COMM 337: Are politicians driving world economy into a black hole?

Here's an editorial - a "leader," as the Brits call them - in tomorrow's print issue of The Economist that explores how economic policies in the U.S. and Europe are related. It's an opinion piece, which by definition means you don't necessarily have to agree with its conclusions. But it gives background on the issues you're reading about in Time magazine reporter Catherine Mayer's article on Germany and the sovereign debt crisis in the euro zone.

Besides, it has one of the more attention-grabbing headlines I've seen lately:

Be afraid

With a graphic that shows a black hole and a subhead that says, "Unless politicians act more boldly, the world economy will keep heading towards a black hole." The leader itself is as well written as the headline.

Published in London, The Economist is an interesting magazine. It's been around since 1843, and it has supported both Labour and Conservative governments in the UK and both Democrats and Republican in the U.S. If it has an overriding political philosophy, it's in favor of free markets, globalization and a center-right or middle-of-the-road approach to government. It has a reputation, according to Wikipedia, for "displaying dry, understated wit, and precise use of language."

Given its attitude to the global economy, it's probably not surprising The Economist sees global implications in the European sovereign debt crisis and parallels in domestic U.S. economic policy:

... Europe’s leaders are a long way from a deal on how to save the euro. The best that can be said is that they now have a plan to have a plan, probably by early November. Second, even if a catastrophe in Europe is avoided, the prospects for the world economy are darkening, as the rich world’s fiscal austerity intensifies and slowing emerging economies provide less of a cushion for global growth. Third, America’s politicians are, once again, threatening to wreck the recovery with irresponsible fiscal brinkmanship. Together, these developments point to a perilous period aahead.

The rest of the editorial elaborates on these points. It says the U.S. economy is "limping along" and is ill-served by our political parties:

Whatever it does, America is currently on course for the most stringent fiscal tightening of any big economy in 2012, as temporary tax cuts and unemployment insurance expire at the end of this year. That could change if Congress came to its senses, passed Barack Obama’s jobs plan and agreed on a medium-term deficit-reduction deal by November. If Democrats and Republicans fail to hash out a compromise on the deficit, draconian spending cuts will follow in 2013. For all the tirades against the Europeans, America’s economy risks being pushed into recession by its own fiscal policy — and by the fact that both parties are more interested in positioning themselves for the 2012 elections than in reaching the compromises needed to steer away from that hazardous course.

In the end, says The Economist, economic problems are made worse by a "failure ... of honesty" among leaders in the rich nations, especially German Chancellor Angela Merkel, the leadership in the U.S. Congress and President Barack Obama:

In Germany, where the jobless rate is lower than in 2008, people tend to think the crisis is about lazy Greeks and Italians. Mrs Merkel needs to explain clearly that it also includes Germany’s own banks—and that Germany faces a choice between a costly solution and a ruinous one. In America the Republicans are guilty of outrageous obstructionism and misleading simplification, while Mr Obama has favoured class warfare over fiscal leadership. At a time of enormous problems, the politicians seem Lilliputian. That’s the real reason to be afraid.

[Lilliput was an imaginary island in Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels where Gulliver was tied down by Lilliputians who stood only six inches high. The Brits still enjoy literary allusions like that.] Whether you agree with the conclusions of the editorial or not, it makes a strong case that the U.S. economy, Europe's and those of the developing nations are interconnected in an age of globalization.

This is not a tangent:Your next analytical assignment will be to evaluate an opinion piece. Tim Harrower, author of Inside Reporting: A Practical Guide to the Craft of Journalism (Boston: McGraw-Hill, 2007), has these tips on how to write an editorial:

• Keep it tight. [By this he means keep it short and simple.]
  
• Keep it relevant.
  
• Take a stand.
  
• Attack issues, not personalities.
  
• Don't be a bully.
  
• Control your anger.
  
• Write a strong lead and a solid finish. (27)

On the next page (271), he adds: "Base your opinions on facts - and present those facts. It's a delicate balancing act: If you leap to conclusions without providing facts to support them, readers will think you're just a raving loon. Yet if the facts crowd out your commentary, you're just rehashing old news."

How well do the editors of The Economist stack up against Harrower's principles?

COMM 150: Radio formats, slicing and dicing the audience

Since the latest edition of John Vivian's text doesn't really say much about the economics of radio, let's fill some of the blanks in class today.

Even though the world is changing, and Vivian has very interesting things to say about some of the changes, radio is still mostly financed by advertising. And it gives us a very good example of how advertisers target their messages to specific audience segments they want to reach.

They do this by paying attention to demographics. So let's start with a definition.

Demographics. Wikipedia has this definition: "Demographics are the most recent statistical characteristics of a population. These types of data are used widely in sociology (and especially in the subfield of demography), public policy, and marketing. Commonly examined demographics include gender, race, age, disabilities, mobility, home ownership, employment status, and even location. Demographic trends describe the historical changes in demographics in a population over time (for example, the average age of a population may increase or decrease over time). Both distributions and trends of values within a demographic variable are of interest.?"

How can advertisers use demographics?

http://www.newsgeneration.com/radio_resources/formats.htm"target="_blank">Guide to radio station formats - News Generation Inc.

Radio formats in the Springfield market - who listens to which stations? Which stations would you want to advertise on if you wanted to sell hybrid corn seed?

Springfield audience share stats complied by Eastlan, Spring 2008.

Radio formats by age - an online survey, but the demographics look pretty typical. I think they'll apply to land-based radio, too.

Radio formats - most commonly played artists - what does this tell you about the genres? What does this tell you about the demographics - i.e. who listens to them?

COMM 337: A well-written, well-reported story on Fox News' Roger Ailes

What's not to like in this story?

Roger Ailes, controversial CEO of Fox News, is one of the most interesting guys in the business. A political operative who helped elect Republican presidents from Richard Nixon through George W. Bush, he's reinvented cable network television with a "fair and balanced" approach that aims for a carefully targeted market segment - i.e. people who think the other networks are unfair and unbalanced - and unfailing showbiz instinct for what it takes to dazzle an audience.

He was interviewed by Howard Kurtz of the Daily Beast/Newsweek conglomorate. Longtime media reporter for the Washington Post, Kurtz is - I think - one of the few truly objective political writers in the business.

Let's see how he puts together an article in this week's print copy of Newsweek headed "Roger's Reality Show" (the headline is Newsweek's). Ask yourself:

Who did Kurtz talk to in order to get the story? How many different people? What kinds of information did he get from each? What details by direct observation during the interviews? What details did he get by reading? How long would you guess it took himato get all these details in the story? What do the details add to the story?

Is Kurtz' story hard news, soft news or a combination? Why do you say that? Does it have a hard lede or a soft lede? What is the tone of her story? Does he seem factual? Objective? Does he express an opinion? Where?

Does Kurtz use "literary" techniques in writing the story? If so, what are they?

COMM 337: Coming attractions - in class and in the financial markets

D R A F T

No face-to-face class meeting Thursday, Oct. 13. Instead, I will post a class discussion question to The Mackerel Wrapper. Watch this space for exciting opportunities to express yourself in the written word!

Background for next week's analytical paper. Since we'll be looking at coverage of the sovereign debt crisis in Europe, in class today (Sept. 29), we'll spend some time foday with a a survey of really, really pessimistic investors by the Bloomberg financial news service. Bloomberg's summary:

Investors See Europe Crisis Driving Economic Slump
Sept. 29 (Bloomberg) -- Global investors anticipate Europe’s debt crisis leading to an economic slump, a financial meltdown and social unrest in the next year with 72 percent predicting a country abandoning the euro as a shared currency within five years, a Bloomberg survey found. About three-quarters of those questioned this week said the euro-area economy will fall into recession during the next 12 months and 53 percent said turmoil will worsen in a banking sector laden with government bonds, according to the quarterly Global Poll of 1,031 investors, analysts and traders who are Bloomberg subscribers. ...

