COMM 317a: 'Perils of Moderation'

To give due credit ... I first saw this in the State Journal-Register, went looking for it on line and found it in a paper from Waltham, Mass. It's by Cokie Roberts and Steven V. Roberts, a couple who have been covering Washington politics since the later Paleolithic age and now write an op-ed column, on the "perils of moderation" and the role (they believe) the media play in dumbing down our political debate in this country.

It's worth reading in full (especially since I'm assigning it), but here's a snippet we ought to consider:

Look at Rep. Joe Wilson, the backbencher from South Carolina who rocketed to fame by uttering two words, "you lie," during the president's healthcare address to Congress. Following his outburst, Wilson probably got more ink and airtime than all House moderates put together.

"See, this is part of what happens," [President] Obama said of the Wilson incident. "It just ... becomes a big circus instead of us focusing on health care."

This "big circus" stems partly from a positive development. Technology has broken the stranglehold over information once enjoyed by the big newspapers and networks. Far more voices, reflecting a wider range of viewpoints, now participate in the national debate. But there is also a downside to this fragmentation of the market.

Walter Cronkite, who died earlier this year, never had to shout to get attention. When he was an anchor for CBS, four out of five Americans watched one of the network news shows. They didn't have a choice; his audience was guaranteed.

Today's audience has countless options for gathering information: from Webcasts and YouTube to Facebook feeds and iPhone apps. The Glenn Becks on the right and Keith Olbermanns on the left have to scratch and claw for every ear and eyeball. The temptation to be loud and shrill - to do a Joe Wilson - is overwhelming. As the president told Bob Schieffer on CBS' "Face the Nation": "They can't get enough of conflict; it's catnip to the media right now."

We share Obama's fear that this culture of conflict leads to a "coarsening of our political dialogue." And we applaud his goal of providing a "good model" for the country and making "civility interesting." But the stakes are far higher than tone or temperament.

The polarization of politics now challenges the basic concept that independent professional journalists can produce a commonly accepted body of shared information. Not only is Walter Cronkite dead - the values and institutions he stood for are dying, and that makes the president's job far more difficult.

As Obama told the Toledo Blade and Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: "I am concerned that if the direction of the news is all blogosphere, all opinions, with no serious fact-checking, no serious attempts to put stories in context, that what you will end up getting is people shouting at each other across the void but not a lot of mutual understanding."

Cokie and Steven Roberts have a point about the "coarsening of our political dialogue," and they're probably right that the media play a role in it. How does today's column in the Journal-Register - and the paper in Waltham, Mass. - fit together with Howard Kurtz' column in today's Washington Post? (See below.)

COMM 317b: Howard Kurtz on ethical issues - statutory rape, ghost writers, Michael Moore, anonymous comments - what's not to like here?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/linkset/2005/04/11/LI2005041100587.html

Roman History

By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, September 29, 2009; 9:11 AM

The conflict has dragged on for years, but now, finally, a serious debate is erupting in the press over how to win the thing once and for all.

Afghanistan? Nah. Roman Polanski.

The forgotten war is getting some overdue media attention, but it's being briefly overshadowed by the film director's arrest.

To prove that we can argue about anything in America, there is now a raging argument over whether to prosecute a man who drugged and raped a 13-year-old girl. ...

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William Safire, Dec. 17, 1929-Sept. 27, 2009

The Washington Post, in an obit on former political PR man and longtime New York Times columnist William Safire by staff writer Joe Holley, reports:

William Safire, 79, a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist and language maven for the New York Times, whose penchant for the barbed and memorable phrase first manifested itself in speeches he wrote for the Nixon White House, died Sept. 27 at Casey House, part of Montgomery Hospice in Rockville. A longtime friend and former colleague, Martin Tolchin, said Mr. Safire had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.

For more than three decades, Safire wrote twice weekly as the resident conservative columnist on the Times op-ed page. He also wrote the popular "On Language" column in the New York Times Sunday Magazine, exploring grammar, usage and the origin of words. The column led to the publication of 10 books about words and language.

He arrived at the Times in 1973, fresh from his stint as a senior White House speechwriter for President Nixon. His catchy turns of phrase often outlived the context in which they were delivered. Perhaps the most memorable was the acidic and alliterative putdown he crafted for Vice President Spiro T. Agnew to describe those in the press who opposed the Vietnam war. They were, Agnew said, "nattering nabobs of negativism."

Safire was able to bridge the gap between working for conservative politicians to writing a conservative political column -- which is not the same thing. His loyalty switched from his causes to the New York Times, although he always wrote from a political point of view. He explained it with a typical show of dry humor:

"I'm willing to zap conservatives when they do things that are not libertarian," Safire told The Post in 2004. "I was the first to really go after George W. [Bush] on his treatment of prisoners. ... The wonderful thing about being a New York Times columnist is that it's like a Supreme Court appointment -- they're stuck with you for a long time."

He also wrote a popular column on language.

Safire will probably be remembered as a wordsmith's wordsmith.

Perhaps his most fitting memorial, in fact, is this graf in his obit in Politico.com by staff writers Jonathan Martin and Harry Seigel:

A life long lover of alliterative language, Safire is the inventor of Agnew's famous phrase, "nattering nabobs of negativism."

Safire would have loved it.

COMM 207: Back, by popular demand ...

Let's vote on whether to do some more AP Stylebook exercises, So, I'll call the question question: Do we want to do some more exercises today?

Each of you gets one vote.

And I get 20.

So ... let's talley the votes. I think we're going to do the exercises.

And here they are, courtesy of Gerald Grow of Florida A&M University and his Newsroom.com website. Isn't this fun?

Let's start with the A's. Or should that be the As? Where would you look it up to find out?

Wisdom from the Internet

Cross-posted to my blogs for the edification of my students, one of those emails that go around. From my cousin on Long Island:

----- Forwarded Message -----

One day an old German Shepherd starts chasing rabbits and before long, discovers that he's lost. Wandering about, he notices a panther heading rapidly in his direction with the intention of having lunch.

The old German Shepherd thinks, 'Oh, oh! I'm in deep doo-doo now!' Noticing some bones on the ground close by, he immediately settles down to chew on the bones with his back to the approaching cat. Just as the panther is about to leap, the old German Shepherd exclaims loudly, 'Boy, that was one delicious panther! I wonder, if there are any more around here?'

Hearing this, the young panther halts his attack in mid-strike, a look of terror comes over him and he slinks away into the trees. 'Whew!' says the panther, 'That was close! That old German Shepherd nearly had me!'

Meanwhile, a squirrel who had been watching the whole scene from a nearby tree, figures he can put this knowledge to good use and trade it for protection from the panther. So, off he goes, but the old German Shepherd sees him heading after the panther with great speed, and figures that something must be up.

The squirrel soon catches up with the panther, spills the beans and strikes a deal for himself with the panther.

The young panther is furious at being made a fool of and says, 'Here, squirrel, hop on my back and see what's going to happen to that conniving canine!'

Now, the old German Shepherd sees the panther coming with the squirrel on his back and thinks, 'What am I going to do now?', but instead of running, the dog sits down with his back to his attackers, pretending he hasn't seen them yet, and just when they get close enough to hear, the old German Shepherd says....
'Where's that squirrel? I sent him off an hour ago to bring me another panther!'

Moral of this story ...

Don't mess with the old dogs ... age and treachery will always overcome youth and vigor!

COMM 207, 297, 317: Steve Lopez feature story in LA Times / READ IT

Steve Lopez of The Los Angeles Times is a reporter's reporter. You won't see him on the talking-head shows in Washington, D.C., and you won't read him pontificating about international relations. He's an old-fashioned get-out-and-talk-to-people reporter who wears out a lot of shoe leather, as the saying goes, finding human interest or feature stories.

