COMM 209: 'Today a peacock, tomorrow a feather duster' -- Gov. Quinn

[Part 1 of 2 --

[We're going to look at two well reported profiles of Illinois' new Gov. Pat Quinn today (Monday), first this one from The New York Times and next one that ran a couple of days later in The Chicago Tribune. On both, you'll see each starts with a statement about Quinn's first day or two as governor, which serves as the lede for both. In the body of each story, they incorporate a "bio" (short for biography) and talk to different people about what kind of governor they think Quinn will be now. And each concludes with a "kicker" -- a kind of twist at the end.

Read this one first, then go back up to the Trib's. We'll discuss them together in class.]

Here's a profile of Gov. Pat Quinn in Friday's New York Times that's worth looking at for a couple of reasons. For one thing, most Illinoisans don't know much about him. For another, it's pretty accurate. It captures the essence of what the guy's like. I don't much care for the "Gray Lady," as the Times is often (and deservedly) known, but there's some good reporting here by political reporter Susan Saulny. Also, for kind of a bonus, a good picture of the Statehouse press corps sticking microphones and voice recorders in Quinn's face. Don't let his hunted-animal expression fool you. He must be loving this.

Saulny's story is worth studying a little. She uses a summary lede -- a very good one, too, crisp and accurate ... and it leads up to an effective short graf.

CHICAGO — Temperate, unfussy and, at times, so independent that he can be out of the loop, the 41st governor of Illinois could not be any more unlike the man he replaced — the attention-loving showman, Rod R. Blagojevich, who was removed from office on Thursday.

And that has a lot of people in Illinois breathing a sigh of relief.

Short grafs pack a punch.

See?

The body of the story fleshes out the thumbnail picture of Quinn in the lede, and it develops the comparison with Blagojevich. Uses a lot of quotes, too. Including one that describes the new governor as "the anti-Blagojevich, for sure."

Look at the way Saulny sandwiches quotes -- from legislators, the former governor and from Quinn himself -- between transitions and explanations. Notice how much more colorful the language is in the quotes than it is in Saulny's transitions. It used to break my heart as a writer to realize it, but the quotes are why readers keep on reading.

That's why I learned to organize my stories as "quote-kebabs" on a skewer.

And look at the end of the story. Saulny uses a "kicker," an all-but-irresistable quote at the end. Here's how she sets it up:

Mr. Quinn said he was not sure whether he would run in 2010, when Mr. Blagojevich’s term ends. As it was, he had not decided what to do when his term as lieutenant governor was up.

One thing he will not do, he said, is let his newfound popularity go to his head.

“You want to know my philosophy?” Mr. Quinn said. “One day a peacock. The next day a feather duster.”

How could you top that?

All COMM classes: Wow ...

That's all I've got to say about Thursday's drama in state government. I'm still trying to absorb it. Here are some links:

I just checked the Office of the Governor's website at 7:30 Central time, and Gov. Pat Quinn has already changed the home page. Here's the text in full:

SPRINGFIELD – January 29, 2009. Former Lieutenant Governor Pat Quinn has become the 41st Governor of the State of Illinois, having taken the Oath of Office at 5:40 p.m. on Thursday, January 29, 2009 The Oath of Office was administered by Illinois Supreme Court Justice Anne Burke in a brief ceremony in the Chamber of the Illinois House of Representatives.

"I pledge an open and fair state government worthy of being called the Land of Lincoln," Quinn said. "The people of Illinois have the right to expect integrity and diligence from their elected officials.”

On Thursday, the Illinois Senate convicted Governor Blagojevich on Articles of Impeachment the House passed earlier this month. Therefore, under Article V, Section 6 ( c ) of the Constitution of the State of Illinois, the Lt. Governor assumes all duties and powers of Governor.

"In the coming days, we will face some tough choices. I am confident that by working together we will meet these challenges to emerge a much stronger and vibrant state.”

Governor Quinn reminds Illinois citizens of President Abraham Lincoln’s immortal words: "Government of the people, by the people, and for the people shall not perish from this earth.”

But they haven't changed the HTML code yet. The page title (which shows up in the Google directory) still reads "State of Illinois - Rod Blagojevich, Governor." That detail, I predict, will get taken care of very soon.

[Later: At 1 p.m., I was still Googling up a directory showing the old page title, but when I pulled down "View Source," I got this:
<blockquote><html>
<head>
<title>State of Illinois - Pat Quinn, Governor</title>
So the problem is with Google rather than the Governor's Office. They just haven't updated the directory yet.]

The last quote, from Lincoln, is very characteristic of Quinn, by the way. So was his swearing-in speech in the House of Representatives chamber last night. I thought he said exactly what needed to be said, but ...

Full disclosure: I worked for Pat Quinn when he was state treasurer, and I like the guy. So I can't be entirely objective. Not yet.

Anyway, I liked the speech.

Here's the the swearing-in and bio story by Mark Brown of The Chicago Sun-Times. A columnist, Brown writes in his own voice and gives his own reaction. That's what columnists (and bloggers) do.

The Chicago Tribune has several stories on Quinn. Including today's editorial which suggests Quinn "could prove to be the man for the moment." It concludes, "Gov. Pat Quinn (who would've thunk it?) has a tough road ahead. Let's hope he has company on it." Giddy praise from a paper that never gave him the time of day -- or any page 1 coverage -- when I was working for him.

We'll look at The State Journal-Register in class, too.

[Later: We sure did! The J-R was giving away copies at the Qik N Ez station on North Grand, and the clerk gave me a bundle of 30 when I told her I teach journalism at SCI-Benedictine. Great for class discussion.]

COMM 209: Links to Blagojevich interviews by Cynthia McFadden and Geraldo Rivera

Governor Blagojevich's interview by co-anchor Cynthia McFadden Monday night on "Nightline." Transcript and eight-minute video clip.

Ask yourself and be ready to discuss in class:

-- How effective was her questioning?

-- What's the purpose of asking questions of a news source anyway? To show what a good questioner you are, or to get them talking? How good were the quotes she got from the governor?

And here's a 10-minute clip of Rivera's interview with Blagojevich earlier in the day.

Same questions:

-- How effective was his questioning?

-- Again, did he get Blagojevich talking? How good were the quotes? Some of his questions sounded sympathetic -- "I agree with you ... I've met him [Senator Burris], he's a good guy," etc. -- and some of them come out of the blue. "Are you broke now?" Does Rivera get good quotes this way?

What makes a good newspaperman?

"What makes a good newspaperman? The answer is easy. He knows everything. He is aware not only of what goes on in the world today, but his brain is a repository of the wisdom of the ages. He is not only handsome, but he has the physical strength which enables him to perform great feats of energy. He can go for nights on end without sleep. He dresses well and talks with charm. Men admire him; women adore him; tycoons and statesmen are willing to share their secrets with him. He hates lies and meanness and sham, but he keeps his temper. He is loyal to his paper and to what he looks upon as the profession; whether it is a profession, or merely a craft, he resents attempts to debase it. When he dies, a lot of people are sorry, and some of them remember him for several days."

-- Stanley Walker, city editor, New York Herald Tribune, 1924

COMM 390: * Revised semester reading assignments * IMPORTANT * / Do not pass 'Go'; do not turn in your "Get Out of Jail" card / READ! READ!! READ!!!

PLEASE MAKE NOTE OF THESE REVISIONS AND LET YOUR CLASSMATES KNOW ABOUT THEM. THEY REPLACE THE READINGS IN THE SYLLABUS.