There are at least a few more optimistic signs. The German parliament voted today to commit more money to bailing out euro-zone countries like Greece that are in financial trouble. While you're reading at the British Broadcasting Corp.'s coverage, follow some of the links under the heading "Europe economy essentials." Excellent background by what is arguably the most trusted news service in the world.

COMM 337: Assignment for your first 1,000-word analysis paper - public affairs reporting

One of the four 1,000-word analyses assigned in our COMM 337 syllabus (scroll down to section VI ("Course Requirements"), Section C ("Written Assignments") is a public affairs reporting piece. And there's a really good piece in Time magazine on the European sovereign debt crisis and Germany's role in creating - and possibly solving - the crisis. It's by Catherine Mayer, reporting from Frankfurt, and it's headlined "Germany: Grappling with the Euro, and with Its Own Complicated History."

Please read it, post your analysis to your blog next week and turn in a hard copy to me for grading. As you read the story, ask yourself the following questions. And incorporate your answers into a sparkling, witty, trenchant, publishable 1,000-word analysis. Due in class Thursday, Oct. 5:

• Who did Mayer talk to in order to get the story? How many different people? What kinds of information did she get from each? What details by direct observation during her interviews? (b) What details did she get by reading? How many written sources - e.g. books and/or magazines, websites, etc. - did she consult? How long would you guess it took her to get all these details in the story? Was it worth her time? What do the details add to the story?
  
• Is Mayer's story hard news, soft news or a combination? Why do you say that? Does it have a hard lede or a soft lede? What is the tone of her story? Does she seem factual? Objective? Does she express an opinion? Where?
  
• Does Mayer use "literary" techniques in writing the story? If so, what are they? Do they add or detract from the story?

As you read the story, also be thinking about Donald Murry's "little green book that won't go away" and be sure to discuss these points in your analysis of Catherine Mayer's story:

• What does Murray mean by "craft?" What do you mean by it? How does "craft" differ from "art?"
  
• What the @#$%!& does that have to do with writing? With reporting? With your career ambitions as a ______________?
  
• What is the relationship between the craft of reporting and of writing? To Murray? To you?

Post your analysis to the blog, and email me at peterellertsen-at[spelled out this way here to discourage spammers]-yahoo.com when you do.

COMM 150 and 337: Flash mob in Copenhagen's central train station goes viral

This item works on so many levels in both our classes, I don't know where to begin! It's an American radio station's blog post linking to a flash mob performance of Ravel's Boléro at a railroad station in the capital of Denmark. It's a perfect example of several things we'll talk about in both classes.

So let's take a minute or two to read about it, and then watch the Copenhagen Philharmonic playing Boléro in Copenhagen's Central Train Station (Hovedbanegård). Conductor, the guy in the light blue sweater, was Jesper Nordin. The performance was May 2, and Copenhagen Phil (Sjællands Symfoniorkester in Danish) put it up on their YouTube channel May 27.



Now it looks like it's going viral. I got a link in an email from my cousin on Long Island over the weekend, and on Copenhagen Phil's Facebook page, a poster said Sept. 19 that it's been shared around the world ("ja, den blev 'shared' på FB ... verden rundt"). Here's what to look for as we watch it.

Sharp-eyed COMM 337 students will also want to link to a blog: Radio WQXR, the big classical music station in New York City, posted Copenhagen Phil's video last month. Their post explains how much planning went into the five-minute video, but while you're there you'll want to click on the "Blogs" link at the top of the page and surf around athe WQXR Blog. How does it promote the station? How does it fulfill the mission of a classical music station? How does it build a community among WQXR listeners?

Students in COMM 150 will see a lot of the themes in John Vivian's "Media of Mass Communication" reflected in the performance. Here are some of the main ones:

Artistic (creative> control. Wikipedia's definition is a good one: "A person with artistic control has the authority to decide how the final product will appear." Since Copenhagen Phil put together the video for its YouTube channel, it had complete artistic control. And the WQXR blog suggests how important that was:

Copenhagen Philharmonic spokesman Stine Larson reports that the orchestra spent six months preparing this performance, from getting permissions to shipping the instruments in trucks. The orchestra hired two cameramen, one placed on the roof of a store in the station concourse and the other moving amongst the audience and musicians.

Larson added: "We also wanted the sound to be as good as possible, so close to the conductor they placed a small microphone on the ground. In the editing phase, it took some time to synchronize the sound and, for example, the conductor's movements, but it succeeded at last."

As we watch the video, check out how well produced it is. If you want to see why artistic control matters, check out some unedited footage by a musician in the audience.

Interactivity and social media. This video was posted on YouTube, which is one of the social media as well as a favorite site for music lovers. It has 1.26 million page views as of today. Now, several months later, it's widely shared on Facebook - "around the world" - and it's going viral. Also: WQXR put it up on its blog, and the station's listeners are commenting on it. WQXR bills itself as "The Classical Music Station" of NYC." Again, how does the internet help build a virtual community?

Public relations. How does this video help Copenhagen Phil's brand? Its reputation in the community? Worldwide? HINT: How many of us had ever heard of Copenhagen Phil or Sjællands Symfoniorkester before? Here's another: What is a symphony orchestra doing with a Facebook page? How does that help the orchestra connect with its audience?

One last word. Flash mobs are supposed to be spontaneous, and sometimes they are. The riots in London last summer were a type of flash mob, and the rioters used text messages and Twitter, for example.

But sometimes it takes a lot of planning to look spontaneous.

Copenhagen Phil's performance was extremely well planned, but it was designed to catch its audience in the train station by surprise. The musician who shot the amateur video caught that very well when he posted it to YouTube and called it, "A random [tilfældig] Monday afternoon in the Central Train Station." Even the choice of music was carefully planned. As Brian Wise of WQXR pointed out, Copenhagen Phil's "performance makes particularly clever use of the inherent drama of the piece itself" as musicians filtered in one by one and started playing on cue.

Something you've heard me say before, and you'll hear me say it again. I've thought about modestly calling it "Ellertsen's law," in fact. None of this stuff happens by accident in mass communications.

COMM 337: Here's an example of a live blog

A "live blog" is a media weblog that updates as soon as new developments come in during a breaking story. Today's Guardian.co.uk website, a project of The Guardian newspaper in the U.K., has one on today's developments in the sovereign debt crisis gripping Europe's financial markets.

It's a complex story, and a very important story - even if it doesn't get much play in American media other than The Wall Street Journal. And we could profitably ask ourselves why our media don't bother with international news until it comes home to bite us.

But instead, let's take a minute and look at how the Guardian is able to use the blog format keep up with events as they happen, wherever they happen ... in Greece, in Germany, Japan, Washington, D.C., and even in the Guardian's competitors' studios in London as the British Broadcasting Corp. tries to confirm the identity of a stock trader who predicted catastrophe and suggested the markets don't care about the health of Europe's economy.

Later [1:06 p.m. CDT]. While I was out to lunch, the Guardian closed out the blog for the day ... and reversed the order, so the earliest items are now on top and the newer ones below. In other words, it's now in chronological order rather than blog-style with the most recent items on top. It's easier to read that way.

COMM 337 (optional for 150): Blogging a "virtual community"

As we read blogs and post our analyses [see assignment posted Sept. 21], we will look at several blogs in class. For starters, I'm linking to a local blog on Illinois politics and state government. It isn't the kind of journalism Don Murray discusses in "Writing on Deadline," but it has some lessons for us.

A virtual community, according to Wikipedia (which is authoritative for these kinds of things), is a "a social network of individuals who interact through specific media, potentially crossing geographical and political boundaries in order to pursue mutual interests or goals." Facebook and other social networking sites are the usual examples, and they're good ones. But an old-fashioned blog can also create a virtual community.

Witness the CapitolFax.com blog.