Here's an anniversary story about a kid who was shot in a hate crime at a Jewish community center and how he's coping 10 years later.

I think it's a model of good day-to-day journalism. Lopez' lead puts you right there:

One bullet hit Ben Kadish in the hip and tore through his abdomen. Another crushed his thigh bone. He tried to crawl to a multipurpose room for cover, but his body wouldn't get him there.

He still didn't know he'd been shot.

How could a boy of 5 conceive of a world in which a stranger, filled with hate, would walk calmly into a community center filled with children and fire 70 rounds from a semiautomatic rifle, on a mission to kill Jews?

Kadish figured the loud noise and the commotion were part of a fire drill at the North Valley Jewish Community Center in Granada Hills, but nothing seemed to make sense. He remembers lying on his back, gazing up and fading out.

Paramedic Todd Carb and his partner, Danny Jordan, plowed out of Fire Station 87 in Northridge with only sketchy information about a shooting. When they arrived at the community center and realized children were inside, they charged into the building before getting police clearance.

The smell of gunpowder was sharp. Shell casings littered the lobby. Jordan went to the aid of the receptionist who'd been shot; Carb heard a woman screaming and hustled down a hallway to where she knelt next to Ben Kadish. Carb knew instantly that the boy was gravely injured.

"Don't do that!" he ordered Ben, shaking him as the boy's eyes rolled back.

How can you not keep reading to see what happens next?

That's how you pace a narrative.

But mostly Lopez' story is very matter-of-fact, solidly based on interviews with the boy and the firefighter ... and observation, a lot of careful, watchful direct observation ... but mostly a quiet retelling of what his sources told him:

Today, as the 10-year anniversary of that rampage approaches, Ben Kadish is 15 and a solid 6 foot 3. He goes to movies, hangs at the mall with friends and will be a high school junior next month. He walks with a limp, but there is no other sign -- nothing physical, at least -- of the horror he endured on what had begun as a normal summer day.

Todd Carb is now in his 29th year of service, rolling under a wailing siren to rescue the sick and injured in a daily race against time. He's the guy you hope to never see; the guy who can't arrive fast enough when you need him. He does a job and moves on to the next, knowing the only way to survive is to not get involved, to not look back.

He's made an exception, though, with the call that came on the morning of Aug. 10, 1999. ...

I think I'd cut out an adjective or two. I use too many adjectives in my own writing, and I've learned to distrust them. But otherwise, hell, even with the adjectives, I think this story is just a model of good journalism. What Lopez saw. What he heard when he got the boy, his family and the firefighters talking. For the most part, very factual.

I tried to relate it to this week's assignments in our comm. classes, and I can't. But I think you should read it anyway. In ways I can't really explain very well but still feel strongly, it's what newspaper journalism is all about.

COMM 317: Media critic discusses ACORN videos / and Fri. assignment

James Rainey, who writes the "On the Meida" column for The Los Angeles Times, questions the ethics of the ACORN videos shot by two conservative activists out to bring down the community organizing agency.

Here's the gist of Rainey's column in today's LA Times:

... Should news organizations be using this kind of subterfuge to get stories? If so, when? And when such hidden-camera theatrics come over the transom, how closely should they be scrutinized before they are thrown open to the public?

The answers -- surprise, surprise -- are not so simple.

Nothing terribly surprising in Rainey's analysis:

No mitigating factors can explain away the behavior of pathetically accommodating ACORN workers (some since terminated) captured on some of the video. Here's how to conceal your prostitution income! How about cutting your taxes by claiming those underage immigrants as dependents! Not pretty.

Yet no legitimate news organization can claim editorial integrity if it merely regurgitates information from political activists without subjecting the material to serious scrutiny.

And that, he said, the media did not do. Fair enough, at least insofar as Fox News is concerned. But is he implying political activists don't have ethical standards?

If they were members of the Public Relations Society of America, they would. Let's look at the PRSA code of ethics today and see how the ACORN shooters would stack up against the code. (If you suspect this long windup is a cheesy way of getting into the professional ethics codes, you would be right.) For Friday read Chapter 2 in Patterson and Wilkins.

COMM 207: Assignment for Thursday, Sept. 24

1. read “Every Newspaper Journalist Should Start a Blog” at http://publishing2.com/2007/05/22/every-newspaper-journalist-should-start-a-blog/ by Scott Karp

Post at least 2 grafs to your blog answering this question: “You are a journalism student/or a mass comm major or minor. How does Scott Karp’s advice apply to you? How can you use a blog at this stage of your career to learn the profession and further your own career prospects?”

2. Post a second blog entry quoting at least one (1) entry in the AP Stylebook that you think will be important to you and explain its importance in at least a 2- or 3-sentence graf.

STUDENT BLOGS -- FALL 2009

David Arterberry http://www.timeisallwasted.blogspot.com/

Gina Collebrusco http://ginawaffles.blogspot.com/

Cassie Dahman http://cassie-consumer-culture.blogspot.com/

Pete Davis http://halfway2hero.blogspot.com/

Melissa Glenn http://missy2009blog.blogspot.com/

Dylan Hardin http://dylanhardin.blogspot.com/

Shah Hasan http://shasan86.blogspot.com/

Amy Heap http://amyheap.blogspot.com/

Carolyn Johnson http://carolinaginger.blogspot.com/

Sean McPherson http://seanmcpherson8.blogspot.com/

Sheena Malone http://sheena-acornhiddencameraoperation.blogspot.com/

Mike Pulliam http://theyawningmonkey.blogspot.com/

Andrew Shackelford http://shackdaddysblog.blogspot.com/=

Amie N Suter http://amiesuter.blogspot.com/

Christina Ushman http://cmu62704.blogspot.com/

Bryce Yoho http://bryceyoho.blogspot.com/

COMM 207 -- editing blogs, steps 2 and 3

On Thursay, I asked you to write a good paragraph, at least four or five sentences long, on this question:

Compare and contrast the description of what a newspaper editor does in Ludwig and Gilmore, "Modern News Editing" and a literary (book) editor does in "Zen and the Art of Editing" by Terri Windling. Focus on what each does to bring out the best in the writing of the people they edit.

Next, I want you to double-space your paragraphs and print them out. Exchange papers with another student, and edit each other's papers using standard proofreading symbols, which you can find on page 73 in Ludwig and Gilmore or on the University of Colorado at Boulder website at

http://www.colorado.edu/Publications/styleguide/symbols.html

Hang onto them, and save your papers in an electronic format. You'll use them to start your blogs for COMM 207.

Do what? He say what?

If you don't have your own blog yet, it's time now to start one. We'll take a couple of minutes in class today for you to do that. Blogger, the website that hosts my class blogs, is relentlessly, determinedly, aggressively user-friendly. The hardest part, in a way, is finding a name that hasn't already been taken ... especially if you want to be imaginative. Click on the student blog link at the top of the page for a directory, and you'll see the names your colleagues have chosen ... and link to their blogs, too.

If you have another blog for another of my classes, feel free to use it. I want all of my 200- and 300-level masscomm students to have a blog for classwork.

If you don't, there's no better time to start one than now. We have several experienced bloggers in the class who can help you. If you've been posting comments to any of my blogs, or any other blogs on blogspot.com, you can use the username (which is really an address, right?) and password you already use for Google applications.

Next ... once you've got a blog, you want to post something to it. Right?

So, get into the dashboard, click on "New Post" and copy and paste your edited paragraph into the Edit Html or Compose field. Click on "Publish Post," and you're blogging.

Remember your username and password, and email me a link to your blog so I can post it to an updated directory of student blogs. We'll use your blogs a lot this semester, so you can get used to a few of the basic HTML tags and get a feel for blogging while you're at it.