As revised, there are two reading assignments. They are:

1. Arthur Asa Berger, "Ads, Fads, & Consumer Culture: Advertising's Impact on American Character and Society." Read as much as you can, as fast as you can and finish it as soon as you can.

Then:

2. Jean Kilbourne, "Can't Buy My Love: How Advertising Changes the Way We Think and Feel." Read as much as you can, as fast as you can and finish it as soon as you can.

The books are fairly straightforward, and you should be able to read them pretty quickly. For advice on reading strategies, see a 2001 handout on strategic reading from Dartmouth College. It's called "Six Reading Myths," and I can practically guarantee you it will teach you things you didn't know before about reading. I have a Ph.D. in English, and it totally changed the way I read for my work. I can't recommend it highly enough. I am very serious about this.

Reason for the new schedule of assignments: When I got home this afternoon and started reading ahead for Wednesday's class, I realized my original schedule of assignments was ping-ponging you back and forth betwee Berger's book and Kilbourne's. The new schedule will give you an overall context from Berger, and a more narrow focus on gender roles and what society might do that would be less corrosive of women, men and families than some of the present stereotypes we see in advertising.

COMM 209: Some ledes on Blagojevich's impeachment trial stories

While I haven't checked them all, most of the stories on the World Wide Web tonight develop the same angles we noticed when we watched the opening minutes of the impeachment trial of Gov. Rod Blagojevich in class today.

From the Chicago Tribune website, a wire story that catches the disjointed nature of today's trial of a defendant who wasn't there:

Blagojevich trial moves on without him
By The Associated Press
6:47 PM CST, January 26, 2009

Gov. Rod Blagojevich spent the day defending himself on TV shows in New York while the impeachment trial that could oust him began in Springfield. Here is what happened:

IN NEW YORK: Blagojevich spent the day on network television, with appearances lined up on NBC's "Today" show, ABC's "Good Morning America," "The View," and "Nightline," and CNN's "Larry King Live." Before national audiences, Blagojevich said federal agents who tapped his home telephone and bugged his office took his conversations out of context. He said he did nothing wrong and defended his decision to boycott the Senate impeachment trial, saying there's no way he can get a fair shake.

IN SPRINGFIELD: The Illinois Senate began the trial without Blagojevich. Neither the governor nor his lawyers were there to dispute the charges or challenge the prosecutor's list of witnesses.

THE PROSECUTION BEGINS: Prosecutor David Ellis presented his case against Blagojevich to the full Senate, saying the governor actively set in motion several plots to use his executive power to enrich himself with a high-paying job in Obama's Cabinet or campaign contributions or other benefits. Abuse of that authority, the prosecutor said, warrants Blagojevich's dismissal from office. ...

And so on. Another, from the Bloomberg financial news service, focuses on the Statehouse action we watched today:

Illinois Senate Starts Governor’s Impeachment Trial (Update4)
By Andrew Harris

Jan. 26 (Bloomberg) -- The Illinois Senate began the impeachment trial of Governor Rod Blagojevich in the state capitol in Springfield, a proceeding that may end with the two- term Democrat removed from office for alleged abuse of power.

Blagojevich, 52, was impeached by the state’s House of Representatives on Jan. 9, a month after he was arrested by the FBI on corruption charges, including allegations that he tried to auction President Barack Obama’s vacated U.S. Senate seat for campaign cash. Blagojevich isn’t attending the trial.

“This is a solemn and serious business that we are about to engage in,” Illinois Supreme Court Chief Justice Thomas Fitzgerald, who is presiding over the trial, said today. “The record will reflect that the governor has failed to appear.” In the absence of an answer to the summons served on him Jan. 14, the governor is being treated as having pleaded not guilty.

The senators will vote up or down on one article of impeachment. ...

And so on ...

Who says we don't get worldwide attention. Here's The Guardian (U.K.), a London broadsheet and arguably the best newspaper in the English-speaking world:

Blagojevich skips impeachment hearing

Daniel Nasaw in Washington
The Guardian, Tuesday 27 January 2009

According to the embattled Illinois governor, Rod Blagojevich, not even the character testimony of "15 angels and 20 saints led by Mother Teresa" could keep the state senate from throwing him out of office.

Which may explain his decision to stay away from impeachment proceedings in the Illinois senate yesterday. Instead of facing what he described as "a kangaroo court" and "a hanging without even a fair trial", Blagojevich flew to New York, where he launched his defence in a round of interviews on television talkshows.

The disgraced governor, who stands accused of seeking to sell Barack Obama's vacant US Senate seat for personal gain, is an unhappy distraction for a Democratic party and a country embracing its new president. And his television appearances were unlikely to win him any sympathy.

Defending his absence from the trial, Blagojevich told NBC's Today Show that not even the parade of celestial witnesses could alter the course of a trial he described as "rigged" and "fixed".

So we've got Springfield in the headline, the governor (in New York) in the lede ... along a really, really fun quote from his TV blitz.

(By the way, if you took COMM 207 [copyediting] last semester, you noticed the period goes outside the quotemark in British English. Made your teeth grind, didn't it? Because you learned to care about things like that in 207, didn't you?)

BBC News, the British Broadcasting Corp., arguably the most objective news source in the world, in any language, takes a solemn and serious approach to the solemn and serious proceedings in Springfield:

Illinois impeachment trial opens
Page last updated at 20:13 GMT, Monday, 26 January 2009

The impeachment trial of US Governor Rod Blagojevich over charges that he tried to "sell" Barack Obama's Senate seat has begun in Illinois.

The trial in Springfield will determine whether the state's chief executive will be forced out of office.

Mr Blagojevich - who is refusing to take part in the trial - has denied doing anything wrong.

The Illinois House of Representatives earlier this month voted to impeach him over the charges.

"This is a solemn and serious business," Illinois Chief Justice Thomas Fitzgerald told the state senators at the start of the trial.

Senators are considering charges that Gov Blagojevich, a second-term Democrat, tried to sell the US Senate seat vacated by President Obama, used his authority to pressure campaign contributors and defied legislative decisions.

(Grizzled veterans of COMM 207, by the way, no doubt will note with appropriate wailing and gnashing of teeth the absence of a period after "Mr" and the initials in "U.S." These things matter!)

But by far the most news outlets hit the angle of the governor's absence from the trial. My favorite was columnist Joseph Curl of the Washington Times, written for tomorrow's paper:

CURL: Blago's impeachment circus
Joseph Curl
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
SPRINGFIELD, Ill. | It was like going to the circus and finding out that the clown had called in sick.

Gov. Rod R. Blagojevich on Monday skipped the opening day of his impeachment trial, which he dismissed as a "sham" devised by fellow Democrats who want him out so they can raise taxes on hard-working Illinoisans. But 59 state lawmakers nevertheless gathered under the crystal chandeliers of the garish Capitol's Senate chamber to weigh the fate of the foul-mouthed governor, charged with trying to sell the U.S. Senate seat vacated by President Obama.

"Is the governor present?" state Supreme Court Chief Justice Thomas Fitzgerald asked shortly after banging his gavel to open the tribunal. A silence as big as the governor's hair followed. "Let the record reflect that the governor has failed to appear."

Skipping opening day, though, didn't stop the impish 52-year-old from making news - lots of it. In New York City for a dawn-to-dusk media blitz that included stints on "Good Morning America, "The View" and "Larry King Live," the man known simply as Blago blasted into the headlines by declaring that he had considered choosing another single-named superstar to fill the open Senate seat: Oprah.

Curl, by the way, writes a column for the Times called "The Political Circus." Moral of the story: Get to be a columnist, and you say things like that because your name is at the top of the column. But even then, you stick with the obvious angle -- that Blagojevich not only skipped out on his own impeachment trial but worked the TV shows in New York City while he was at it.