It's basically an online extension of Capitol Fax, a $350-a-year newsletter for Illinois politicians, government officials and lobbyists. Rich Miller, owner and operator of Capitol Fax, uses the blog to promote the newsletter by covering state government better than the commercial newspapers. Essentially he's giving away a sample of his product, and gaining a well-deserved reputation in the larger community as the guy to ask about Illinois statecraft, and it does wonders to promote his brand.

A unique feature of CapitolFax.com is the high quality of the comments. Many of Miller's subscribers are players in Illinois politics themselves, and some of them are very, very knowledgeable.

So after a while, you learn to go to Cap Fax to see what its readers have to say. They seldom disappoint.

On today's blog, Miller posted an obituary of Thomas Ryan, a former Republican powerhouse in Kankakee, onetime mayor of that city and older brother of former Gov. George Ryan. Miller, who grew up in Kankakee, added his own memories and asked readers, "Do you have any old-time political stories you’d like to share?"

Miller's old-time political story was about Tom Ryan's liquor store:

As a young kid, I was often sent to West Kankakee Liquors on Station Street for grownup supplies (times were different back then). The fastest way to the liquor store was through my grandma’s back yard, down the alley and in the back door, where I’d pass through a storage room. Old men would sit on cardboard cases of beer in that back room, drink, smoke and tell stories.

I loved walking through that room. ...

Miller added, "I talked to Mayor Ryan about that back room years ago when his younger brother George was still governor. He remembered it well. The room had apparently become an icon in his mind for the way things used to be and should have been."

About 20 readers shared memories. Here's one I like:

Jim Edgar was running for reelection for the 95 race. During the summer of 94 he came to Galesburg to campaign during the big Railroad Days celebration. We approached a food booth with home made cookies and pies. An elderly lady sat behind the table leaning on her cane. Edgar stuck out his hand and said,”Hi, I’m Jim Edgar, I’m running for reelction as your governor”. The old lady thought about it for a second and replied, “Are you boys gonna buy something or are you just messin around?”

And here's something else I noticed. George Ryan is still in federal prison, but the fact was hardly mentioned. And when it was, the tone wasn't snarky, "Condolences to the Ryan family. I can imagine they have had a hard road with the Governor’s on-going legal battles and the loss of [Gov. Ryan's late wife] Lura Lynn." Another thing I noticed - there wasn't as much about Republicans and Democrats as you see in other forums. Gov. Edgar's party, for example, wasn't mentioned. He's a Republican, but does that matter to the story?

My point: I think CapitolFax.com is a good example of a virtual community. But that didn't happen by accident. Its readers are political pros, who are inclined to respect each other across party lines after the votes are counted, but politics has always been a rough business. (You read about some of that, too, in the reminiscences.) So Miller puts considerable effort into moderating the comments. At the bottom of each post, he says:

All new commenters should click here before proceeding. Inappropriate or excessively rabid comments, gratuitous insults and "rumors" will be deleted or held for moderation. Profanity is absolutely not acceptable in any form. "Sock puppetry" is forbidden. All violators risk permanent banishment without warning and may be blocked from accessing this site. Also, please try to be a little bit original. [Boldface type and red letters in the original.]

A "sock puppet" refers to "the manipulation of a simple hand puppet made from a sock" and is defined in Wikipedia as "a false identity assumed by a member of an internet community." (It's different from a screen name, because it's designed to mislead.) The link is to a post in June of this year, when Miller said, "national politics brings out the crazy in people. And national political posts bring crazy people to the blog." He asked, "What advice would regular commenters/readers give to newbie commenters here?"

There were 60 comments. They're all worth reading.

So read them (link here) and answer these questions:

• How do the comments on Capitol Fax compare to the comments in other blogs or online forums you read?
  
  
• Which words of wisdom or advice to commenters would you like to see adhered to on other blogs? Quote a couple (show me you read 'em). How would you handle comments on your blog?
  
  
• How would the tone of political discourse in the U.S. be different if commentary on national politics followed the same civility guidelines as Cap Fax?

Post your answers as comments to this blog item.

LATER: More evidence of virtual community. This tongue-in-cheek exchange took place in the comments on a linked Springfield restaurant item later in the afternoon:

- Cheryl44 - Monday, Sep 26, 11 @ 4:07 pm:
What’s a horseshoe?

- Michelle Flaherty - Monday, Sep 26, 11 @ 4:31 pm:
For that Cheryl44 should be banned [from commenting] for life.

- Rich Miller - Monday, Sep 26, 11 @ 4:39 pm:
I don’t even know why it was asked?

- Cheryl44 - Monday, Sep 26, 11 @ 4:43 pm:
Because I don’t live in Springpatch and I don’t know of a restaurant in Chicago that serves them. I could look it up, but I prefer asking you guys. You’re the experts, not Wikipedia.

- Rich Miller - Monday, Sep 26, 11 @ 4:44 pm:
Toast, meat, french fries, cheese sauce.

You had to be there.

- Cheryl44 - Monday, Sep 26, 11 @ 4:46 pm:
Thanks. That sounds…delicious. Yeah, that’s it.

COMM 150: Questions, Chapter 4 "Ink on Paper" and Ch 5 "Sound media"

CH 5: How do issues of creative - ie artistic - control play out in the media that John Vivian discusses in Ch. 5?

Also: What is the revenue stream for each?

Cf. Chapter 4 below:

Who buys newspapers?
Who pays for newspapers - ie what is (are) their revenue stream(s)?

Who buys magazine?
Who pays for (bankrolls) ...

Who buys books?
Who pays for ...

How do these factors influence content?

BONUS QUESTION: Would it interest you to know this was the 50-point question on my midterm when I taught this course a couple of years ago? Just askin'.

COMM 150: In-class quiz ...

You must be in class this morning to receive credit for this quiz.

For 30,000 points of extra credit, please answer the following question:

In what large East Coast city does The New York Times have its editorial offices?

a. New Berlin

b. Pawnee

c. Athens

d. Springfield

e. New York City

Post your answer as a comment to this blog post.

Et barn er født i Betlehem (Danish)

Oops! COMM 150 and 337 students at Benedictine please note: I posted this item to our class blog by accident - it belongs on another blog of mine, called Hogfiddle at http://hogfiddle.blogspot.com/, which is for research on articles I write about music. This one is a "s----y first draft" of a post about a Christmas carol from Denmark that I'm trying to learn called "Et barn er født i Betlehem." It means "A child is born in Bethlehem," and, no, it won't be on the test!

In the Danish Psalm Book (den Danske Salmebog), No. ____

Erling Jan Sørensens klaver-arrangement med improvisation af forspil og efterspil og spillet af Erling selv. http://www.erlingmusic.dk/




Et Barn er født i Bethlehem - Radiokoret 1941
Medlemmer af Radiokoret
Dirigent: Martellius Lundqvist
Orgel: Palle Alsfelt

Optaget i Matthæuskirken i København




Et barn er født i Bethlehem - Statsradiofoniens Pigekor 1944
Statsradiofoniens Pigekor. Dirigent: Lis Jacobsen 1944



Et Barn er født i Bethlehem - Aage Thygesen 1931
Operasanger Aage Thygesen, 1931







http://youtu.be/0tZ-1KFF6lM Koren Glomma synger en dansk julesang med norsk uttale på Julefest 2007, Cluj-Napoca

COMM 337: ** D R A F T ** Voice - what do you like to read?

This will be an ongoing project. I want you to find a blog that you like to read. It can be about anything. Do some analysis on how it's written. Answer these questions:

1. What appeals to you? What's the blogger's voice? Does it speak to you?

2. Does the blogger do the kind of writing that Donald Murray talks about? What can you infer about his/her attitude toward the craft from reading the blog? How do those attitudes compare to Murray's? Do the same with techniques.

3. What ideas, techniques, attitudes ... and anything else that comes to mind, whether I'm mentioning it or not ... can you use in your own blogging? Other types of writing that you do?

4. What else about the blog is important that I'm forgetting to ask you about?

For starters, post your answers today (Thursday) to these questions as comments to this post on Mackerel Wrapper, and we can talk about them.