Reading assignment for Thursday: Follow this permalink to my Jan. 20, 2008, blog "Should every newspaper journalist journalism student start a blog?" at http://mackerelwrapper.blogspot.com/2008/01/should-every-newspaper-journalist.html.

COMM 317: Blogging the ethics of a 'hidden camera' sting operation

Editor's note. Chris Britt's cartoon in Monday's State Journal-Register sums up a common attitude in most of the professional news media - all but Fox News - but look at some of the comments. Rank-and-file conservatives are upset by the ACORN story.

By all appearances, the "hidden camera" TV investigation by two right-winger activists of the community organizing group ACORN amounted to a tempest in a teapot, with nearly all the coverage coming from right-wing bloggers and the Fox cable news network. Here, according to an Associated Press wrapup that moved today (Sunday), is where it stands at the moment:

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama says there should be an investigation into the hidden-camera video involving employees at the activist group ACORN and a couple posing as a prostitute and her pimp.

The two ACORN workers are seen apparently advising the couple to lie about her profession and launder her earnings to get housing aid.

The video is only the latest problem for the group, which had nearly $1 million embezzled by its founder's brother and has been accused of voter registration fraud. The House and Senate voted last week to deny federal funds to ACORN.

Obama told ABC's "This Week" in an interview broadcast Sunday that what he saw on the video "was certainly inappropriate and deserves to be investigated." But the president did not say who should investigate. And he said it is not a major national issue he pays much attention to.

"Frankly, it's not really something I've followed closely," Obama said. ...

But before we leave the story to its rightful place as a very small footnote to history, let's discuss it. We started Friday, but I wasn't able to lay the groundwork for class discussion. So let's try again.

And let's give you some practice blogging some media analysis while we're at it.

Here's your assignment: Write a thoughtful, analytical blog piece on the ethical implications you believe most important in the hidden camera ACORN investigation. Consider what Aristotle, Immanuel Kant and the Utilitarians like Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill might say about it. (They'd be all over the map, and it's OK if you guys are all over the map, too. I like discussing this case precisely because it isn't clear-cut.) You can try my idea of imagining Kant and Aristotle talking over a bottle of peppermint vodka, if you like, or you can write it another way completely. My only requirements are that it be: (1) thoughtful; (2) well reasoned; (3) readable; and (4) well written. Shoot for 500-750 words minimum, and no more than 1,500 max. Due as soon as you post it.

I'll lay out some of the main ethical questions here, and point you to he sources linked to the blog post below:

• It is illegal in many states (including Illinois) to record people without their knowledge, and it the Society of Professional Journalists' code of ethics says to "Avoid undercover or other surreptitious methods of gathering information except when traditional open methods will not yield information vital to the public." You will find other ethical canons that may apply at http://www.spj.org/ethicscode.asp Bookmark that website. We'll return to it often.
  
• Yet the SPJ code allows undercover operations, and two college kids posing as a pimp and a prostitute would qualify as undercover, when "traditional open methods" won't work. And it is common to several systems of ethics that you can violate your code if it brings a greater good, for example if you jaywalk to rescue a child from a busy street. The ACORN expose kids say their video is bringing down a corrupt organization.
  
• When one of the ACORN kids, Hannah Giles, 20, was interviewed on the Sean Hannity show, she acknowledged she published the video showing an ACORN employee who said she murdered her husband without checking the truthfulness of that statement. (It later turned out to be a joke.) What are the ethics of accusing someone of "murder" without checking police reports to verify the accusation? Would it be different if the ACORN employee hadn't been filmed as she was saying it? Does it matter that she didn't know she was being taped? What are the professional ethics? What are the personal ethics?
  
• Giles and her partner in the investigation, James O'Keefe, 25, claim to be independent free-lance journalists who make no bones of their right-wing political beliefs and their desire to bring ACORN down. What would Aristotle say to them? Would he approve or disapprove?
  
• Immanuel Kant would take an entirely different tack, no doubt. What would he say to Giles and O'Keefe? What would he base his reasoning on? What would happen if surreptitous videotaping were raised to the level of a general principle? What if everybody did it? How about telling lies? How many people in this story are telling lies? What would Kant think about that? Or would he say "I told you so?"
  
• According to the Utilitarians, the ethical thing to do is sometimes the thing that does the most good for the greatest number of people? How would Giles and O'Keefe use this to justify their undercover operation? Or would they bother? When does the end justify the means? When doesn't it? Do you think that's the case with this story?

Here's a link to a blog that Nikkie Prosperini wrote a couple of years ago titled "WWAD (What Would Aristotle Do)" ... if you're wondering who I stole the phrase from, it was Nikkie. She was writing about the U.S. Supreme Court case about a kid of got kicked out of school for displaying a banner that said "Bong Hits 4 Jesus" during a public event and claimed his First Amendment rights were violated. It, too, had both ethical and legal implications.

Writing your resume? Consider adding a 'profile' ... and here's a Web page that shows you how to do it

A couple of days ago, a student showed me a resume with a one-paragraph "Profile" in the space just below her name on her resume. It was not one of those lame "career objectives" I used to write when I was in college - like "seek rewarding career in newspaper industry" or "seek Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing by the time I'm 30." Instead, it was a brief list of skills, attitudes and goals that a potential employer might want to use. I'd never seen one before, but she showed me how it worked, and I was impressed. Here it is:

Possesses strong work ethic, has a high level of integrity and honesty, strives for excellence, self-driven, patient and understanding, works extremely well with others on team projects, displays a positive attitude, highly adaptable to fast-paced assignments, open and encourages new ideas, is culturally aware, takes on difficult challenges and tasks with an optimistic approach, and is well composed under pressuring circumstances.

Each phrase was supported by a bullet point in the student's list of specific professional skills she exercised on the job, from her internship with a not-for-profit agency to her former job as a flight attendant and relevant student activities. It wasn't just a piece of fluff.

So I went home and did a couple of Google keyword searches, and I came up with a Web page by Emily Sanderson of Preferred Resumes, an online resume service, that explains how to write a profile for your resume that can help land you a job. It's apparently a growing trend, and a good one.

The key to it, according to Sanderson, is to emphasize your skills. What can you do that an employer needs you to do?

Here's how it works. Sanderson says:

Use a profile or statement of qualifications on your resume when a summary of your accomplishments, skills, and career focus would be helpful in guiding potential employers, such as when you are changing career pursuits or entering a new market, whether it be a different geographic area or a different industry sector. A profile can emphasize transferable skills, those skills you have already gained in your career which make you marketable for your current career pursuits. A profile can emphasize transferable skills, those skills you have already gained in your career which make you marketable for your current career pursuits.

Potential employers give your resume an average of 20 seconds upon first review. That means you want to provide the most pertinent and relevant information in a format that is easy for them to absorb and that will make the best impression of you as a strong and viable candidate. Placing a profile or statement of qualifications at the top of your resume is one way to summarize this information.

If I were doing my resume, I'd do the profile last. I'd write the chronological list of work experience first, then I'd build my profile around the skills I had acquired or demonstrated on the job. Here's an example from one of Sanderson's clients:

Results-oriented and talented marketing professional with strong analytical and strategic planning abilities paired with superior client and project management skills. Expertise in developing promotional materials. Firmly committed to earning and inspiring rapport and confidence with all members of the team.

See how much this focuses on specific skills -- strategic planning, for example, and on-the-job tasks from designing promotional material to managing working groups - that an employer might be looking for?