COMM 390 -- class discussion notes

CONVENTIONAL WISDOM -- PURPOSES OF ADVERTISING

• Get people to buy a product
• " " " " YOUR "
• To get the word out there and get people talking about it
• $$$$
• To beat out the competition (clutter)
  

Grab attention with flashy colors, fun catchphrases

COMM 209: Monday, Blagojevich trial

Today in class we'll watch the opening part of the trial of Gov. Rod Blagojevich in the Illinois State Senate -- (if it convenes as scheduled and if our video feed from the Illinois General Assembly works OK). Take notes, and we'll talk about it as time permits.

LINKS:

Illinois General Assembly/Senate website http://www.ilga.gov/senate/audvid.asp (click on "Watch Live Video*).

Channel 2 Chicago live streaming video at http://www.abclocal.go.com/wls/livenow?id=6546124

COMM 390: Semiotics and ads / A COUPLE OF BASIC CONCEPTS

D R A F T

One of the basic theoretical underpinnings of what we're going to do in Communications 390 is what is known as semiotics -- i.e. the study of signs, which means (sort of) the study of texts and the way we create meaning from texts. As you read up on Arthur Berger (and we will, sooner or later), you'll discover he's written widely about the subject. Including this introductory essay posted to the Internet as "Cultural Criticism: Semiotics and Cultural Criticism." Read it for class Wednesday. It'll give us some analytical tools to use as we look at ads, along with the checklists in Chapters 8 and 9 of "Ads, Fads, & Consumer Culture."

We started to get into semiotics a little bit in class Friday, and Katie emailed me afterward:

Doc,

I found some cool stuff on semiotics. Thought you might want to check it out:

http://www.uvm.edu/~tstreete/powerpose/index.html
http://www.uvm.edu/%7Etstreete/semiotics_and_ads/introduction.html

Thanks,Katie

She's right. The stuff is cool! It was new to me, and it explained the subject in a way I'd never understood before. (OK, I'll admit it. Very little of this theoretical stuff had made sense to me before.) It's part of a semiotics, advertising and media website created by communications prof Tom Streeter for his students at the University of Vermont.

We'll start today by looking at a picture of a pipe that's not a pipe and click through Streeter's introduction till we can wrap our heads around that idea. Along the way, we'll pick up several concepts we can use. Including:

signs
symbols
semiotics
signs (again)
signifier
signified
connotations (of a word)
paradigms
codes

Then we'll see what Berger has to say, in "Ads, Fads ..." about the Fidji ad we looked at Friday. After which, if we still have time (and we'll try to make sure we do), we'll take another look at the Macintosh 1984 ad and the Hillary Clinton mashup we watched Friday in light of what we now know about semiotic theory.

Below is some really draft-y stuff we may come back to later (if I can get it worked out to my satisfaction). Remember, I'm just learning a lot of this stuff as we go along.

* * *
Is this a sign?

'Semiotics for beginners av Daniel Chandler er en grei og kortfattet innføring til de fleste aspekter ved semiotikken. Mange forslag til videre lesning' - Espen Østli, Department of Media and Communication, University of Oslo, Norway

I found it on the table of contents of the HTML version of Chandler's book. Doesn't mean much, does it? (Unless you speak Norwegian.) But let's keep going. We'll come back to it.

Refresh the page (or reload it if you're driving a Mac), and see what you get in the quote field at the bottom. It changes every time you refresh the screen. I've been trying it tonight, and I got quotes from Florida Gulf Coast University, Monmouth College (in Illinois, hooray for us!) and LaTrobe University in Melbourne, Australia.

Do signs add up to codes? If the quote from Norway is a sign, so's this:

'A very highly recommended site, offering an accessible and useful introduction to semiotics' - B G Woolland, Department of Film & Drama, University of Reading

That's Reading in England, by the way, not Pennsylvania. (And it's pronounced "redding." Does the meaning of the name change in your mind when you know that? Remember: The signified is in your mind.) Another quote, this one from Ireland:

'This guide is a very good introduction to the world of semiotics, written in a very straightforward manner. Dr Chandler succeeds in demysifying many of the more difficult elements involved.' - Michele Neylon, postgraduate research student, University of Limerick

Let's take these three quotes together, and remember a sign consists of a signifier and a signified. So what's the signifier here? What's the signified? How does it change in our mind when we keep refreshing the screen and see people are saying the same things about Chandler's book in Florida, in Monmouth, Ireland and Australia? And what about Espen Østli in Norway? Now we understand how these quotes fit together on Chandler's TOC page, now we can guess he's also saying it's a good book. There's another code here, too, by the way. Chandler put the quotes in red type. What does that mean? Pretty important, huh?

Martin Irvine, founding director of the graduate Communication, Culture, and Technology Program at Georgetown University, has an in-depth glossary of key terms in semiotics.

COMM 209: A journalism students' survival kit

Since you're going to be writing stories almost immediately, you're going to learn how on the job. Nothing wrong with that. It's how professional journalists do it But you're going to need to learn the basics in a hurry. Here's a webpage that tells you how to write a story and gets it right in just a few words. It's by Lawrence Surtees, a Canadian telecommunications expert who was a reporter at the Toronto Globe and Mail for 17 years. (Here's a link to his bio.) It's called "How to Write a Great News Story," and it's written for a readership of Canadian high school students. But it's quite simply the best short explanation of the basics that I've ever seen. Read it.

Notes
The beginning of a news story is called the "lead." It's pronounced "lede" (I spell it that way).

Grizzled veterans of my other journalism classes will notice that Surtees quotes Donald Murray.

COMM 390: 'What the $%^#?" -- a note (and a link) on strategic reading and reading between the lines

Did you feel like you needed to put on hip boots to wade through today's reading from "Ads, Fads, & Consumer Culture" by Arthur Berger? There's good information there, but there's a lot of stuff about Freud, about French post-structural philosophy (bet you were happy to see it, weren't you? Oh boy, I haven't read any good French post-structuralism lately), and a bunch of other stuff you can relax about because you aren't going to have to worry about it for COMM 390.

But there's also a little bit of good common sense in there, too, along with the academic bafflegab. So how do extract it? Skim-read. It's that easy. Huh? He say what? Skim-read through all that stuff that doesn't make a @#$%! bit of sense? How am I going to do that?

Easy. Just keep skimming till you come across something that does make sense.

Example. When I read through Friday's assignment in Arthur Berger's "Ads, Fads, & Consumer Culture," I didn't find much in the front matter that interested me very much till I got to the mention of Vance Packer's "Hidden Persuaders" on page xvi. It was an influential book, and it made an important point -- that we're all manipulated subconsciously by ads, without our being aware of it. So I circled it in green ink. (Like a lot of teachers, I don't use red ink. I don't want to brutalize your little psyches by turning back papers that look bloody.) The books are cheap, and I'm not going to sell them back. By marking in the book I can come back to the passage more quickly when I need it later. Doesn't take me very much time at all.

Try it yourself. Do it a couple of times. Once you get used to it, it'll save you time.

Here's a link to a handout from Virginia Tech about a reading technique known as SQ3R that I recommend highly. It stands for Survey-Question-Read-Recite-Review (or something like that, I tend to do the three R's all at once). It sounds gimmicky. Worse: If you took developmental reading, or "study skills" as freshmen, it sounds like English 099. But it works.

If you're studying something for total recall, say for an oral examination or if you need to operate a new piece of complicated machinery without slicing your fingers off, you go through all the steps of SQ3R. If you just need to find some information, you can get by with the first one or two.