Fair's fair. Here, as an example to help get us started, is how I'd answer the questions ...

1. One blog I keep coming back to is jill/txt at http://jilltxt.net/ ... it's by Jill Walker Rettberg, a communications professor at the University of Bergen in Norway. She blogs about blogs - yep, what I said. Rettberg explains, " do research on how people tell stories online." She adds, "I've been a research blogger since October 2000." - I've been reading her since I started blogging in 2006. Back in the day, it helped me answer a lot of questions about how I wanted to do my blog. I still check her out from time to time because I like the way she writes.

2. True confessions time: I'm not sure Murray has much to say here. But I'll keep reading, keep my eyes open. Keep my mind open. Come back to it.

3. I like the way Rettberg combines academic and personal writing here. In fact, I've modeled the way I use the language on my student blogs after jill/txt. It's conversational, informal. Academic at times. Probably too academic. But, hey, I'm an academic. My generation of feminists (I'm married to one) would talk about combining "the personal and the political," which has something to do with using your own voice, admitting your own biases and not trying to sound like an official pronouncement handed down on stone tablets. Still good advice, I think. Anyway, I like the way Rettberg combines her professional interests with her personal attitudes - kids, conferences, etc. - without getting unprofessional about it.

4. Not yet ... but we're not done with the exercise.

COMM 150: Are we in the world's first "post-literate" culture?

For Friday, watch the PBS segment below at home, since our sound wasn't working Wednesday in D220, and answer the questions:

-- How much of what Neil Postman was saying in 1985 still holds true today? How much do you agree with? How much do you disagree? Does he go too far sometimes? If so, where?

-- When Postman was interviewed for the PBS show, the World Wide Web hadn't been invented yet. How has the internet changed things? Are we more literate because of the internet, or less?

-- Do you find it ironic we're watching a TV show about a guy who says TV is killing the print media? And how about this: We're watching a TV show that aired 25 years ago on a medium of mass communication that hadn't even been invented yet? Any irony there?


Just askin'.

But as we keep reading John Vivian's "Media of Mass Communication," we'll keep on asking. You'll notice I'm not trying to answer the question. But I think it's a good question - do we live in a post-literate society? Did we used to be literate, and now we aren't? Good question, isn't it?

Who knows? We may encounter the same question on the midterm, or the final ... or a term paper assignment.

(By the way, did you notice the great big HINT in the paragraph above?)

There are some heavy thinkers who say we do have a a post-literate culture. One of them was Neil Postman, who taught at New York University before his death in 2003. In the mid-1980s he wrote a book called "Amusing Ourselves to Death." Its basic message was that TV treated serious subjects as if they were entertainment. He said books, print media, demanded more attention from readers, and TV was trivializing discourse in America, ie the way we talk about public issues. Postman said:

The name I give to that period of time during which the American mind submitted itself to the sovereignty of the printing press is the Age of Exposition. Exposition is a mode of thought, a method of learning, and a means of expression. Almost all of the characteristics we associate with mature discourse were amplified by typography, which has the strongest possible bias toward exposition: a sophisticated ability to think conceptually, deductively and sequentially; a high valuation of reason and order; an abhorrence of contradiction; a large capacity for detachment and objectivity; and a tolerance for delayed response. Toward the end of the nineteenth century, for reasons I am most anxious to explain, the Age of Exposition began to pass, and the early signs of its replacement could be discerned. Its replacement was to be the Age of Show Business.

It's no substitute for reading the book, but I'll link to a page of quotes from the book.

I'll also link to a 14-minute clip (embedded below) from a Public Broadcasting Service show on Postman's thesis - that we don't read anymore, and our culture is the poorer for it - as it appeared when his book came out in the 80s. That means it's 25 years old, but Postman is still influential. How much of what he was saying then still holds true today? How much do you agree with? How much do you disagree? Does he go too far sometimes? If so, where?

Another question: When Postman was interviewed for the PBS show, the World Wide Web hadn't been invented yet. How has the internet changed things? Are we more literate because of the internet, or less?

Here's a third question: Do you find it ironic we're watching a TV show about a guy who says TV is killing the print media? And how about this: We're watching a TV show that aired 25 years ago on a medium of mass communication that hadn't even been invented yet? Any irony there?

Post your answers to these questions are comments to this blog post.

COMM 337: Odds and ends - assignments for Thursday and Tuesday

Announcement 1: David Logan, our division chair in Arts & Letters, needs to meet with several members of our class: Adam Pemberton, Rachel Seaver, Dylan Hardin. And if you see Jeff Adams, tell him Mr. Logan needs to meet with him, too.

Announcement 2: I'm still having trouble commenting on your blogs. I'm not mad yet, but I'm starting to get irritated. aCapice?

Assignment for Thursday (I apologize for shouting), taken down from the screen in Dawson 220:

FOR THURSDAY< READ CH 1-2 IN MURRAY
1 CRAFT OF THE WRITER (JOURNALIST)
2 PROCESS OF NEWSWRITING
ASK YOURSELF: HOW CAN I USE MURRAY’S WORDS OF WISDOM IF I’M GOING TO BE A ________ WRITER INSTEAD OF A NEWSPAPER JOURNALIST?

Here's the assignment for Tuesday. It comes in two steps:

1. Read Donald Murray, especially Chapters 3-4, on "reporting for surprise" and finding the flow (Murray calls it "tension" of a story. As you read Murray, try to figure out what he means by "surprise." It's almost impossible to explain, but it's important. It may be the single most important thing that makes your work stand out in the crowd.

2. Post your thoughts (about 1,000 words) to your blog, and email me when you've finished. How does Donald Murray define "surprise?" You'll want to skim through Chapter 3, "EXPLORE: Report for Surprise," before answering this. He doesn't really define it, but he has several brief quotes you might want to include in your blog post.

>As always, if you have questions, comments or suggestions, please don't hesitate to get back to me.

Here's something I posted to another blog a couple of years ago (Sept. 12, 2009, to be exact. It isn't half-bad.

How can you adapt Murray's concept to your own writing? In other words, how can you report for surprise? Hint: I think it has something to do with always being ready to be surprised.

Here's an example of how I might go about blogging it ...

So I'm sitting in a little family restaurant on 9th Street, throwing cholesterol bombs into my stomach (No. 3 on the menu, scrambled, corned beef hash, wheat toast) and wondering how I'm going to explain what Don Murray means when he says, "The constant awareness of the working journalist is not a mystery. It is something that can be learned and practiced" (35). And in the booth in front of me, I'm aware of a couple of guys with one of those tourist-y maps of Route 66 spread on across the table between them. The kind with little pictures of the Cozy Dog Drive-In and all the other tourist spots along old U.S. 66 between Chicago and St. Louis. Back in the day, it ran down 9th Street. They're in their mid- to late 30s, I'd say, and one of them is wearing a tan knit shirt with "RSPCA" embroidered on the sleeve.

With that, I start to get interested.

The only RSPCA I know of is the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, in England.

So I listen a little more carefully, and darned if one of the guys with the Highway 66 map doesn't have a British accent.

Do I have a story? I don't know yet. But I know how to find out. All I'd have to do is introduce myself, comment on the map and start a conversation. If my hunch is correct and they're Brits who are following old U.S. 66 from Chicago to Los Angeles, I could do a five-minute interview on the spot. I already know the old highway attracts occasional pilgrims from Europe, and I can get on the Internet later to fill in the background.

Anyway, that's what I think Murray means by surprise. If my hunches pan out, I've got a story. Just by keeping my eyes open, and being ready to be surprised.

But even that's just an example. It's your blog you're posting to, and I want you to be finding your voice, not an imitation of mine! So take this assignment, turn it around and adapt it to your own style, your own voice. Surprise me!