But what if you're a college student and don't yet have a lot of professional experience? Sanderson says you can still use this strategy:

Individuals who are fresh out of college who don’t have a lot of work experience outside of an academic setting can still benefit from using a profile. At this time of economic uncertainty, profiles should be strategically written not to pigeonhole you but to emphasize your strengths and those skills which could be applied to multiple sectors within your industry.

A profile uses a different structure than the rest of your resume or your cover letter. The text of the profile is comprised not of sentences but of a series of strategic phrases that include actions and that express enthusiasm and zeal. Be careful that the profile doesn’t follow a classified ad format — save your career objective, if mentioned at all, for the end of the profile.

Even as students, you are acquiring transferrable skills - learning how to do the things an employer needs you to do - in off-campus jobs, internships, work-study gigs and student activities.

Warning: Actually, a couple of them:

• Preferred Resumes is a business, and basically it is giving away some of its product - career advice - on the Web site in order to attract customers. It's like the free samples you get on a toothpick at the supermarket. Their other services will cost you money if you decide to use them.
  
• If you are required to prepare a resume on campus, you may be directed to follow a specific format that does not include a profile statement and emphasizes schoolwork rather than your on-the-job experience. In that case, you should follow the directions you are given. But consider saving your school resume to your hard drive and adding the profile later when you apply for work in the real world.

COMM 207: In-class assignment. Here's the chance you've been waiting for ...

Update: For Tuesday, bring the paragraphs you wrote Thursday (Sept. 17), and be ready to print them out and edit each other's writing ... bringing out the best in the writing, of course. Read Chapter 5 in Ludwig and Gilmore, and pay special attention to the copy editing symbols on page 73 because you'll be using them. - pe

You get to write something!

And edit it for grammar, spelling and AP style!!

Isn't that exciting?

Here's what I want you to do: (1) Write a good paragraph, at least four or five sentences long, on the question below; (2) double-space it and print it out as a Microsoft Word document; (3) exchange papers with one of your colleagues in COMM 207; (3) edit your colleague's paper for grammar, spelling and AP style.

Use standard copy editing symbols.

There's a good set of copy editing/proofreading symbols from the University of Colorado at Boulder, and there's a set on page 73 in Ludwig and Gilmore, "Modern News Editing." It's in a chapter we haven't assigned yet, but it's not too soon for you to start getting used to them.

The QuestionCompare and contrast the description of what a newspaper editor does in Ludwig and Gilmore, "Modern News Editing" and a literary (book) editor does in "Zen and the Art of Editing" by Terri Windling. Focus on what each does to bring out the best in the writing of the people they edit.

Finish your paragraph in class today. Save it to your flash drive or email it to yourself and bring it in Tuesday. We'll do the editing piece then.

COMM 317: From ACORN story, a mighty oak? or a little puff of smoke?

Today I was going to post discussion, links and some questions about the latest political scandal to consume inside-the-beltway Washington pundits -- a series of hidden-camera reports by two amateur journalists who posed as a pimp and a prostitute and got employees of ACORN, a tenants'-rights organization, to talk about violating the law.

But a "crisis" came up relating to another course, and I'm just going to leave you with the links

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/09/16/AR2009091602341.html?hpid=topnews
w/ video (1:26




By Darryl Fears
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, September 17, 2009

Amid a firestorm of criticism from both sides of the political divide, the community organizing group known as ACORN announced Wednesday that it would launch an independent review into "the indefensible action of a handful of our employees" who were secretly videotaped while giving advice to actors posing as a pimp and prostitute on how to buy a home and start a brothel.

The announcement by Bertha Lewis, ACORN's chief executive, came on a day when her organization's actions were strongly condemned by White House spokesman Robert Gibbs and days after conservative members of Congress called for a complete cutoff of federal funding for the group.

today's story, with video,
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/09/17/AR2009091704805.html?hpid=topnews


Who's Blogging» Links to this article
By Darryl Fears and Carol D. Leonnig
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, September 18, 2009



Debra Saunders, San Francisco Chronicle,
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/09/16/MNFS19NG5L.DTL

Nut falls near the ACORN tree
Debra J. Saunders

Thursday, September 17, 2009


I would not go see the film "Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan" because I found more cruelty than humor in deliberately exposing unwitting civilians to the easy ridicule of smug sophomores.
...

Congress should pass a measure ending federal funding for ACORN, and President Obama, who represented ACORN in a 1995 lawsuit, should sign it.

But I won't join those who are hailing the enterprising O'Keefe and Giles for doing the sort of work "60 Minutes" should have done. There was so little fact-checking in this exercise that Fox News' Glenn Beck ran a video in which a San Bernardino ACORN organizer said she had killed her husband - when she had not.

Conservatives, beware. Any activist can grab a camera, head for a church or a campaign, and record some stupid quotes. When they do - and they will - the right will complain that it is wrong to brand a cause by the careless comments of a handful of disciples.

http://mediamatters.org/research/200909160047 "Videotaping may have violated state criminal statutes"



Sean Hannity "Fourth ACORN Video Most Explosive Yet"
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,550841,00.html

HANNITY: Let me go to the other aspect of this which we just showed here. Not only does she admit to — if I heard her correctly running a prostitution ring.

GILES: Yes.

HANNITY: Heidi Flies is my idol. Is that the right word?

GILES: Yes, her hero.

HANNITY: Her hero. OK. Specifically now, she goes into this scenario about her husband and the killing of him.

GILES: Yes.

HANNITY: Why don't you explain exactly because I want to make sure people understand it?

GILES: So this is exactly what happened. She said she was abused by her husband. And that she killed him. Now, if a woman is getting abused, she has the right to defend herself. And I went ahead and I asked her oh, was he abusing you when you killed him? And she goes no, not right that instant; which is huge.

HANNITY: All right. She is saying she killed her husband or created the plot to kill her husband?

GILES: Right, then after — she goes well, she tried to cover up for saying she didn't kill him in self-defense and said she went around to the community and let different groups know that she was being abused. And so it's basically she set up the murder of her husband.

HANNITY: Have you ever checked to see if, in fact, she had a husband that was killed?

GILES: We are working on that.

HANNITY: You haven't gotten to the details on that?

BREITBART: Look, there is so much stuff coming in, we have — there are more than four cities as you know.

HANNITY: Because she could have just — in fairness.

BREITBART: She certainly does exist. And if you look on the Internet you can see that she's also involved on the other side of ACORN, ACORN political side. So she is a community organizer in the political sense as well.

GILES: There is a criminal record also for her if you look her up and different things and then...

HANNITY: So you are really investigating that now.

GILES: We are working on that.

HANNITY: So she's on the tape admitting that she plotted to kill and had her husband killed but we don't know if it's true yet.

GILES: Yes. We don't know if it's true. She also threatened to kill someone else.

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/baltimore-city/bal-md.ci.acorn11sep11,0,7738162.story

Charles Cooper, column on CBS News,
http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2009/09/16/blogs/coopscorner/entry5316534.shtml

If I had a nickel for each time a Fox News talking head put down "the mainstream media," we'd be talking Rupert Murdoch money already.

Over the years, the network's anchors regularly have sounded that snarky refrain. It's become even more insistent since the Republicans lost control of all three branches of government in the 2008 elections. Of course, there's special irony when employees employed by a multi-billion dollar conglomerate pretend that they're not part of the big, bad establishment. Especially when you consider that that their corporate parent owns two of New York City's four major dailies, but that's another story for another time.)

Still, it's effective marketing, no matter how inaccurate or self-serving.



The Chicago Tribune and Baltimore Sun's blog "The Swamp," Monday - with video of Greg Gutfeld, host of 'Red Eye' on Fox News
http://www.swamppolitics.com/news/politics/blog/2009/09/acorn_a_doubleedged_lightning.html





...