So when I was ripping through Berger's introduction, I was doing the "S-Q" part of SQ3R. I was surveying it and asking myself (questioning) what information I could use. When I found something, I marked. The "3 R's" come later, when and if I go back to it.

Today in class we'll go through the rest of the assignment, chapters 8 and 9 on how to analyze ads and commercials, with SQ3R in mind. We'll survey it first. What makes sense? What doesn't, so we can skip over it quickly? What does? Let's identify the parts we can use later and mark them. That's getting into the "Q" part of SQ3R, when we question what we're going to be able to use. Right?

Hint: The chapters are on analyzing ads and TV spots, and each one has a list of common-sense questions on what to ask yourself as you do an analysis. Don't those lists kind of stand out from all the academic bafflegab and make you want to slow down and remember them?

Then we'll look at the ads Berger analyzes. Another hint: In addition to the Freudian, myth-and-ritual, Marxist, feminist and other academic analyses, can we just do a common-sense analysis as consumers and media professionals? What's the message? (Let's call that the text of the ad, just so we're all on the same page.) What's being said between the lines? (Let's call that a subtext. A message, or text, can have more than one subtext.) See also what Arthur Berger says about texts on page 137 of today's reading. Below are links to websites that feature both ads.

• In case you didn't get anything out of the tiny b&w illustration in Berger (figure 8.1 p. 141), here's a better picture of the Fidji ad with the picture of a woman wearing a snake around her neck. It's from a webpage on semiotics (see below for a definition) in advertising put up by Scotland's Heriot Watt University. You can also find larger pictures on eBay, by doing a Google search on keywords like Fidji perfume ad girl reptile.
  
  
• To see the 1984 Macintosh ad, go to YouTube. The ad is at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OYecfV3ubP8". And there's also a six-minute clip of director Scott Ridley discussing how he shot the ad from storyboard to classic TV production.
  
  
• Feel like you've seen this before? If you followed last year's election, you have. Before the primaries, a supporter of Barack Obama put togheter a mashup featuring Hillary Clinton as the unsettling "Big Brother" figure in the ad. And here's Slate.com's take on the mashup by political analyst John Dickerson.

The point to all of this? (And, yes, there is a point.) There's more to an ad than meets the eye. You don't have to use academic bafflegab when you go looking for it. But you do have to look. If you don't, you're allowing yourself to be manipulated.

COMM 390: a gendered 'behavioral divide' in search strategies? read and decide for yourself

An article that appeared in 2006 in ClickZ, a Web-based digital marketing newsletter, by British interactive media guru Andy Chen suggests behavioral differences in the way men and women use search engines to find information or to network. He discusses implications of a Pew Foundation study for marketing on the Internet:

This recent Pew study finds some clear differences in the way men and women use the Internet. Men tend to use the Web as a task-accomplishing tool; they retrieve information such as weather, sports, news, financial information, self-education guides; to download music and software; and to research products. Women use it first and foremost as a communications vehicle (with email as a prime reason for usage); they also search for health, medical, and religious information, as well as maps and directions.

OK, makes sense. We have lots of other studies that tell us pretty much the same thing: Men tend to value facts and figures while women tend to value relationships. (But: Don't men use email? or social networking sites?) Next question: What does this have to do with marketing? Chen suggests:

Most of us have come to embrace the idea that behavior is pivotal to segmenting an online audience. Perhaps it's better described as a "behavior first, demographic second" model. But we must not overlook the importance of demographics.

To effectively communicate with the audience, a thorough, in-depth understanding of the demographic and behavioral information is absolutely necessary. The current challenge is that unless the sites physically collect personally identifiable information (PII), gender-targeting accurately and consistently is very difficult.

I'm not sure how much I buy Chen's argument, other than agreeing the World Wide Web is beginning to revolutionize marketing by allowing to collect so much information about Web users. But that's not the point.

Besides, you don't have to agree with me. Or with much of anything else, for that matter. I want to encourage you to think for yourselves.

My point in posting this is to alert you to one of many ways the stuff we're reading about in COMM 390 can be put to use in the real world outside our classroom. Be on the lookout for others in your own reading.

COMM 209: A pretty good little 'color' story

But first, some ground rules for the class -- and how to use our class blog ... Get in the habit of reading the blog. When you see a course number in a head, that means the post is assigned reading for that class. For example, this post is assigned for Communications 209 (basic newswriting). Sometimes I'll ask questions and direct you to post answers as comments to the post. (That'll come a bit later, though, and I'll show you how to do it when it does.) Sometimes we'll kick off a class discussion by looking at the blog. Other times I'll sneak up on you from behind with a question you wouldn't know the answer to unless you read the blog.

Here's one: What does "color" mean when you're talking about newspaper stories? Read on.

Jeff Zeleny, who covered President Barack Obama's campaign for The New York Times, has a nice little story on what Obama's first day as president was like. (I've also been known to refer to these as "dumb little stories" ... which is not an insult the way I use the term ... that won't win anybody a Pulitzer Prize but are nice, solidly crafted little stories that people like to read.) Let's look at the way this one is put together.

First, there's a lede that tells a little story.

WASHINGTON — As President Obama stood on the east steps of the Capitol, waiting to review the troops in his new role as commander in chief, he discreetly moved the American flag pin from the lapel of his suit to his black wool overcoat and proceeded onto one of his first ceremonial acts of office.

He listened to “Stars and Stripes Forever.” He watched stoically as representatives of each branch of the armed services passed before him. And before he climbed into his limousine to set off for the parade, he turned to the military officer in charge of the day’s festivities and offered a handshake of gratitude.

The two-star Army general returned the handshake with a sharp salute.

When, as protocol demanded, Mr. Obama returned it, he delivered his first salute with a crisp precision that looked as though he had been practicing. (Yes, one friend said, he certainly has.) By nightfall, Mr. Obama had gotten plenty more practice, saluting again and again as bands and soldiers marched by in a parade that rolled along until well after sundown.

You'll see these ledes again and again. And again. Sometimes they'll be called "soft" ledes. Sometimes "Jell-O" ledes. (We'll study a handout from Newsweek pretty soon, and I'll probably call them Newsweek ledes, but you see them in Springfield's State Journal-Register, too. You see them everywhere.) See how this little anecdote in the lede tells you something important about Obama? His attention to detail? His studied effort to win over the military people who mostly voted against him in last year's election? Notice also how the color that is, the details, launch us as readers into the rest of the story.

"The day was steeped in emotion, history and a dash of disbelief — all three of which, friends said, Mr. Obama experienced himself in formally becoming the nation’s 44th president."

Notice how everything in this story -- every detail, every bit of color -- comes from Zeleny's own observation or his reporting. How did Obama feel? And how did Zeleny know what he felt? He asked Obama's friends. And he attributed it to the friends. After U.S. Sen. Ted Kennedy collapsed at a luncheon, Zeleny said, "Mr. Obama’s aides kept him apprised of Mr. Kennedy’s condition." How did he know this? The aides (or one of them) said so. My point: Even the things Zeleny didn't see for himself, he got from someone who did.

So ... now ... what do we mean when we talk about "color" in a newspaper story? The details? Yeah. Good. And what's a "color story?" A story that tells the details? Yeah. See, we're cooking already! And how do you get the details? You have to be there. Go to the scene. Of the crime. Of the inauguration. Whichever. So it's a kind of eyewitness story. And it's based, always, on reporting. Always.

Silver(ware) lining?