COMM 150: Critical thinking, in-class discussion notes ... and a $13.95 word for how we know what we know and why we think what we think

D R A F T

From class Monday, our definitions of critical thinking, typos and all ...

not taking the first thoughtt as the right one – looking further

researched, planned out

internal debate ... for the purpose of deciding a perspective

thinking – clear, rational – ID importance between ideas

open-minded thinking

think - focused approach

probing deeper into thought for ideas

tjomlomg amd ama;uzomg

thinking and analyzing to come up w/ best solution

What we're talking about is epistemology (huh? he say what?) ... it's a term that philosophy students have thrown around for more than 100 years. And it has something to do with how the media affect our daily lives. Huh? So let's find out what it is.

COMM 150: Revised schedule of assignments

As we get deeper into the 10th edition of John Vivian's "Media of Mass Communications," I have come to realize its organization is substantially different from that of earlier editions.

The good news is that it makes a lot more sense this way. The bad news ...

Well, there isn't any bad news.

There's more good news, though, for those of you who bought used copies of earlier editions. I've been madly reading the 10th edition over the weekend, and Vivian's main points are pretty much the same as before. So are the concepts or themes he discusses, like concentration of ownership and what he calls "demassification" and I'd rather think of as smaller media targeting narrower audience segments as advertisers seek lower CPM.

(Don't know what "CPM" is? Read Vivian, any edition, and you'll find out soon enough. It's a key, key concept. (I'll give you a hint: The "M" is an abbreviation for a thousand. Remember your Roman numerals?)

Enough of that. Here's a revised schedule of assignments. I have also revised the Tentative Calendar in the syllabus posted Aug. 18 at http://mackerelwrapper.blogspot.com/2011/08/comm-150-syllabus-fall-2011.html. Like that calendar, these assignments are tentative. Paper topics, etc., will be assigned a week or two before the papers are due.

Revised Schedule:

First Week. Introduction to Class, syllabus, academic integrity, etc. Read Chapter 1, Mass Media Literacy; Chapter 2, Media Technology. Write: How much of what you know did you learn from mass media? How many of your attitudes, interests, tastes, etc., derive from mass media?

Second Week. Read Chapter 3, Books; Chapter 4, Newspapers; and Chapter 5, Magazines Media Economics

Third Week. Read Chapter 6, Sound Recording; and Chapter 7, Motion Pictures Continue Chapter 3 on economics.

Fourth Week. Read Chapter 8, Radio; and Chapter 9: Television Chapter 4, Ink on Paper.

Fifth Week. Read Chapter 10, Internet Chapter 5, Sound Media.

Sixth Week. Midterm over Chapters 1-10. Read Chapter 11, News; and Chapter 12, Public Relations Read Chapter 6, Motion [ie visual] Media.

Seventh Week. Read Chapter 14, Entertainment Chapter 7, New Media Landscapes; midterm essay exam .

Eighth Week. Read Chapter 15, Media Research 8, News.

Ninth Week. Read Chapter 16, Mass-Media Effects on Society 9, Entertainment.

10th Week. Read Chapter 17, Global Mass Media 10,Public Relations.

11th Week. Read Chapter 19, Mass Media and Governance 11, Advertising; and 12, Mass Audiences. Paper due on "mass media messages" and career prospects.

12th Week. Read Chapter 20, Mass Media Law 13, Mass Media Effects; 14, Media and Democracy; and 15, Globalization.

13th Week. Read Chapter 21, 16, Media Law; and 16, Ethics. Self-reflective essay due.

Final exam TBA.

COMM 150: Assignment for Monday ... and some themes we'll follow throughout the semester.

PLEASE NOTE: At the bottom I've copied and pasted the themes I put on the projector in class this morning. These are things we'll take up this semester. Translation: Some of these themes have been known to reappear as term paper assignments and/or final exam essay questions.

For Monday, read Chapter 4 in John Vivian, "The Media of Mass Communication." As you read, ask yourself:

1. What would your day, your life be like in a world w/o media?

2. ... in a world w/o print media (books, magazines, newspapers) in dead tree format?

3. How do print media change the way we think?

Some themes to watch for between now and midterms finals –

1. Entrepreneurs, "indies, etc.," vs. conglomerates, corporate “suits” - artistic freedom vs. the bottom line
2. Concentration of ownership
3. Market segmentation
4. Impact of digital technology, espec. internet
5. How do media change content [‘the medium is the message’]?
6. How do different media change the way we think?

COMM 150 and 337: More info on that Spike Lee commercial for State Farm

COMM 337 students please note - this post, on the State Farm tribute to New York City's firefighters airing this week, also has some hints on where the jobs are. Plus an example of a targeted online magazine on the CafeMom.com website, "the #1 place for moms on line." And a job description for writers. This, I think, is one direction the future is taking us.

In class Monday, we watched the video [see Mackerel Wrapper post below]. This morning there's more in the online version of Shoot magazine, which covers "the news and information needs of creative and production decision-makers at ad agencies, and executives & artisans in the production industry."

How's that for narrowcasting to a targeted market segment?

Read the story - link here to open a new window. How many people were involved in this 90-second commercial?

That's not untypical. Good commercials don't happen by accident.

According to staff writer Jeanne Sager for The Stir, an electronic magazine on the Cafe Mom website, State Farm "wisely chose to list only its name, not even using its well-known logo, at the tail end of the commercial getting major airplay this week. Now it has taken down the full-screen original of the ad that went up Sunday on its website. Here's why. It's nuanced and perceptive, so I'll quote at length:

You can almost always tell when a child is singing vs. an adult. Even supremely talented kids traditionally have a different timbre to their voice than that which will develop with age and changes to their bodies. And save for the really screechy, pitchy ones, they pretty much always sound cuter than us (come on I said pretty much).

I don't think you can really quantify "amount of happiness derived" from listening to a child singing. But State Farm is trying (this is where I get to the "they don't benefit" part). Buy a copy of those sweet little kiddos singing "Empire State of Mind" from iTunes or Amazon, and the company's portion of the money goes to the National Fallen Firefighters Foundation.

Sing it with me now ... awwwwww.

Did the kids make this video for you? The company has already pulled the original video to ensure people buy the song and really help the firefighters rather than getting the love for free (see what I mean about how awesome they are?), but you can check out Spike Lee talking about how they got it done, and see them in action ...

And then she linked to a video of Spike Lee explaining how the spot was put together.

Tangent: Where the jobs are. Sager is a free-lance writer with publication credits in Kiwi Magazine, Babble.com, AOL, Parents Magazine as well as The Stir. She "writes articles for The Stir by day, slays closet monsters and bounds through bedtime stories with her elementary schooler by night." Check out the "about us" page on The Stir's website to see more about the publication - and a job description for their writers.

COMM 337: Profiles - Donald Murray and finding pleasure in the challenge of a blank piece of paper

Since you're going to write some profiles for Tuesday, I thought I'd put up a few so you can get a better idea of how they're written out in the world. Plus ... these aren't just random profiles. They're about Donald Murray, author of our textbook "Writing to Deadline."

The first is by Chip Scanlan, writing for the Poynter.org website (put up by the Poynter journalism foundation). Scanlan noted in his lede that Murray wrote his last column for The Boston Globe five days before his death at the age of 82 on Dec. 30, 2006. And he quoted that last column, which was almost eerie in its timing:

“Each time I sit down to write I don’t know if I can do it,” Murray wrote in [the column, headlined] “Finding Pleasure in the Challege of a Blank Sheet.” “The flow of writing is always a surprise and a challenge. Click the computer on and I am 17 again, wanting to write and not knowing if I can.”

Jack Driscoll, retired editor of The Boston Globe, wrote a tribute to Murray in January 2007 in Rye Reflections, a citizens journalism project in Rye, N.H. He combined lede, description, nut graf and a strong quote as he began his reminiscence. He started with a word picture:

My most vivid image of Don Murray is of him sitting outside a restaurant on a bench, wearing his customary chinos, head down, writing away in his daily journal — or maybe even drawing sketches. He is alone in his writer’s world as chatting customers pass him by.

