques are the same in both cases). My answer, which wasn't backed up with good examples, was that usually a prepared text is given to the media shortly before the speech actually takes place. It will have a heading like "Prepared for delivery at _______ (whatever the event is)". Lately it's been political speeches. But the process is the same for the State of the State, the budget address or other political speeches with high news value.

That gives us a chance to write a story based on the prepared text and file it as soon as the speechmaker starts speechifying. During the speech, we'd follow it in the text and note ad libs as we heard them. Often the ad libs, for a variety of good reasons, would be the most newsworthy part of the speech.

Now, a couple of days later, here's an excellent example.

It's in an Associated Press story on Sen. Joe Biden's speech tonight at the Democratic National Convention. Here's the lede, by Walter Mears, who has covered presidential politics for AP for years and is one of the best reporters around. I'll quote several grafs, since I doubt it will be archived for long and it's worth coming back to and studying:

DENVER – Democratic vice presidential candidate Joe Biden said Wednesday night that the challenges America faces require "more than a good soldier" in the White House and called Barack Obama a wise leader who can deliver the change the nation needs.

In a single sentence, Obama's new running mate complimented John McCain's years of military service and slapped his claim on the presidency.

The Delaware senator told the Democratic National Convention he'd learned a lot about Obama by campaigning against him for his party's presidential nomination. Biden was an early dropout in that campaign, quitting after he managed only 1 percent of the vote in Iowa's opening caucuses.

Biden said that in debating Obama, watching him react under pressure, he learned about the strength of the Democratic presidential candidate's mind and his ability to touch and inspire people.

"And I realized he has tapped into the oldest American belief of all: We don't have to accept a situation we cannot bear. We have the power to change it," Biden said in excerpts of his prepared remarks. He was poised to receive his party's nomination for vice president Wednesday night.

"The choice in this election is clear," he said. "These times require more than a good soldier, they require a wise leader. A leader who can deliver ... the change everybody knows we need. Barack Obama will deliver that change."

There's a lot to admire in this lede. Mears works in a lot of background without bogging us down in details. But what I want you to notice is the reference to "excerpts of his prepared remarks." For those of us who know how to read the signs -- and that's a category that should include all of us as professional writers -- that tells us Mears was working from an advance copy of the prepared remarks.

Why do that? Let's look at the numbers. In this case, the numbers on the clock. According to the notation on the Yahoo! news page where I found it at 9:30 p.m. Central time, the story moved "24 minutes ago." By my calculation, Biden would have still been speaking when it hit the AP wire. But 9:30 our time is 10:30 on the East Coast, and a lot of smaller papers -- who tend to rely on AP for national news coverage -- are on deadline at that time of the night, i.e. filling their last few pages before they go to press. Filing the Biden speech story based on the prepared text would allow these AP clients to consider it for tomorrow morning's paper.

COMM 337, 386, 207 / READ!

A very good column by a senior reporter with Fox News, about how he got a story wrong -- and one of the worst ways an old-fashioned beat reporter can do it -- by reporting a person's death prematurely. I'm not always a big fan of Fox News, at least not when they blur the line between reporting and commentary, but this guy clearly knows the ethics of the craft.

COMM 207: Some "AP Stylebook" things to know

Here's a list of earth-shaking revelations you'll find in the "AP Stylebook." It won't be the last I give you, but it'll get you started. We'll add others later.

I've tried to pick out the points of AP style that cause the most trouble -- in other words, the ones that are most different from the standard English style we learn in school. You're not going to want to sell the Stylebook back to the bookstore anyway, so I'd circle the keywords at the beginning of each entry and paperclip the pages together. I circle the page numbers too.

For several years, I kept an extra copy of the AP Stylebook in my bathroom ... for those moments -- we all have them -- when we'd like to read something but don't have enough time to read a whole article. I don't expect you to learn all of this stuff at one sitting, but I do encourage you to pick up AP style over time ... almost by osmosis ... because it's the most noticeable thing that demonstrates the stuff you write is by a professional.