While reading a Fox News report on former President George W. Bush's departure from Washington I thought of something to be thankful about soon-to-be-former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich.

The item was headlined "Bush Family to Leave Many Treasured Items Inside White House." It turned out to be a fairly typical Fox News job, taking a swipe at a favorite target in the first couple of grafs:

Unlike Bill and Hillary Clinton, George and Laura Bush will take few treasured mementos with them from their years at the White House.

When the Clintons left the White House in January 2001, the former first couple took with them more than 50 gifts -- including a chandelier, flatware, and paintings -- valued at nearly $200,000.

The Bushes, however, borrowed from furnishings that already existed within the White House collection, said Sally McDonough, press secretary to Laura Bush.

"Mrs. Bush -- having the experience of being at the White House when her father-in-law was president -- knew how many beautiful things she had to choose from to furnish the residence. And she will go back to Texas with only those items that belong to her," McDonough told FOXNews.com.

The story turned out to be what is sometimes technically known in the industry as a "nothingburger." But it got me to thinking.

If our {bleep)ing governor came to Springfield more often and if he stayed in the Executive Mansion when he did, would he "... Leave Many Treasured Items Behind?"

Or (I'm asking in the spirit of fair comment, of course) would he steal the silverware?

Inaugural schedule / from Newsday [times EST]

Inauguration Day, hour by hour, on your TV screen
BY REID J. EPSTEIN reid.epstein@newsday.com
7:36 PM EST, January 19, 2009

With Barack Obama set to be inaugurated Tuesday as the nation's 44th president, the day figures to be one of the most-covered live events ever in television history. For Obama's swearing-in at noon, estimates put the potential worldwide audience in the billions. That figure that could dwarf viewership numbers for the Super Bowl and Academy Awards, and reach heights ordinarily seen only for the Olympics and the World Cup.Following is an hour-by-hour account of what to look for as you keep up with the day's proceedings:

5 a.m.

CNN kicks off the day's live event coverage from Capitol Hill. C-Span and Fox News begin broadcasting at 6 a.m.

8 a.m.

Security gates open for ticketholders for the swearing-in and the National Mall. Expect to see shots of cold, but excited attendees slowly making their way through security gates at entrances to the swearing-in viewing areas and on the National Mall. Inauguration officials have advised anyone with tickets to arrive no later than 9 a.m. to get through security. Nonetheless, expect to see people in lines well before and after the official program starts.

8:45 a.m.

The Obamas attend a private prayer service at the historic St. John's Episcopal Church on Lafayette Square.

9:30 a.m.

CBS News begins a six-hour broadcast

10 a.m.

Now the show starts for real. The swearing-in ceremony begins with music from the Marine Band, the San Francisco Boys Chorus and the San Francisco Girls Chorus. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) will issue the call to order and make brief welcoming remarks before making way for probably the day's most controversial figure, Rick Warren of the Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, Calif.Obama infuriated gay and lesbian groups when he announced earlier this month that Warren, a conservative evangelical megachurch minister who opposes same-sex marriage, would deliver the invocation. The Obama camp attempted to defuse the situation by naming Gene Robinson, an openly gay Episcopal bishop of New Hampshire, to give the invocation at Sunday's inauguration opening ceremonies at the Lincoln Memorial.

Also, Obama meets with President George W. Bush at the White House; they travel together to the Capitol for the inauguration ceremony.ABC News and MSNBC begin their coverage.

10:30 a.m.

After a song by Aretha Franklin, who also sang at President Bill Clinton's first inauguration, Joe Biden will be sworn in as vice president by Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens. NBC starts its coverage.

11 a.m.

The third musical interlude features composer and Floral Park native John Williams (noted for his "Star Wars" scores, among other accomplishments), violinist Itzhak Perlman, cellist Yo-Yo Ma, pianist Gabriela Montero and clarinetist Anthony McGill.

Once Williams and the foursome are through playing, Obama and John Roberts, the Supreme Court's chief justice, will take center stage. The swearing-in duties will be Roberts' first, making him the 14th chief justice to swear in a president.

Every elected president since John Adams has been sworn in by the chief justice. (In 1789, George Washington was sworn in by Robert Livingston, the New York state chancellor, and William Cushing, an associate justice, in 1793.)

Obama, placing his hand on Abraham Lincoln's inaugural Bible, will recite the same oath as his 43 predecessors, as prescribed by the Constitution: "I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the office of president of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States."

PBS begins its inaugural coverage.

Noon

Obama is sworn in as president and delivers his inaugural address.

The address will be followed by a poem composed and read by New York-born poet Elizabeth Alexander. The Rev. Joseph E. Lowery will follow with a benediction and the program concludes with the playing of the national anthem by the U.S. Navy band Sea Chanters.

12:30 p.m.

After President Obama finishes his speech, he will accompany his predecessor to a departure ceremony at the Capitol and then attend a luncheon at the Capitol's Statuary Hall. The three-course meal featuring stewed and scalloped oysters and an apple desert, is inspired by Lincoln's culinary favorites. Obama, Biden and their families, the Supreme Court justices, cabinet designees and the congressional leadership are expected to attend.

At 1:25 p.m., Bush makes "brief remarks" at the departure ceremony.

2:30 p.m.

The 56th Inaugural Parade begins, and the Obamas join the inaugural motorcade. The parade will make its way down Pennsylvania Avenue from the Capitol to the White House. The forecast calls for clouds and temperatures about 30. Expect Obama to emerge from his limousine to walk a stretch of the route. In doing so, he would follow a tradition established by Jimmy Carter that now seems ingrained in presidential inauguration. Carter's 1.5-mile walk, which he made with his wife, Rosalynn, was designed to show that the country had emerged from the stain of the Watergate scandal.

6 p.m.

The parade ends.

7 p.m.

The official inaugural balls begin, with the first-ever Neighborhood Ball at the Washington Convention Center. The event, which is expected to include the president and first lady's first dance of the night, will be broadcast exclusively on ABC beginning at 8 p.m.

8 p.m.

The Obamas begin their trek to the remaining official balls: The Commander-in-Chief's Ball, a Youth Ball, five official regional balls - including the Mid-Atlantic ball at the convention center, for invitees from New York and four other states and the District of Columbia - and Home States Balls thrown by Hawaii and Illinois for Obama, and Delaware and Pennsylvania for Biden.

Among unofficial events, there's also a ball that touts itself as "the largest gathering of peace activists without a protest" ( Harry Belafonte and Joan Baez are attending), a Funk 4 Peace ball and a ball thrown by the D.C. municipal government to highlight the capital's lack of representation in the federal government.

Also, several television networks air inaugural specials in this time period: BET's "Yes We Will" inauguration celebration, featuring Ne-Yo and Wyclef Jean, and the Disney Channel's "Kids' Inaugural," honoring military families, at 8 p.m; CBS' "Change and Challenge," and Frontline's "Dreams of Obama" on PBS at 9 p.m.; and NBC's "The Presidency of Barack Obama" and ABC's "A moment in history: The inauguration of Barack Obama" at 10 p.m.

COMM 209: Of freedom of the press and 18th-century "Weekly Dung Barges'

COMM 209 (semi-optional). If you're planning to major in mass communications, you want to skim this to get the flavor of how the news business got started in America. Even if you're not a major, you still want to skim it. Hint: It wasn't about news, it was about opinion. Now we do things differently. If the required course in media law and ethics (COMM 317) hadn't been canceled, I would have definitely assigned it for students in that class. Since it has, I'll assign it for journalism majors in COMM 209 but make it optional. A lot of the 18th-century quotes are hard to follow, but if we don't know where we come from, we don't know where we're going.