Here's a wrapup that aired yesterday on National Public Radio. And here's report by ABC News political editor Jake Tapper that goes into some of the journalistic ethics involved.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/09/14/AR2009091400790.html


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/linkset/2005/03/24/LI2005032401272.html
Media Notes Archive

COMM 207: AP Stylebook exercises

Here, courtesy of Gerald Grow of Florida A&M University and his Newsroom.com website, are some fun-filled exercises designed to get you using the AP Stylebook. What I like about them, aside from the sheer, giddy joy of using the Stylebook, is that Grow developed them in consultation with Ron Hartung, *aka "Grammar Man," now of Florida A&M and formerly an assistant city editor and writing coach at The Tallahassee Democrat.

*Tangent (but it's not): I said "aka" in the last sentence. Or should it have been "a.k.a.?" What does it mean? How should we write it in AP style? Where would you look to find out?

What I like about the Newsroom101.com website is that the things Grow and Hartung obviously think are important are the things working newsmen think are important.

COMM 337: Today's discussion -- 'what would ________ do?'

You've seen the "WWJD" bracelets, right? The ones that ask "What Would Jesus Do?" Well, in COMM 337, I want us to get familiar with the ethical theories of Aristotle, Immanuel Kant and the Utilitarian philosphers Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill. So we're going to look at an issue -- actually a couple of them -- that are in today's news and ask ourselves, "what would ___________ do/say" about it?

The issue: President Obama was taped at an off-the-record session saying he thought Kanye West acted like a "jackass" at a recent music awards ceremony. It got onto a network TV news Twitter feed --briefly -- and independently the TMZ celebrity gossip website. Story here with a link to the audio.

It's clearly a violation of the Society of Professional Journalists' code of ethics to record off-the-record comments.

But what would ______________ (insert philosopher of your choice) say about publishing the remark? Does TMZ have the same ethical standards as a mainsteam outlet?

What about Kayne West's tantrum itself? What would Aristotle, Kant and the boys say about that? How does their philosophy apply?

COMM 317: Breaking story, assignment for Friday

There's a political scandal brewing over ACORN, a community action organization that Republicans accuse of fostering crime and corruption. The story is developing, and today it's just at the point of moving from the partisan opinion media and blogosphere into the big commercial newspapers and television networks (the "MSM" or "Mainstream Media"), but it raises some interesting ethical issues. No idea how they'll play out, but I want you to follow the story and be ready to discuss it in class Friday.

There aren't too many unbiased stories so far, but the major media are just getting into it. Here's a wrapup that aired yesterday on National Public Radio. And here's report by ABC News political editor Jake Tapper that goes into some of the journalistic ethics involved.

COMM 207: What do editors do, anyway?

Editor's note (yep, writing editor's notes is something else editors do): I put this post up on the blog last week, but skipped over it until we got into Chapter 4 on editing as a management function. Today, we'll start by going back through the reading and seeing how much of the discussion compares an editor to a coach or a manager ... i.e. someone that brings out the best in the other people who work for a publication and helps them work together as a team. Then we'll look for some of the same things in the websites linked below. - pe

"Editing should be, especially in the case of old writers, a counseling rather than a collaborating task. The tendency of the writer-editor to collaborate is natural, but he should say to himself, How can I help this writer to say it better in his own style? and avoid How can I show him how I would write it, if it were my piece?" - James Thurber (1894-1961, humorist, cartoonist, editor and contributor, The New Yorker)

"One should fight like the devil the temptation to think well of editors. They are all, without exception - at least some of the time, incompetent or crazy." - John Gardner (1933-1982, novelist, creative writing teacher, Southern Illinois University-Carbondale)

"Only kings, presidents, editors, and people with tapeworms have the right to use the editorial 'we.'" - Mark Twain (1835-1910) author of "Huckleberry Finn," journalist)

There are different types of editing. One that isn't discussed in our textbook is exercised by literary editors who work with creative writers. Let's start today's class by going back through the text and refreshing our memory on Chapter 4. Then we'll read a piece called "Zen & the Art of Editing" by freelance book editor Terri Windling of New York City. She begins:

In my years as a fiction editor, I have rarely met anyone outside of the publishing industry itself who has any real idea what it is that I do for a living. My own mother was convinced that I spent my days correcting other people's spelling and punctuation, and she couldn't fathom how a daughter who'd brought home Fs on spelling tests had ended up with that job.

Part of the confusion derives from the term itself, since the word "editing" can apply to several different jobs within the book publishing field alone (and we won't even go into film or newspaper editing here). ...

And so on ... Windling also has links to a couple of articles that are worth surfing. One is in The Guardian, a British broadsheet newspaper, and one is in the online magazine Salon.com. While we're looking at all these things, let's notice how they're edited. There's a lot of variety in the industry.

James Thurber worked with Harold Ross, one of the 20th century's legendary literary editors, at The New Yorker. In a book called "The Years With Ross" he explained what a great editor like Ross did with his writers ... part of it was keeping writers out of trouble. Thurber:

He had a sound sense, a unique, almost intuitive perception of what was wrong with something, incomplete or out of balance, understated or over-emphasized. He reminded me of an army scout riding at the head of a troop of cavalry who suddenly raises his hand in a green and silent valley and says, "Indians," although to the ordinary eye and ear there is no faintest sign or sound of anything alarming.

But Ross did more than that. For 25 years he set the tone at the New Yorker.

Another famous literary editor was Maxwell Perkins of Charles Scribner's Sons, the book publishing company. Here's an assessment of Perkins' editorial gifts in his Wikipedia profile:

Perkins was noted for his courtesy and thoughtfulness. He also recognized skilled writing wherever he found it and nursed along writers as few editors did. That Ring Lardner has a reputation today, for example, is because Perkins saw him as more than a syndicated humorist. Perkins believed in Lardner more than the writer did in himself, and despite the failure of several earlier collections he coaxed Lardner into letting him assemble another under the title How To Write Short Stories (1924). The book sold well and, thanks to excellent reviews, established Lardner as a literary figure.

Apart from his roles as coach, friend, and promoter, Perkins was unusual among editors for the close and detailed attention he gave to books, and for what the novelist Vance Bourjaily, another of his discoveries, called his "infallible sense of structure." Although he never pretended to be an artist himself, Perkins could often see where an author ought to go more clearly than the writer did.

Perkins was also known for editing novelists Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Thomas Wolfe. Most of us don't publish writers of their caliber, or New Yorker's for that matter, but we try to do something they excelled at.

Both Ross and Perkins are remembered for: (1) understanding what their writers were trying to say; and (2) bringing out the best in them. Their gift was basically a gift of empathy.

As we read this week's assignment in "Modern News Editing" by Mark Ludwig and Gene Gilmore, we'll read about editors as coaches, as team players and and as newsroom managers. But I think it all starts with slinging words around. That's what you do when you work for publications, whether they're newspapers, literary magazines, Pulitzer Prize-winning novels ... or press releases, three-fold brochures and employee newsletters.

One other thing. Both Ross and Perkins started out as newspaper reporters, Perkins for The New York Times and Ross for The New York Evening Post. Even though times have changed since the 1910s and 1920s, newspapering values and conventions are still basic to the rest of the publishing world: Something to keep in mind as you continue to read "Modern News Editing," even if you have no intention of ever going into the newspaper business!

COMM 317: Copyright, assignment for next week

Let's start with the assignment so I don't forget it (you wouldn't forgive me if I did that ... right)? Get our textbook out. It's "Media Ethics: Issues and Cases," by Philip Patterson and Lee Wilkins. If you like philosophy, read the Foreword by Clifford Christians of UIUC. If you don't like philosophy, still read it. It raises some ideas that are worth thinking about, even if we usually don't like to talk about them. Main part of the assignment: Read Chapter 1 (pp. 1-17). A warning: It's a 17-page crash course in ethics (another subject we don't like to talk about). It's heavy going. So start early. Skim-read it a couple of times first, then go back over it. It will not go away. -- pe

For today, we'll take up copyright.