So let's get started. I added my helpful hints to some, just listed others. Here they are:

abbreviations and acronyms. Doesn't have a page number in my book, so I didn't circle it. But it's important. And tricky. Oops! It goes on to a second page. That's page 4 in my edition. Circle it, clip it or whatever. And keep coming back to it.

addresses. Are you beginning to notice we're not dealing with deep philosophical issues here? Every publication has its own local style. When I was at The Rock Island Argus, we went to Duffy's 4th Avenue Tap after work. And we abbreviated it that way, with the numeral followed by "-th." But in Springfield we'd write it out -- like this: "Fourth Avenue" -- because that's local style at the J-R. Luckily, we don't have such a street in Springfield. But if we did, the local paper would write it out.

capitalization.

cents. See also dollars and percent. They're related. Write it like this: $4 without the zeroes if it's a round number, $4.15 of whatever if it isn't. Cents like this: 15 cents. Percents like this: 30 percent. Got that? Try writing it that way a few times and you will.

composition titles. Basically you put titles in quotes for a newspaper that you would ordinarily underline or put in italics for college papers.

directions and regions. It's all about when to capitalize something like "central Illinois" and when not to.

fewer, less You'll make fewer mistakes if you know this, and you'll be less likely to get it wrong, too.

governmental bodies. Newspapers are full of government news. I know, I know. That's why they're losing readers. But till the last dying newspaper goes out of business, you'll be writing about governmental bodies. This item tells you how.

it's, its It's essential for you to put apostrophe in its proper place.

midnight. Also see noon. The only times of the day you don't use "a.m." or "p.m." with. You don't use numbers, either. The Stylebook explains why.

millions, billions.

more than. Also see over. Use "more than" with numbers of things, "over" with heights.

numerals This is probably the one that's hardest -- and most important -- to learn in the whole book. Keep it in the bathroom so you'll have it whenever you're looking for a few minutes of light reading matter.

plurals. Did I say numerals was the hardest? Maybe it's plurals. What's worse, numerals and plurals come up all the time. You'll never run out of fun stuff to read in the AP Stylebook!

possessives. AP's rules regarding defy logic. So you'd better learn them. More reading for the bathroom.

state names. The tricky part is the abbreviations, which are not the same ones the Postal Service uses. Learn a few you're likely to use, like "Ill." and "Mo." Look up the rest. I guess you could memorize them, but do you really think you'll be writing that much about Casper, Wyo.?

time element, time of dayand times. Picky, picky. But the rules make sense once you get used to them.

titles. Don't try to learn them all. Just know this section is there when you need to know how to abbreviate the lieutenant governor's title. And you'll need it often.

trademark.

COMM 386: 'Capitol Fax' blog w/ Obama story

Link here to the story on Barack Obama's event Saturday in downtown Springfield. Rich Miller, who writes the blog, is one of the best political reporters in the business. The State Journal-Register also has a pre-story (or -stories) by J-R political columnist Bernie Schoenberg. He is also a very good reporter. We'll be keeping up with both this semester, especially when the state Legislature comes back for the "veto session" in November.

I will be assigning you to compare the coverage of Obama's campaign event in local, state (in other words Chicago) and national news media. Details to follow. If your schedule permits you to attend the rally, tentatively scheduled for 1 p.m. at the Old State Capitol, I strongly encourage you to do so.

COMM 386: Basics on polling / PLS READ!

Here's an op-ed piece on polls by Steve Kircher, longtime research manager at the St. Petersburg Times, in yesterday's Seattle Post-Intelligencer. It includes this evaluation of the polls so far in the presidential race:

Why conduct surveys so far in advance of the election? Cynics will say it helps fill the cable news channels and political columns of newspapers. While that's a likely factor, more important is that polls generally are accurate, and even this far out they are helping to track the dynamics of the presidential race, even if the dynamics today are quite a bit different from what they will be in November.

There's an interesting paradox here: We usually compare poll data to election results in order to evaluate a poll's acccuracy, but there's a down side to that because it tends to emphasize "horse-race" reporting. That's one of the issues we'll be looking at this semester.

COMM 386: 'Thumbsucker' by Brownstein

Here's a term you won't find defined in the AP Stylebook. It's what is known in newspapering as a "thumbsucker" or a "think piece." It's an analytical, thoughtful article that really explains a current issue. Think of a deep thinker sucking his thumb while he tries to think deep thoughts and you'll get the metaphor behind it.

I think it's a word that was used by hard-news guys who didn't necessarily appreciate the ivory-tower types who wrote for the edit page.

But I digress ...

The article is titled "Reconcilable Differences," and it's by Ronald Brownstein in the current issue of The Atlantic at http://www.theatlantic.com/ ...I'm linking you to the magazine's home page because I want us all to be familiar with the publications that run quality public affairs journalism by the end of the semester. The Atlantic has been one of the best magazines in America for more than 150 years, and Brownstein is one of the best political reporters in the business. His take on this year's presidential election is the best I've seen so far.