In this week's New Yorker, an article on how the newspaper business got started in the British colonies before the American revolution.

Some background:

Newspapers date to the sixteenth century; they started as newsletters and news books, sometimes printed, sometimes copied by hand, and sent from one place to another, carrying word of trade and politics. The word “newspaper” didn’t enter the English language until the sixteen-sixties. Venetians sold news for a coin called a gazzetta. The Germans read Zeitungen; the French nouvelles; the English intelligencers. The London Gazette began in 1665. Its news was mostly old, foreign, and unreliable.

Because early newspapers tended to take aim at people in power, they were sometimes called “paper bullets.” Newspapers have long done battle with the church and the state while courting the market. This game can get dangerous. The first newspaper in the British American colonies, Publick Occurrences, printed in Boston in 1690, was shut down after just one issue for reporting, among other things, that the king of France had cuckolded his own son. ...

You get the idea. (If you don't know what "cuckolded" meant, by the way, look it up. Celebrity gossip is nothing new.) As you read the rest of the New Yorker article, you'll get an idea what scandal sheets the early newspapers were. You'll also learn how long it took to set the type for a four-page broadsheet, or standard-size paper; I will create opportunities for you to demonstrate this hard-earned knowledge in the future. One paper, the Boston Gazette published by Benjamin Edes during the 1760s and 1770s, is credited with helping incite the American Revolution. Money graf:

John and Samuel Adams, James Otis, Jr., Joseph Warren—Boston’s self-styled Sons of Liberty—all wrote for Edes’s paper; Paul Revere engraved its masthead. Edes wrote for the Gazette, too, though his prose flickered but dimly. But Edes, like all his writers, knew how to sling mud, especially at royally appointed governors, British soldiers, and tax collectors. Tory printers took to calling the Gazette the “Weekly Dung Barge.”

This charge wasn’t entirely without foundation. Early American newspapers tend to look like one long and uninterrupted invective, a ragged fleet of dung barges. In a way, they were. Plenty of that nose thumbing was mere gimmickry and gambolling. Some of it was capricious, and much of it was just plain malicious. But much of it was more. All that invective, taken together, really does add up to a long and revolutionary argument against tyranny, against arbitrary authority—against, that is, the rule of men above law.

The New Yorker's article, by history professor Jill Lepore of Harvard University, suggests, "Maybe if we knew more about the founding hacks, we’d have a better idea of what we will have lost when the last newspaper rolls off the presses." That day, she says, is surely coming. "If the newspaper, at least as a thing printed on paper and delivered to your door, has a doomsday, it may be coming soon. Not so soon as weeks or months, but not so far off as decades, either. The end, apparently, really is near."

I'm not sure I buy that, and you don't have to buy it either. (You also don't have to buy it that I don't buy it. You're in this class to help develop your own opinions, not parrot mine.) Anyway, Lapore is talking about some important things here.

Maybe especially this: She suggests the 18th-century newspapers changed after the Revolutionary War. Some newspapermen of the day thought that meant the DEATH of LIBERTY, but the papers changed as circumstances changed. Lapore doesn't come right out and say it, but I think she's suggesting the same thing will happen again as print newspapers morph into an electronic delivery system. Or is she? You read it. You decide.

COMM 209: Here's what Statehouse reporting ought to be like ...

Stories that I post to this blog carrying a course number -- in this case COMM 209 -- are assigned reading for that class. I realize our class doesn't begin for another two weeks, but for some reason the world doesn't always bother to follow the Springfield College-Benedictine University academic calendar. So I'll post stories that illustrate things I think are important. But I'll try not to post too many. Keep scrolling down, BTW, there's also one of these on Jan. 5 about an Israeli reporter who covers the Palestinian side from a sympathetic perspective, and one on Jan. 2 on the difference between newspapers and blogs.

One silver lining from the scandal that unfolded after Gov. Rod Blagojevich was arrested Dec. 9, on a criminal complaint alleging corruption in his office, is that a lot more people know of one of the best Statehouse reporters in the business as they discover Rich Miller's Capitol Fax Blog. In this week's Illinois Times, staff writer Dusty Rhodes profiles Miller and his take on the scandal as well as his passing, and sadly accurate, comments on the national media.

Rhodes' column isn't half bad, either. Here are the basics, as she lays them out:

Miller started his career in 1989 here, at Illinois Times, making $50 a week and living in a basement coal bin; he now makes a very comfortable living writing a syndicated column for about 150 papers (including IT), a weekly column for the Chicago Sun-Times and churning out a thrice-weekly hot sheet called Capitol Fax, a subscription-based enterprise he launched in 1993. He also produces a juicy up-to-the-minute blog (thecapitolfaxblog.com). Did I say he covers Illinois politics? He’s all over it.

Once she interviewed Miller over lunch (a good way of doing interviews when you have the time), and she describes the experience like this:

Not surprisingly, lunch with Miller isn’t for the faint of heart. He’s a big, loud, hairy dude with a wardrobe of tie-dyed shirts and a vocabulary that could give Gov. Rod Blagojevich a run for his money on the bleepometer. “Do you mind if I smoke?” Miller asked me. “Because, if you do, you can just go sit way the [bleep] over there.”

Brackets, and bleeps, are in the original, by the way. I'll let you follow the link and read the rest of Rhodes' profile, but I do want to quote what they say about the national media, because this is a media writing class and because it's something you often hear local reporters say about the nationals:

I’d say that Miller has a love/hate relationship with this unfolding circus, but that would be putting it too mildly, on both sides. His exasperation with cable TV reporters who try to sponge off his expertise was born during Barack Obama’s presidential campaign; the Blago fiasco has turned it into a blood oath. He refuses to watch them, much less talk to them.

“First, they don’t seem to know what they’re doing, and second, I don’t like this [bleep] about ‘We’re the national media so you need to help us.’ Well, no, I don’t,” he says.

I'll let you read the rest of Dusty Rhodes' story. Better yet, read it and take a look at Miller's blog at http://thecapitolfaxblog.com.

Questions to ask yourself as you read: How does Miller report on this fast-moving story? What technology does he use to report the news? With print newspapers in "dead tree format" (i.e. paper) in deep financial trouble, is something like what he does the wave of the future?

A lot of Capitol Fax is inside baseball -- you have to know the players to get it all -- but since Blagojevich's arrest Miller has consistently kept up with the extremely fast, complex action unfolding in the state Legislature, the federal courts and Congress> For a good example, here's how he live-blogged the inauguration of the new state House and Senate. His part reads blog-style, BTW, from bottom to top. Scroll down to the last item, which reads:

* You can watch or listen to the Senate swearing-in here. [link omitted] The House feed is available here. [link omitted] WUIS radio will broadcast the Senate’s festivities, which will be presided over by the governor.

Have fun.

- posted by Rich Miller

Then scroll back up as you read his post. It conveys the immediacy of the event, and some sense of how very unusual, and solemn, it was as the House and Senate prepared to impeach and try a sitting governor who actually presided over the opening of the Senate.

Then scroll back down and look at the Comments. There are 183 of them, posted to an open thread during the inauguration. Looks like they were watching on the Legislature's video feed -- or trying to -- and unlike a lot of reader forums, they have intelligent things to say.

Miller's blog costs $350 a year, and most of his subscribers are government officials, lobbyists and others who have to follow the state Legislature closely. So he is able to write more than most Statehouse reporters, who usually only get enough space for one or two stories a day in the Chicago Sun-Times, the Trib, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch or Springfield's State Journal-Register.