Where would you go to find out about copyright issues? The AP Stylebook is always good, of course, and I'm sure by now you all keep copies under your pillow for those sleepless nights. But where would be even better?

Bingo! You got it!! The U.S. Copyright Office website has a Frequently Asked Questions page. Let's go there.

Keep this window open, though. We'll come back to it.

Later: Hope you enjoyed the copyright page. Welcome back. Last week I had a piece published on a website called EverythingDulcimer.com, a niche publication for amateur musicians who play the Appalachian dulcimer. On the theory you might be interested in seeing how copyright issues play out in practice (even though the content of the article is of interest only to people who play that instrument), let's go there. Link below to Everything Dulcimer's directory of articles ...

http://everythingdulcimer.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=category&id=14&Itemid=113

... and my piece is No. 9 in the directory, called "Drones, Picks and Popsicle Sticks."

Let's start by looking at the bottom of the directory page and the bottom of the first page of my piece. The website owns the copyright, since I assigned all rights when they accepted it for publication.

Next, let's look at the picture at the top. The line drawing that shows a mountaineer playing a dulcimer on the porch of his cabin. It's from a magazine article that appeared in 1915. So it's in the public domain. That's why I used it.

Next, skipping over my golden prose, let's click through to the next page. See the picture of the guy playing the dulcimer? The one I shot as a staff photo for The Knox County News in Tennessee, if you look at the cutline. A couple of copyright issues here. One is that I shot the picture when I worked for the paper. That means they owned the copyright, since I was on their staff. But the paper went out of business in 1974 (long story, involving a guy who was picked up by sheriff's deputies trying to board a bus in Jefferson City, Tenn., amid wholesale allegations of violation of the bad check law). Since it was my photo, I can argue that am exercising a secondary, or residual, right to use it. But that would be contested in court, if there were anybody around to contest it on behalf of The Knox County News.

Last copyright issue is the most interesting of all, because you can learn how to use it. Click through to Part 2, headlined "Europe: 'Remember the Buzzing of Bees'." You'll see a reproduction of a picture in an old book by a Michael Praetorius. If you look at the list of sources at the end of my piece, you'll see it comes from Wikimedia Commons. The Wikipedia websites have been very active in promoting use of artwork and other intellectual property in the public domain and under what is know as a Creative Commons license. Creative Commons is new, and its implications are still unclear. But it looks like it's going to be an important source for people to use the intellectual property of others for non-commercial or not-for-profit purposes and with some rights reserved. Especially as an educator, I think it's worth keeping an eye on.

COMM 317: Right to Privacy?

http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/mon-february-9-2009/bill-o-reilly-s-right-to-privacy

COMM 207: Zen in the art of AP style

“Flow with whatever may happen and let your mind be free. Stay centered by accepting whatever you are doing. This is the ultimate.” - Chuang Tzu (ancient Chinese philosopher)

Actually, it's the pentultimate. The next to the ultimate.

The ultimate is the AP Stylebook. Right?

Here's a preliminary list of life-changing 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 some of the points of AP style that cause beginning professional writers 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 your dog-eared copy of the 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. How about the head of the local mosquito abatement district? (Or is that a trick question?) And you'll need it often.

trademark.

[Modified from Aug. 21, 2008]

COMM 207: What do editors do, anyway?

"Editing should be, especially in the case of old writers, a counseling rather than a collaborating task. The tendency of the writer-editor to collaborate is natural, but he should say to himself, How can I help this writer to say it better in his own style? and avoid How can I show him how I would write it, if it were my piece?" - James Thurber (1894-1961, humorist, cartoonist, editor and contributor, The New Yorker)

"One should fight like the devil the temptation to think well of editors. They are all, without exception - at least some of the time, incompetent or crazy." - John Gardner (1933-1982, novelist, creative writing teacher, Southern Illinois University-Carbondale)

"Only kings, presidents, editors, and people with tapeworms have the right to use the editorial 'we.'" - Mark Twain (1835-1910) author of "Huckleberry Finn," journalist)

There are different types of editing. One is exercised by literary editors who work with creative writers. James Thurber worked with Harold Ross, one of the 20th century's legendary literary editors, at The New Yorker. In a book called "The Years With Ross" he explained what a great editor like Ross did with his writers ... part of it was keeping writers out of trouble. Thurber:

He had a sound sense, a unique, almost intuitive perception of what was wrong with something, incomplete or out of balance, understated or over-emphasized. He reminded me of an army scout riding at the head of a troop of cavalry who suddenly raises his hand in a green and silent valley and says, "Indians," although to the ordinary eye and ear there is no faintest sign or sound of anything alarming.

But Ross did more than that. For 25 years he set the tone at the New Yorker.

Another famous literary editor was Maxwell Perkins of Charles Scribner's Sons, the book publishing company. Here's an assessment of Perkins' editorial gifts in his Wikipedia profile:

Perkins was noted for his courtesy and thoughtfulness. He also recognized skilled writing wherever he found it and nursed along writers as few editors did. That Ring Lardner has a reputation today, for example, is because Perkins saw him as more than a syndicated humorist. Perkins believed in Lardner more than the writer did in himself, and despite the failure of several earlier collections he coaxed Lardner into letting him assemble another under the title How To Write Short Stories (1924). The book sold well and, thanks to excellent reviews, established Lardner as a literary figure.

Apart from his roles as coach, friend, and promoter, Perkins was unusual among editors for the close and detailed attention he gave to books, and for what the novelist Vance Bourjaily, another of his discoveries, called his "infallible sense of structure." Although he never pretended to be an artist himself, Perkins could often see where an author ought to go more clearly than the writer did.

Perkins was also known for editing novelists Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Thomas Wolfe. Most of us don't publish writers of their caliber, or New Yorker's for that matter, but we try to do something they excelled at.

Both Ross and Perkins are remembered for: (1) understanding what their writers were trying to say; and (2) bringing out the best in them. Their gift was basically a gift of empathy.

As we read this week's assignment in "Modern News Editing" by Mark Ludwig and Gene Gilmore, we'll read about editors as coaches, as team players and and as newsroom managers. But I think it all starts with slinging words around. That's what you do when you work for publications, whether they're newspapers, literary magazines, Pulitzer Prize-winning novels ... or press releases, three-fold brochures and employee newsletters.

One other thing. Both Ross and Perkins started out as newspaper reporters, Perkins for The New York Times and Ross for The New York Evening Post. Even though times have changed since the 1910s and 1920s, newspapering values and conventions are still basic to the rest of the publishing world: Something to keep in mind as you continue to read "Modern News Editing," even if you have no intention of ever going into the newspaper business!

COMM 317: A combat picture, a death and the ethical dilemmas that confront the news media

This gets us ahead of where I wanted us to be today, but it's in the news now and it relates to what we'll be doing next. It's also a good way for us to start *segueing from law to ethics. -- pe

Two stories on the Politico.com website today on an issue that's also reflected in our media ethics textbook ... where should we draw the line on publishing pictures that are: (1) graphic or disturbing, especially when they show people's injuries; and/or (2) not helpful to selling U.S. foreign policy to the public? Here's the issue: The Associated Press has published a picture of a 21-year-old Marine corporal being treated shortly before he died of combat wounds in Afghanistan. U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates asked AP not to run the picture, saying the Marine's family asked that it not be published, but AP consulted its editors and decided the picture should be published anyway.