He is early for our lunch, a monthly ritual the last dozen years (his late wife, Minnie Mae sometimes joined us, an honor). Prior to that we had been professional colleagues for several years, then just friends. It was a loss to me to learn of his sudden death at age 82 on December 30. But it was also a loss to thousands of others — former students he had in class and in dozens of seminars during his days as a professor, colleagues at the University of New Hampshire with whom he had long, close relationships, readers of his many books and of his weekly column in the Boston Globe, his morning breakfast group in Durham and so many more.

He was a magnificent writer. No, he was a magnificent teacher. Indeed, his writing was teaching.

“In writing about myself, I am writing about others,” Murray would say. He was tricking us into thinking we were absorbed in his memories, when in fact he was awakening our own stories.

Driscoll's tribute is worth reading in full - and bookmarking for future reference. Murray once shared a page from his daybook, or writer's journal, with some of his colleagues in New Hampshire. He wrote:

There are two glass patio doors to my right facing the woods, a window just to the left above my computer screen. The squirrel circus does not distract me when the writing flows. And it isn't just when I am at my computer. James Thurber once said, "I never quite know when I'm writing. Sometimes my wife comes up to me at a party and says, 'Damn it, Thurber, stop writing.' She usually catches me in the middle of a paragraph." I write in the car, across the dinner table from my wife, in front of the television, waiting on the bench at the front of the supermarket, visiting the doctor, waiting in line at the post office, watching my grandchildren play. I am in this life and in the other, writing.

That story of Thurber's is one of my favorites. It means he was always trying out words and combinations of words in his mind. He was writing. He was a writer. So was Murray. So, obviously, is Driscoll.

Murray sparked off lots of short, snappy quotes, like a roman candle. Driscoll calls them "one-liners." He quotes a good half dozen. And he ends his tribute with what I think is a perfect kicker:

His one-liners ring in my head. My favorite occurred the day I hired him as writing coach at the Globe when I was Editor there. He meandered across the cityroom and entered my office with the boast: “I know who three of your best writers are.”

I fell for the bait. “Who?”

“That woman there, that woman over there, and that man there.”

“OK,” I conceded. “You just pointed to three of our very best writers. How did you know?”

“Because,” he said, “their lips move when they write.”

Think about it. Their lips move because they're trying out the sound of the words. The best writing has the rhythm, the cadence of ordinary speech. And that doesn't happen by accident. We have to work for it. But that's a subject for another day.

Chip Scanlan wrote his first piece, the obit quoted above, on deadline the day Murray died. The following day, Dec. 31, he followed up with "An Appreciation of Don Murray: The Things He Gave" beginning with the day he first met Murray years before at The Providence (R.I.) Journal. Scanlan said "he taught me some of the most important things I know about life and writing," and shared them:

• Never be afraid to admit you’re human.
• It takes the greatest strength to admit you’re weak.
• It takes the greatest courage to admit you’re afraid.
• If a teacher asks a student to write, the teacher must write as well, for writing is the great leveler; students see that even the expert in front of the class struggles to make meaning with words. (Editors should do the same, at least a couple of times a year.)
• All writing is revision.
• When someone you love is sick, you become their caregiver, as he did during the long years of illness suffered by [Murray's wife] Minnie Mae before her death in 2005.
• For writers, professionalism – making deadlines, rewriting when the need arose — is everything.
• What you write is what you are capable of writing today.
• You are a writer by virtue of one action: you write.

What I like most about Don Murray's books about writing is that they're about more than writing. Like Scanlan says, they're "about life and writing." There are lots of good books on technique out there. [Check out Anne Lamott, too, and her explanation of how a "sh-tty first draft" helps overcome perfectionism in "Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life."] There it is again. Writing. Life. How they fit together. The reason Murray's little green book won't go away in my journalistic writing class this semester isn't what he says about technique, although that's important. It's because I find so much wisdom in his attitude to writing - and to life.

COMM 337: In- and out-of-class assignment, REMEMBER: DIRECT QUOTATION IS THE LIFEBLOOD OF JOURNALISM

To set the stage, we'll watch a video called Boatlift, part of the outpouring of media for this month's 9/11 commemoration. Narrated by Tom Hanks, Directed by Eddie Rosenstein, Produced by Eyepop Productions.

As we watch, ask yourself:

• How much of this is direct quotation and how much is voiceover?
  
• What do the direct quotes add to the video?
  
• How can you get the same effect in a print medium?

Here's something else to look for: This 11-minute 56-second video is organized a little bit like the attention getter plus quote-kebab print stories I've been recommending: (1) Some really compelling stuff at first to get our attention, with the interview with the captain of the Amberjack: (2) a brief summing-up, about the largest boatlift in history, corresponding to the nut graf; (3) more quotes skewered together like a shish-kebab in the body of the story; and (4) a zinger at the end.

This will lead us into an assignment that (hopefully!) will be less dramatic ...

Here's the assignment: Write a 2- or 3-page (500- to 750-word) profile of one of your classmates. Let's make it due in class Tuesday, Sept. 20.

My main requirement: Find out something interesting about this person, and include it prominently in the profile. Another requirement: Use a couple of direct quotations. That means two. At least two. Direct quotation is, not to be repetitious about it, the lifeblood of journalistic writing.
Here's how to go about it: Pair off (or get into groups of 2 or 3 if there's an odd number of people in the class) and interview each other. Ask the basic stuff you always want to know about people: When and where they were born, where they're from, hobbies, sports, trips to Mexico, France or Russia (or Jacksonville, Decatur, Petersburg or New Berlin, it doesn't have to be exotic to be interesting), goals, ambitions, dreams, etc. Draw them out, and you'll find something interesting. This may be a bit of challenge: Most of us, if we're asked to tell something interesting about ourselves, will think something like, "Oh, I'm not interesting. I'm pretty boring." But we're all interesting. Your job as an interviewer is to find it out and tell it. I can't give you a cookbook formula for "interesting," but you'll know it when you hear it. If it surprises you, it'll surprise your readers. People like surprises!

Take notes so you'll be able to include those direct quotations. There's a good tip sheet by journalism teacher and former newspaper reporter Tony Rogers at http://journalism.about.com/od/reporting/a/notetaking.htm. Let's go over it before we start.

A couple of basics from my experience: (1) take down enough key words so you can reconstruct the quote; but (2) don't take down too many. Don't get bogged down. The person you're interviewing might say, "We lived, uh, like, in New Mexico." All you need to take down is, "we lvd N Mex." And you write, "We lived in New Mexico." Do what reporters do: Use abbreviations. Make 'em up on the spot. Write fast. Scribble. Get the key words down, and fill in the blanks later. If you use a sound recorder, use it for backup. Dead batteries, not to put too fine a point on it, are the death of journalistic writing.

Write up a sparkling profile. I'd suggest you use the organization below, which I have adapted from an old Newsweek magazine format for news stories.

The Newsweek format --

This is a common way of organizing news-feature stories - you'll also find it in Springfield's State Journal-Register and a lot of other print media. Elements of a story written to this format are:

• The lead (often spelled "lede"): A little anecdote or story-within-the-story, a joke, wordplay or surprising fact that "leads" readers into the story - i.e. gets their attention.
  
• The nut (which journalists often call a "nut graf" or 'graph), meaning the paragraph in which they state the main point of the story.
  
• The body of the story, which uses a lot of quotes. Think of the body of the story as being like a cheap necklace, with quotes strung together like dime store jewelry. Or a shish-kebab. Why? Because direct quotes are more interesting than paraphrase. All together now: "Direct quotes are the lifeblood ..." Got it.
  
• The "kicker" (which we used to call a "zinger" when I was in the news business). At the very end, it sums up the story, ties it back to the lead and gives it a little twist.

COMM 337: Your blogs ...

I was thinking about how to handle class discussion questions on your blogs - our blogs - over the weekend. And I've got a compromise solution.

[Which means, of course, a solution that nobody's really satisfied with but nobody really, really hates either.]