Fair warning: We're going to be following state government coverage pretty closely this semester. It's a major story. So we'll be seeing more of Capitol Fax. By the way, for those of you who are taking Communications 150, the name dates back to the '90s when facsimile transmission was the cutting edge communications technology and Rich used to fax the newsletter to subscribers. An early example of new media and cross-platform convergence, which you'll be learning about in COMM 150.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer up for sale, no buyer likely

Link here to the story on the sale of The Seattle Post-Intelligencer by Hearst Corp., a move that likely means the end of the print edition of the paper and may mean the end of its website as well. The story was in the P-I Jan. 9.

And to cartoonist David Horsey's blog post on the demise of the P-I and what it could mean for the newspaper business. He predicted, "it is entirely possible there will soon be several cities without daily newspapers and Seattle could be one of them." He added:

There may be a silver lining at the edge of this dark cloud. Though the P-I made up of ink and wood fiber will be gone, technology may allow a transformed P-I to live on. Can a newspaper survive as an entity on the internet? Is that the future of newsgathering? Those questions have been asked for several years now as the business has undergone radical change. No metro daily has given it a try. The first real experiment may occur right here with seattlepi.com. I'll be writing more about this possible metamorphosis of the veneralbe P-I brand. For now, though, I want to simply mark this moment.

COMM 209: Israeli reporter on Gaza attack

Stories that I post to the class blog carrying a course number -- in this case COMM 209 -- are assigned reading for that class. I realize our class doesn't begin for another two weeks, but for some reason the world doesn't always bother to follow the Springfield College-Benedictine University academic calendar. So I'll post stories that illustrate things I think are important. But I'll try not to post too many (if the world will just let me slack off like that ...) Keep scrolling down, BTW, there's also one of these on Jan. 2 on the difference between newspapers and blogs.

On the Haaretz.com website today is a story by Amira Hass on what it's like for civilians in the Gaza Strip under attack by the Israeli army, known in Israel as the IDF or Israeli Defense Forces. It's a remarkable piece of reporting.

Amira Hass is, in my opinion, in a category all by herself. She's Jewish, born in Israel to two survivors of the Shoah or Holocaust. She reports from a Palestinian point of view for Ha'aretz, a Labour party newspaper, and she's lived both in Gaza and Ramallah on the West Bank. According to a profile in Editor & Publisher magazine in the past month she was: (1) thrown out of Gaza by Hamas; and (2) promptly arrested by Israeli police on her return to Israel. She won the Press Freedom Hero award from the International Press Institute in 2000, the Bruno Kreisky Human Rights Award in 2002, the UNESCO / Guillermo Cano World Press Freedom Prize in 2003 and the inaugural award from the Anna Lindh Memorial Fund in 2004.

Today's story begins with a matter-of-fact account of how difficult it is to communicate in Gaza:

Three hours after the Israel Defense Forces began their ground operation in the Gaza Strip, at about 10:30 P.M. Saturday night, a shell or missile hit the house owned by Hussein al A'aiedy and his brothers. Twenty-one people live in the isolated house, located in an agricultural area east of Gaza City's Zeitoun neighborhood. Five of them were wounded in the strike: Two women in their eighties (his mother and aunt), his 14-year-old son, his 13-year-old niece and his 10-year-old nephew.

Twenty hours later, the wounded were still bleeding in a shed in the courtyard of the house. There was no electricity, no heat, no water. Their relatives were with them, but every time they tried to leave the courtyard to fetch water, the army shot at them.

Al A'aiedy tried to summon help on his cell phone, but Gaza's cell phone network is collapsing. Shells have hit transponders, there is no electricity and no diesel fuel to run the generators. Every time the telephone works, it is a minor miracle.

At about noon Sunday, Al A'aiedy finally managed to reach S., who called me. There was nothing else that S., who lives nearby, could do.

I had known Al A'aiedy for eight years, and I called Physicians for Human Rights. They called the IDF's liaison office to ask it to arrange to have the wounded evacuated. That was shortly after noon - and as of press time, the liaison office had still not called PHR back.

Meanwhile, someone else had managed to reach the Red Crescent Society. It called the Red Cross and asked it to coordinate the evacuation of the wounded with the IDF. That was at 10:30 A.M. - and as of press time Sunday night, the Red Cross had still not been able to do so.

Notice how she knows these people, from living in Gaza before. (She's on the Israeli side of the lines now, of course.) Notice also how she identifies one of them only by initial and doesn't pinpoint where he lives. Sometimes you do things like that to protect your sources.

And notice also how she tries to get humanitarian aid across the lines for the Palestinian family. Under American standards of journalistic ethics, that might be considered an ethical violation - i.e. putting yourself in the story too much. Ask yourself: What would you do in a similar circumstance?

Israeli journalism is more like that in Europe than America. And Hass is a columnist, which means she gets to express her opinion more than a hard news reporter would. In an earlier column quoted extensively in the Editor & Publisher profile, she did just that:

This is not the time to speak of proportional responses, not even of the polls that promise a greater share of Knesset [Israeli parliament] seats to the mission's architects. This is, however, the time to speak of the voters' belief the operation will succeed, that the strikes are precise and the targets justified.

Take, for example, Imad Aqel Mosque in Jabalya refugee camp, bombed and strafed shortly before midnight on Sunday. These are the names of the glorious military victory we achieved there - Jawaher, age 4; Dina, age 8; Sahar, age 12; Ikram, age 14; and Tahrir, age 17, all sisters of the Ba'lousha family, all killed in a "precise" strike on the mosque. Another three sisters, a 2-year-old brother and their parents were injured. Twenty-four neighbors were wounded and five homes and three stores destroyed. This part of the military victory did not open our television or radio news broadcasts yesterday morning, nor did they appear on many Israeli news Web sites.

Powerful writing, as Editor & Publisher's editor Greg Mitchell noted.

Something else must also be noted: Israel is a democracy with a strong tradition of freedom of the press. In most countries worldwide, Hass would not be allowed to do this kind of reporting in time of war.

Al-Jazeera link to live Twitter updates on Gaza

I'll just copy Al-Jazeer'as description:

Stay up to date with all the latest developments on the violence in and around the Gaza Strip with Al Jazeera's Gaza channel on Twitter*

Here's the link:

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2008/12/2008122916531937971.html

COMM 209: Happy New Year (sorta) for journalists and bloggers (WE'LL COME BACK TO THIS WHEN SPRING SEMESTER BEGINS)!

Thought-provoking post today on Mudflats, a weblog on local Alaska politics that shot to well-earned national prominence when Gov. Sarah Palin shot to national prominence (well earned or otherwise) during last year's election. It's on the future of newspapers and journalism and how blogging fits into the puzzle.

This stuff is important, and we're going to be coming back to it all semester. How can we use the skills we're learning in Communications 209 in technologies that haven't even been invented yet?

It was prompted, according to AKMuckraker as the Mudflats blogger identifies herself, by reports The Anchorage Daily News faces the same problems as newspapers nationwide. And it segued into a comparison of what it's like to get your media content, ahem, on line or on paper, i.e. in what is also known as dead-tree format and may soon become a dead-format format:

I was talking to a friend recently about the fact that the ADN will be drastically cut back, and what might happen if it became an online only publication. She was traumatized. “But….it’s my PAPER!” she lamented. I asked what her morning routine was, and she described making the pot of coffee, letting the dog out, and sitting with her paper in her bathrobe, taking in the news before getting ready for work. Then I told her about my morning routine. Stumble out of bed, into shower, let the dog out, get to work early, make pot of coffee, sit at my computer and peruse the ADN website, and the blogs before work.