Here's Gates' rationale for asking that the picture be supressed:

Gates wrote to Thomas Curley, AP’s president and chief executive officer. “Out of respect for his family’s wishes, I ask you in the strongest of terms to reconsider your decision. I do not make this request lightly. In one of my first public statements as Secretary of Defense, I stated that the media should not be treated as the enemy, and made it a point to thank journalists for revealing problems that need to be fixed – as was the case with Walter Reed [military hospital where substandard conditions were revealed by the news media]."

“I cannot imagine the pain and suffering Lance Corporal Bernard’s death has caused his family. Why your organization would purposefully defy the family’s wishes knowing full well that it will lead to yet more anguish is beyond me. Your lack of compassion and common sense in choosing to put this image of their maimed and stricken child on the front page of multiple American newspapers is appalling. The issue here is not law, policy or constitutional right – but judgment and common decency.”

AP editors explained their decision in a story picked up separately by Politico:

The Associated Press is distributing a photo of a Marine fatally wounded in battle, choosing after a period of reflection to make public an image that conveys the grimness of war and the sacrifice of young men and women fighting it. Lance Cpl. Joshua M. Bernard, 21, of New Portland, Maine, was struck by a rocket-propelled grenade in a Taliban ambush Aug. 14 in Helmand province of southern Afghanistan.

The image shows fellow Marines helping Bernard after he suffered severe leg injuries. He was evacuated to a field hospital where he died on the operating table.

The picture was taken by Associated Press photographer Julie Jacobson, who accompanied Marines on the patrol and was in the midst of the ambush during which Bernard was wounded. She had photographed Bernard on patrol earlier, and subsequently covered the memorial service held by his fellow Marines after his death.

"AP journalists document world events every day. Afghanistan is no exception. We feel it is our journalistic duty to show the reality of the war there, however unpleasant and brutal that sometimes is," said Santiago Lyon, the director of photography for AP.

He said Bernard's death shows "his sacrifice for his country. Our story and photos report on him and his last hours respectfully and in accordance with military regulations surrounding journalists embedded with U.S. forces."

Here's how I'd frame the issue: (1) It's a question of ethics, not law. It doesn't give away upcoming troop movements, therefore doesn't call for "prior restraint." It doesn't sap morale or support for the war effort, although that case is at least arguable, and it doesn't threaten immediate harm. So nobody says the AP doesn't have the right to publish the picture. (2) The ethical principles are inexact, and we'll study them in more detail later. But for now, let's define ethics as "doing the right thing." And let's say two tests of whether something is "the right thing" are: (a) whether it is a universal moral obligation, like being kind to others or telling the truth; and (b) whether it does the most good for the greatest number of people, for example the old fund-raising pitch, "Give till it hurts."

Here's the overall issue, boiled down to a series of questions:

• Whose rights are involved here? The family's? The Marine Corps'? The AP's? How about AP readers? The public's? Does the public have a right to know?
  
• What universal ethical principles are involved here? (If you've had ethics in another course, I'm thinking of Immanuel Kant here.) Do they complement each other?Do they conflict? Both? Neither? How do you sort out the principles?
  
• If AP supresses the picture, who is helped? Who is hurt? On the other hand, if AP runs the picture, who is helped and who is hurt? Where is the greatest good for the greatest number? (If you've had that ethics course, I'm thinking of Jeremy Bentham's and John Stuart Mill's theory of utilitarianism. If you haven't, don't worry. We'll get to it.) How do you balance these interests?

According to Editor & Publisher, the trade magazine for, well, editors and publishers in the newspaper business, papers "had a mixed reaction" with "some using the image as a stark example of war and others declining to run it." E&P also has links to the picture and the story itself. I think we ought to read the story (it's up to you whether you want to find the picture ... it is disturbing), and we ought to think about its implications.

This is an issue that arises all the time. Why did British papers bribe a neighbor so they could get pictures of kidnap victim Jaycee Dugard's backyard compound? Why have British papers (some, not all) run such pictures, as well as pictures of Dugard's 11- and 16-year-old daughters? We'll look at coverage of the Dugard kidnapping in more depth later. But it's worth at least being aware of now.

__________________
* Jargon alert: Most of you probably know this already, but a "segue" (pron. seg-WAY) is a transition between segments of a broadcast program, more generally just a transition of any kind.

COMM 207: For class today (Thursday)

At the end of class Tuesday, we were talking about how well news media prepare us for our roles as citizens and taxpayers. Today I'd like to broaden that out a little, and see if it gives a context for the rest of what we do in COMM 207 (editing for publication). Let's discuss and THEN post our thoughts on it as comments to the blog. Here's the question:

How well do all the media, separately and taken together, give us what we need in order to function effectively in our society?

In order to get anywhere with that question, we'll need to break it down some. To what degree is contemporary American society mediated? What do we need to get from the the communications media? What? Why? (Always ask "why?" To everything.) What do we get? How? When? How much? Why? Let's talk about it, come to some conclusions and think about what those conclusions mean to us (or don't mean) as we study the nuts and bolts of preparing copy for a mass readership.

COMM 317: Friday - freedom of speech and press

find on Linder's website

http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/conlaw/home.html

What is "Speech"?

Prior Restraints on Publication

Clear & Present Danger Test for Subversive Advocacy

internship (COMM 297) syllabus - posted here for easy reference till I get access to the Internet again

This version of the syllabus supersedes the version posted to my faculty webpage, which I haven't been able to update. -- pe

Communications 297: Internship
Benedictine University at Springfield
Fall Semester 2009

www.sci.edu/faculty/ellertsen/masscomm/comm297syllabus.html

Communications 297 is an internship course. Students will perform editorial, public relations or other communications duties at workplace, hereinafter refered to as the work site, and meet several times during the semester with the internship coordinator, Pete Ellertsen, Beata Hall (old Ursuline convent), telephone 525-1420x519. e-mail: pellertsen@sci.edu. Office hours TBA. Home: 545 Feldkamp, Springfield, IL 62704. tel. 793-2587.

I. Course Description.

Course Title: Internship
Course Number: COMM 297
Credits: 1.00-3.00
Description
Practical experience in public relations, electronic media, journalism, advertising or multimedia supervised by the Communication Arts department. Up to three internship hours may be applied toward the 39 hour major requirement. Up to 12 hours may apply toward the 120 hours for graduation.
Prerequisites
Consent of internship coordinator, department chair, and at least 3.0 G.P.A.
The internship experience is designed to give the student practical, real world experience in a focused area of his/her choice. Through a variety of hands-on experiences, the student should expect to be better prepared for future employment experiences. It is the sole responsibility of the student to secure the internship experience. The department may have a lead or recommendation, but you are not guaranteed an internship opportunity by the Communication Arts Department. Further, the department makes no promises or guarantees concerning the quality of the internship. Each student's Learning Contract [see below] will state his/her prescribed goals and outcomes, and it is the responsibility of the internship site that mutual goals are met. The student should also understand that while he/she may be working at a location outside of Benedictine, this is still considered a course, and the student is receiving academic credit for this experience. Therefore, the student will have to pay tuition and register for each credit hour earned.

II. Textbooks. All written work for communications classes will conform to The Associated Press Stylebook and Libel Manual. Preferred editorial style at your workplace, of course, may vary.

III. Mission statement of Benedictine University. Benedictine dedicates itself to the education for the undergraduate and graduated students from diverse ethnic, racial and religious backgrounds. As academic community committed to liberal arts and professional education distinguished and guided by its Roman Catholic tradition and Benedictine heritage - the University prepares its students for a lifetime as active, informed and responsible citizens and leaders in the world Community.