What we can do is to move a lot of the spur-of-the-moment, in-class blogging to the Comments field of The Mackerel Wrapper. I still want you to discuss professional journalism-related questions on your blogs, because it'll be good experience and also good portfolio fodder. But it'll be better thought out this way, and I can do everything but the assignment of grades as comments to your blogs.

In order for me to comment on your work, however, you will need to change your settings to allow Users with Google Accounts. [In the Dashboard, click on the tabs for "Settings" and "Comments." The second question asks "Who Can Comment?" Click on "Users with Google Accounts."]

As I said in class last week, I really like the way some of you are focusing on things like photography, music, food, volleyball, etc., and I don't want to make you gunk it up with a lot of random, top-of-the-head answers to questions in class.

There will still be posts on your blogs that don't relate to the main theme, but I think you can cover that in your profile description: Something on the order of: This is a blog about music, or volleyball or whatever, but it also includes assignments for COMM 337 at BenU, etc. I've used the "About Me" field in the profile to do this, i.e. describe my blogs so readers will have some idea what's in there. You will no doubt find better models as you surf other blogs, but mine should be a pretty good starting place.

COMM 150: 9/11 and 'culturally binding role' of media

Read and discuss. Questions are highlighted in red type. Post your answers as comments below.

According to John Vivian, author of our textbook, the "[m]ass media's culturally binding role is diminishing" [see next post below on the Mackerel Wrapper]. Yet at times the media do play such a role.

In the next issue of TV Guide after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and Washington, D.C., on Sept. 11, 2001, Matt Roush wrote:

Watching on split screens with a growing sense of alarm, in homes aor offices that became bunkers as the world outside instantly grew more uncertain, we couldn't quit wondering when it would stop. We still have no idea how it will end. ... But throughout, as disturbing and unimaginable as it all was, the TV coverage provided a reassuring reminder that we were all in this togethr. Our enemies hadn't destroyed our abiity to communicate: to share grief, express hope and investigate the truth. Perhaps not since the 1963 assassination of John F. Kennedy has the medium provided so necessary and defining a public service. (10-11)

How is that working 10 years later? Can the media play a culturally binding role today?

We'll watch Sunday's CBS Evening News Online. [Full episode is 20:27; we'll watch the first 10 minutes or so.] Pete Hamill, free-lance writer and former columnist and editor for the New York Post and The New York Daily News, says, "Our collective heart was broken on Sept. 11 ... and I think [now] that has largely healed." How does Sunday's CBS News report represent an effort to help that healing of the city's - and the nation's - collective heart?

We'll also watch a State Farm commercial that aired Sunday. Directed by Spike Lee, the 90-second TV spot is a tribute to the firefighters who died at the World Trade Center. The title of the commercial is "Never Forgotten. Always Grateful." According to a State Farm publicist, "Nearly 150 school children (ages 8-11) from the New York City area visited four firehouses and thanked the firefighters through song." The song was "Empire State of Mind" as written by Jay Z and performed by Alicia Keys.

Link below for the videos. But first, here's a question to ask yourself as you watch the videos. (1) This is a State Farm commercial, but it doesn't say a word about insurance. What's in it for State Farm? Do they benefit from airing it? If so, how? Link below to watch the videos:

• Click here to watch the 90-second versiona of the commercial on YouTube [1:31]. It aired Sunday during the Eagles-Rams pro football game on NBC.
  
  
• Click here to watch as Spike Lee takes us behind the scenes as he talks and narrates video about the song, the children and the firefighters.

Lee has been involved in several controversies over the years. That's partly because "Lee's movies have examined race relations, the role of media in contemporary life, urban crime and poverty, and other political issues," as his Wikipedia article notes. But it's also because he's very outspoken, especially on issues involving race or ethnicity, as Wikipedia also details. A couple of questions: (1) Basing your opinion on watching the video clips, does his approach to the State Farm commercial appear to be divisive or "culturally binding?" (2) Does this commercial help play a culturally binding role? If so, how? For people in New York City? For the rest of us who watched it on TV (or YouTube)? If so, how?

Work(s) Cited
Roush, Matt. "Terror Hits Home." TV Guide 29 Sept.-5 Oct. 2001: 8-11.

COMM 150: Assignment for Monday

Come into class ready to write a page on the following question: How does the subject matter of Chapters 1, 2 and 3 of John Vivian's "Media of Mass Communication" - i.e. media literacy, media technology and media economics - fit together in your mind? Taking the three-chapter introduction as a whole, which ones seem most important to you? Which ones surprse you? Which ones are unclear to you?

Here, to help you out in case you've ordered the book but it hasn't come yet, is a set of "Learning Objectives" from the companion website to an earlier edition (the 7th) of the same book. (I couldn't find the 10th on line, but this one will do.) Its introduction wasn't divided into three chapters like ours is, but it covered some of the same ideas. Here they are:

In this chapter you will learn:

The mass media are pervasive in our everyday lives.

Mass media's culturally binding role is diminishing.

The primary mass media are built on print, chemical, and electronic technologies.

Integration of mass media technologies has transformed their impact.

Traditional mass media products are being supplemented and replaced.

Scholars have devised models to explain the mass media.

Most mass media organizations must be profitable to stay in business.

Mass media ownership is consolidating.

This list is no substitute for reading the book, of course, but it will give you some idea of the main themes or trends in Vivian's book. What do they mean to you? What surprises you? What confuses you without further study?

COMM 337: How to organize a news story

Post what you remember of what you learned in COMM 209 (or wherever).

COMM 150, 337: An English journalist covers 9/11

These links were posted Nov. 5, 2007, to a blog called TEACHING B/LOG that I used to keep. They're timely again with the 10th anniversary of 9/11, so I edited the piece and am posting it here. At the bottom I posted questions for students in COMM 337, which I was teaching that semester. We probably won't have time to get to them in class today, so I'm not assigning them this time. But you can still answer them by posting your reaction to your blogs for extra credit. - pe

David Usborne is the New York correspondent for The Independent, a center-left newspaper in London. He was in lower Manhattan Sept. 11, 2001, and he knew immediately his coverage of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Centers would be the biggest story of his career. Reading it now, several years later, it brings back the immediacy he tried to convey to readers in England.

At the end of 2001, he wrote an account of how he covered the story and how he felt that day that is, to my mind, one of the best pieces of reporting to come out of that tragedy. He also captured the conflicting emotions and instincts of a reporter covering a very big story in a way that I think any hard news reporter will recognize.

... I was distracted by worry that I should have been getting closer to the towers. It is a reporter's disease; you have to get to where it's at. (The same instinct took over a few weeks later when American Airlines flight 587 crashed in Queens. I was just despairing of reaching the site itself when I found myself staring at one of the plane's engines in a driveway.) I imagined getting inside the tower, exploring the foyer and getting important detail. With my press badge on display – theoretically it gets me through police – I went against the flow of people fleeing the Trade Centre area, ignoring urgent appeals from police officers to stop and turn back.

But then I changed my mind. An officer shouted that they were clearing the area because of a risk of gas explosions. And while I felt a twinge of professional guilt, I rationalised that every non-essential person in the area was one more person getting in the way of the rescue crews. And something else was starting to dawn on me. This was going to be a very big news story. I was going to have enough to write that day and it wouldn't matter if I didn't have first-hand details of how it looked on the mezzanine level of the South Tower, or wherever. So, about three blocks north-east of the towers, I stopped. It was one of the better decisions I have taken in my life.

The rest of his account relives that day, from the time he rushed to lower Manhattan in the morning to his trying -- unsuccessfully -- to unwind in an East [Greenwich] Village bar shortly before midnight.

Also linked below are:

• Usborne's spot news coverage on Sept. 12, 2001.
  
• A story Sept. 18, 2001, by David Lister, also of The Independent, on spot news coverage of the attacks by news media in the UK.