She needs paper. I don’t. But that said, I empathize. Because, frankly, if there were no more books, and we all had to get that Amazon Kindle thing, I would be in despair. With books, I want a cover. I want paper. I want to turn pages. I want to write in the margins. I do not want a “wireless reading device.” But newspapers? They hang around the house in stacks, and have to get recycled, and turn your fingers black. And I never was able to perfect the delicate art of folding that gigantic thing over into a readable size without looking like a bumbling idiot. For me, the web version is sleek and clean, and saves me time and effort. It is all about our routine, our comfort, our habit. And nobody likes theirs messed with, no matter what it is.

(Boldface type in the original.)

All this leads her into another segue. (You can segue like mad in a blog, because arguments in hypertext don't have to be linear, probably shouldn't be in fact.) And it's this that I think we ought to be aware of in COMM 209.

Sometimes you hear blogs are taking the place of newspapers, and bloggers are taking the place of journalists. I read the industry press, and I hear it a lot.

But, says AKMuckraker, that's too simple. Too cut-and-dried.

Anyone who has ever perused the blogosphere, even in a cursory way, realizes that blogs run the gamut from rediculous, to horrifying, to funny, to invaluable sources of information. It’s like the internet itself. One amorphous collection of the very best and the very worst of human nature, all available at the click of a mouse. And the blogosphere is the same. Now any person with internet access, be they psychopath, philosopher, or anything in between can say something “aloud”, and with a click of the “Publish” button, anyone else in the world with internet access can read it.

So, it is misleading to think that all “bloggers” are the same. Conservative pundits are fond of saying that bloggers are all pimple-faced teenage kids in their parents’ basement, eating Cheetos and stirring up trouble. I’m sure there are some out there who are exactly that. And in the interest of full disclosure, I’ll confess to you that drafting this post late at night, I am in my pajamas, but am not in my parents basement, and I am eating cashews. So make of that what you will.

I'm not sure what to make of it. Blogs are taking on some of the functions of journalism. I think they serve the same purpose as an old-fashioned printer's shop in the days when Benjamin Franklin could wander into Philadelphia with a roll of bread in his pocket and set himself up as a printer ... they make it easier for "a citizen who is paying attention" (which is how AKMuckraker identifies herself) to have a voice in public ... but it's awfully hard to tell what a revolution is going to look like when you're in the middle of one.

Anyway, here's what AKMuckraker makes of it. She says a journalist has an important job to do, and not just anybody can do it. She quotes an online dictionary that defines journalism as "The style of writing characteristic of material in newspapers and magazines, consisting of direct presentation of facts or occurrences with little attempt at analysis or interpretation." She adds:

I don’t know what kind of willpower it would take for me to be a good journalist, but it would have to be superhuman. To “present facts or occurences with little attempt at analysis or interpretation” is a very very valuable thing. It is a skill which I do not possess.

“Journalism” for me would be like someone telling me I could go to a party, as long as I promised not to have any fun. I leave that to those diligent, objective, determined souls for whom this is a calling.

Now I think it's important to realize this is coming from a writer who once compared Governor Palin's sound bites to "moose nuggets" (if you're not sure what a moose nugget is or which end of the moose it comes out of, link here for an explanation and a link to a picture of a wooden moose dispensing nuggets). If we didn't have the Mudflats blog, the world of political commentary would be a poorer place.

But I digress (which you can also do in a blog). AKMuckraker, the Mudflats blogger, says what she does isn't journalism. Instead, she surfs the online dictionary and decides she's a "polemicist," that is, someone who follows the "art or practice of argumentation or controversy." Me, as an old newspaper guy, I'd call her an opinion writer. It's the same thing, just easier to spell on deadline.

Says AKMuckraker,

I have a feeling that there are many other bloggers who can identify with this self-diagnosis. And like the voices of the past that wrote in diaries, or stood on soapboxes on street corners, posted writs in the public square, or who wrote letters to the editor (and continue to do so today), polemecists have a place. The crown jewel of a free democracy is the ability to raise one’s voice, say what one wants to say, and throw those ideas and opinions out into the wide world to encourage discussion and debate. And thanks to the internet, the world gets wider every day. Ain’t it grand.

All that said, I shall, with joy, leave journalism to the journalists, and I shall continue to inhabit my little polemical world, giving all those in the aforementioned profession complete permission to ignore me at will, and go about their important business, or to join the conversation.

As we learn the conventions for journalistic writing -- that is, the direct presentation of facts without much analysis -- we also want to be thinking about how we adapt these conventions to new platforms, to a new world. I don't have any answers. Especially this early in the semester (and it's still three weeks away)! But these are questions you'll be dealing with throughout your career in mass communications.

Solid reporting behind Broder's op-ed columns on Burris, Blagojevich and the 'Springfield Syndrome'

Two columns by David Broder, dean of The Washington Post's op-ed page columnists. One today and one back in December when the U.S. Attorney's Office in Chicago filed a criminal complaing against Gov. Rod Blagojevich.

Today's piece discusses Roland Burris' qualifications for high office in a candid, but even-tempered way:

Everyone, including Obama, has been exceedingly polite in their public comments about Burris. I have known him for years, and I like him. But I have never been confused about the level of his talent. He was elected as far back as 1978 as state comptroller and stayed in that low-visibility office for 12 years before moving up to attorney general in 1990.

When he tried to climb higher, he found the competition too tough. He lost a Senate race to Paul Simon, tried three times for the nomination for governor without success and ran for mayor of Chicago with the same result. He couldn't get past the Democratic primary in any of those contests.

Burris is, in short, typical of a lot of politicians in both parties who find a comfortable lodging for years in down-ballot offices but who never make the cut for the major prizes. He was distinctive in Illinois mainly for breaking the color barrier in statewide office, thanks to his downstate birth and friendships and his pleasant, accommodating personality.

A good piece of on-deadline analysis. Well sourced, too. One thing that distinguishes Broder from other op-ed pundits is that works the phone and wears out shoe leather. If he says something in print, it's based on reporting.

Linked to today's was a column he wrote Dec. 11 in which he said "Blagojevich was a scandal waiting to happen." Typically, he based it on solid reporting. In this case, of the 2002 gubernatorial primary:

When I went to Chicago to cover their pre-primary debate, Blagojevich, a boyish-looking young congressman who got his seat thanks to the clout of his father-in-law, an influential Chicago alderman, was by far the least impressive candidate. He had made no particular mark on Capitol Hill, and he seemed much less informed on Illinois issues than his rivals.

I was inclined to dismiss his chances, but a longtime Chicago reporter friend told me, "Don't write him off. He's a money machine."

The rest, as the cliche goes, is history. Or federal investigation, as the case may be.

Broder's assessment of Blagojevich is also, in the circumstances, remarkably even-handed:

The brazenness and utter sleaziness of Blagojevich stunned even veteran FBI men, [U.S. Attorney Patrick] Fitzgerald said, but it did not surprise people in Chicago or Springfield who had been watching the governor.

The criminal complaint against Blagojevich, the nominal head of [Barack] Obama's home-state party, is a mild embarrassment for the president-elect. But it really does not reflect on Obama, who has kept Blagojevich at arm's length for a long time.

As a fellow Illinoisan, I have to admit that this latest example of the Springfield Syndrome that has now tainted four recent governors is a signal that the ethics reforms Obama sponsored as a member of the Illinois Legislature did not go far enough to cleanse the pay-to-play culture.

Get out the scrub brushes.

How about that? "Springfield Syndrome." And I'll bet you thought our only contribution to the larger culture was the horseshoe sandwich!