IV. Goals, objectives and outcomes.
A. Goals.
• Students will gain practical communications experience in a workplace setting.
• Students will reflect on that experience and its relation to theories taught in the classroom.
• Other goals may be stipulated at the discretion of the student and internship coordinator.

B. Student Learning Objectives. Upon completion of the course, students will be able to:
• Demonstrate mastery of specific skills required in the performance of duties at the worksite, to be agreed upon by the student and the internship coordinator, and stipulated in the Learning Contract.

V. Teaching Methods.

VI. Course Requirements.
PLEASE NOTE: As of the fall semester of 2009, students are required to initiate their internships with Career Development Coordinator Marion Hitchens, whose office is located in the Resource Center, Becker Library L-36, and to follow her instructions in addition to fulfilling the departmental course requirements listed below.

In order to begin the internship experience, the student must do the following: (1) Meet with the departmental internship coordinator to discuss requirements; (2) fill out a Request for Internship form and secure signatures of the SCI/Benedictine officials listed on that document; (3) negotiate an individualized Learning Contract with the internship coordinator, and obtain signatures from his/her on-site supervisor and academic advisor. The department internship coordinator give final approval to this form. You will NOT be credited with any hours until the the Request for Internship and Learning Contract are completely filled out and all signatures have been obtained.

INTERNSHIP REQUIREMENTS

A. ON-SITE HOURS - The student is required to complete a MINIMUM of 50 on-site hours for every credit hour earned (e.g., a three hour internship requires 150- plus hours of on site work). The student may register for ewer hours with consent of the departmental internship coordinator; if the original projection of hours proves to be incorrect (i.e., too high or too low), the student will need to DROP the internship for the original allotment of credit hours, and ADD the course for the revised number of projected credit hours. This needs to be taken care of before the semester drop date.

B. DAILY JOURNAL - The student is expected to keep a daily journal of work done at the internship site. Students should deliver the journal to the department coordinator before their in-person meetings, if possible, or else bring the journal with them for the meetings. The internship journal should contain a complete detailing of duties and tasks performed. Further, it should provide insight into the internship experience for the department coordinator. The journal will be kept confidential between the student and coordinator, and therefore the student is asked to write all entries with complete candor.

C. FINAL PAPER - The student will prepare a 5- to 7-page paper on the internship experience. It should be structured approximately as follows:
1. INTRODUCTION - A history/background of the department/company.
2. BODY - A synthesis of the journal entries into a narrative form. The body of the
paper should explain the processes, projects, and learning experiences acquired by
the student during the internship period.
3. CONCLUSION - Would you recommend this internship experience to future
Benedictine students? Why, or why not?

D. SUPERVISOR EVALUATION - The immediate supervisor of the student will be asked to evaluate the student intern along a number of applicable criteria.

E. IN-PERSON MEETINGS WITH DEPARTMENT INTERNSHIP COORDINATOR - The student is expected to meet with the department coordinator in-person four to five times during the academic term.

VI. Means of Evaluation. Grades are weighted as follows:
• DAILY JOURNAL - 30%
• FINAL PAPER - 30%
• SUPERVISOR EVALUATION - 30%
• IN-PERSON MEETINGS WITH COORDINATOR - 10%

Academic Integrity Statement
Academic and professional environments require honesty and integrity, and these qualities are expected of every student at Springfield College-Benedictine University. In accordance with such expectations, academic integrity requires that you credit others for their ideas. Plagiarism, whether intentional or not, is a grievous offense. Any time you use words or ideas that are not your own, you must give credit to the author, whether or not you are quoting directly from that author. Failure to do so constitutes plagiarism.
Any incident of plagiarism and/or academic dishonesty may result in serious consequences. Penalties for academic dishonesty vary depending on the severity or extent of the problem but are always serious.
The following are consequences you may face for academic dishonesty:
• a failing grade or “zero” for the assignment;
• dismissal from and a failing grade for the course; or
• dismissal from the Institution.
Please refer to the Springfield College Benedictine University Catalog or the Student Handbook for a complete discussion of the Academic Integrity policy.
Grade Appeal Process
According to the Springfield College Catalog, grade appeals must be initiated 90 days prior to the end of one semester after the course in question has been completed. The process for appealing a grade is outlined below.

First, contact the Instructor.
1. A student must appeal to his/her instructor in writing (e-mail is acceptable) and provide specific reasons why his/her grade should be changed.
2. The instructor must respond to the student in writing (e-mail is
acceptable) and provide a copy to the division chair.
Second, contact the Division Chair.
3. If the student wishes, he/she may then appeal to the division chair in
writing (e-mail is acceptable) and provide specific reasons why his/her
grade should be changed without the instructor’s permission. The student
should understand that overwhelming evidence must be presented to the
division chair to prove that the current grade is incorrect.
4. The division chair must respond to the student in writing (e-mail is
acceptable) and provide a copy to the academic dean.
Lastly, contact the Academic Dean.
5. If the student wishes, he/she may appeal to the academic dean in writing
(e-mail is acceptable) and provide specific reasons why his/her grade
should be changed without the instructor’s or the division chair’s
permission. The student should understand that overwhelming evidence
must be presented to the academic dean to prove the grade is incorrect.
6. The academic dean must respond to the student in writing (e-mail is
acceptable). The academic dean’s decision is final.

Add/Drop Dates
Aug. 28 - Last day to add courses
Aug. 28 - Last day to drop a course without a W (4:00 p.m.)
Oct. 24 - Last day to drop courses

Incomplete Request
To qualify for an “I” grade, a minimum of 75% of the course work must be completed with a passing grade, and a student must submit a completed Request for an Incomplete form to the Registrar’s Office. The form must be completed by both student and instructor, but it is the student’s responsibility (not the instructor’s) to initiate this process and obtain the necessary signatures.

Student Withdrawal Procedure
It is the student’s responsibility to officially withdraw from a course by completing the appropriate form, with appropriate signatures, and returning the completed form to the Advising Office. Please refer to the Student Handbook for important financial information related to withdrawals.

VII. Course Outline and/or Calendar. TBA.

IX. Americans with Disabilities Act. Springfield College in Illinois/Benedictine University provides individuals with disabilities reasonable accommodations to participate in educational programs, activities, and services. Students with disabilities requiring accommodations to participate in campus-sponsored programs, activities, and services, or to meet course requirements, should contact the Director of the Resource Center as early as possible. If documentation of the disability (either learning or physical) is not already on file, it may be requested. Once on file, an individual student’s disability documentation is shared only at that individual’s request and solely with the parties whom the student wishes it shared. Requests are kept confidential and may be made by emailing jharris@sci.edu or by calling 217-525-1420, ext. 306.

IX. Assessment. Goals, objectives, and learning outcomes to be assessed will be stated in the Learning Contract. Primary means of assessment will be self-reflective essays and examination of any portfolio artifacts.
Final exam schedule TBA.

COMM 207: What is news? Let's step back and start fresh ...

Instead of going through the cut-and-dried tests of newsworthiness on pages 29-31 that you are happily memorizing, let's try something else. I think we'll come back to the same place, but maybe along the way we'll stumble onto something that will revive a dying industry.

Obviously, somebody needs to. Newspapers are losing readers. Why?

Let's start by making our own definition of news. Here. Now. Post your thoughts to the blog - as comments to this post - so we can build on each other's ideas.

How to post your responseScroll down to the bottom of this post. On the right side of the last line, there will be a link that says "___ comments" (with a number filled in where I've left a blank, depending on how many comments have been posted). Click on that link and fill in the comment field on the right. Sign in (and make a note of the username and password you choose because we'll keep on posting to the blog, and if you don't make a note of it, you'll be out of luck). Review your comment if you wish, and publish it by clicking on "Publish Your Comment." It's relentlessly user-friendly.