Read all three stories, and answer the following questions:

1. How do Usborne's accounts of the terrorism that morning in New York City stack up as pieces of writing? Compare and contrast his deadline story that ran Sept. 12 with his year's-end retrospective Dec. 28. What's the same? What's different? What does it tell you about deadline writing?

3. What do you learn from reading Usborne about the ethics and instincts of a journalist? Your careers, hopefully, will involve events that much less dramatic. But there may be some of it you can apply to your own writing. What does Usborne say that you can so apply?

COMM 150, 337: How an online class at SCI [and a reporter in New York City] reacted to 9/11

Everybody has his own memories of Sept. 11, 2001, as that day's terrorist attacks became the defining event of our new century, and this week's 10-year anniversary coverage can't help but trigger them. At Springfield College in Illinois, the predecessor school to Benedictine University at Springfield, the students in one of my classes used the then-new medium of an online message board to vent our feelings about it. And at the end of that school year, in May 2002, I collected some of the messages in a story about 9/11 in The Sleepy Weasel, SCI's campus literary magazine that I edited at the time.

What I remember most vividly 10 years later was the radio that Scott McCullar, now marketing director for BenU-Springfield, set up on a stool in the middle of the Presidents Room so everybody could hear it. The local station in Springfield had switched it over to a network feed from its affiliate in New York City, and it was broadcasting local news advisories ... which public schools were evacuating, which subway stations were closed. It had an immediacy that the television news lacked, the day-to-day reality of a city under attack.

But, of course, the TV news had pictures. So after a few minutes, we all watched the pictures.

Another thing I remember was the poor squirrel.

About mid-morning, some of the students who lived in housing across the 6th Street parking lot from Dawson Hall, came running into Dawson scared half to death because the power had just gone off in their apartments. The morning of Sept. 11, none of us knew the dimensions of what was happening. We were hearing the Illinois Capitol and the public buildings downtown were to be evacuated. And we didn't know why the power went off, although the lights - and, importantly, the TV - were still on in Dawson.

But it turned out the outage was caused by a squirrel. It didn't turn out very well for the squirrel - he was electrocuted - but I remember having a good laugh, and then being embarrassed because I was so relieved.

* * *

Student comments to the message board were pretty perceptive. I thought they reflected credit on our students at SCI, and that's why I collected them in the article. They speak for themselves, as you'll see if you read them.

* * *

My piece in The Sleepy Weasel also contains the most complete version of the news story on 9/11 that I liked the best, by Jimmy Breslin who was a columnist for Newsday at the time. I described him as "one of the last of the old-school, streetwise big city reporters." He was 71 at the time, and he'd been covering New York City for 40 years. His report wasn't elegant, but it was written fast. On deadline. By a guy who knew and loved the city. It's no longer available. I didn't save the complete version, and it was deadline writing, not the kind that wins you awards and gets you into anthologies. Just a newsman doing his job. Which is what I liked so much about it. But I can reconstruct parts of it from what I quoted in The Weasel. Here they are:

MANHATTAN SCENE
The War Comes Home
Jimmy Breslin

September 11, 2001

Always, all our wars were somewhere else. The one this time is here.

Suddenly Tuesday morning, in the smoke that covered the sun, and in the flames coming in red-orange tongues between the silvery panels of the high floors of the building, that is over a street of people who are looking up at the smoke and fire and sound a loud moan. They look at the building top as they start running away.

The windows of the building do not open and the stairwells inside the building have no effect on smoke except to let it rise at an extraordinary speed.

There is a rumble that shakes the sky and the street. Now there is screaming. Suddenly, the top of the World Trade Center south tower blows up. Twenty stories, thirty stories. The top of the tower blows up in fire and thick smoke. The top of the tower collapses into the smoke.

Debris comes out of the black smoke and is hanging in the air for an instant. Silvery pieces of the side of the building. Glass in shards. Then everything comes down and hits the street and starts flying like bullets you can see.

The World Trade Center Tower Two is no more. The cops and firefighters who are closest to the building are running. The people on the street are running. …

I wrote, "An old-fashioned newsman, Breslin left the commentary to others. He wrote of the fires engulfing the World Trade Center towers, of a man he saw 'dropping, dropping, dropping until he is no more,' of the blast, the debris and choking dust as the towers collapsed, of people running through the streets, ducking into buildings, running, running again. On the scene with a folded sheet of paper and a soft pencil, he caught details a TV anchor can't. And he wrote of a new spirit of resolve that began to emerge even as police were still directing survivors out of lower Manhattan." Then I quoted:

They walk to the shriek of sirens and with water bottles in their hands. They walk out of the last smoke and into hot sunlight. The streets are becoming more crowded as buildings empty and the war refugees of New York march to the north. The crowds were thick in front of St. Vincent's Hospital and Medical Center at 12th Street, where the sidewalk in front of the emergency room entrance is lined with gurneys and nurses and doctors and attendants and with screams the first ambulances are coming around the corner and cops rush and hands reach and ambulance doors fly open and the workers struggle to get the first injured onto the gurneys on the sidewalk.

"We're nurses who want to volunteer," a woman calls out from the crowd.

"You got ID?" a cop says.

Two nurses hand him paper.

He waves them on and they run to where the wounded are being unloaded.

In COMM 337, we've been reading about how reporting is the soul of journalistic writing. And Breslin, who is retired now, was a reporter's reporter.

COMM 150 and 337: Civility, in class and on line

I've added something to the syllabus in both classes ... here's an explanation of what it is and why I'm adding it.

As the semester gets fully under way and we start posting more often to my Web log and the blogs we're starting in Communications 337, we will be commenting on each other's posts and reacting to each other's ideas. I hope we'll be using the technology to form virtual communities, one in COMM 150 and one in COMM 337.

"A virtual community, according to Wikipedia, "is a social network of individuals who interact through specific media, potentially crossing geographical and political boundaries in order to pursue mutual interests or goals. ... These virtual communities all encourage interaction, sometimes focusing around a particular interest, or sometimes just to communicate. Quality virtual communities do both. They allow users to interact over a shared passion, whether it be through message boards, chat rooms, social networking sites, or virtual worlds."

Adds Wikipedia, "Virtual communities resemble real life communities in the sense that they both provide support, information, friendship and acceptance between strangers." That's why we can call them communities.

I also try to maintain my classes as learning communities. That means, among other things, students can feel safe with each other. When I first began to move class discussion onto the internet 10 years ago, I developed a civility statement for a message board I used in my classes. I have revised it a little and posted it to the student blog directory on The Mackerel Wrapper. As revised, the civility reads as follows:

Web logs evaluated for course credit in my classes comprise a virtual community and an electronic extension of my classroom. In asking students to post to blogs, as in all of my classes, I encourage you to think for yourselves and try out new ideas; to do that safely, we have to respect and trust each other. Therefore, I must ask that we refrain from negative personal comments or "flame wars" on line. What sounds like friendly kidding when we're F2F (face-to-face) with each other can look hostile and intimidating in writing.

It applies to students in COMM 150 and 337 alike.

Please also note: When I was adding the civility statement, I also revised the COMM 337 syllabus to bring its language closer to the statement in COMM 150 asking students to "please be considerate and respectful of one another" and turn off cell phones, among other things. New language in each syllabus is underlined.

COMM 337: Using a blog to promote your business ... here's an example of how to do it

I mentioned CapitolFax.com the other day - it's a blog that Rich Miller uses to promote his newsletter Capitol Fax about Illinois politics and government. Miller has been covering state government since about 1990, and he has a daily newsletter that state officials, politicians and lobbyists can subscribe to for $350 a year. He's always made sophisticated use of technology - in the early 90s, he transmitted the newsletter by fax, which was cutting-edge high tech at the time - and he took to blogging as soon as it developed 10 and 12 years ago.

How does Miller use the blog? Essentially, to promote the newsletter. Here's an example this morning ... in a post headlined Quinn will threaten to close facilities, lay off workers" ... it begins with the lead-in to an extended quote from this morning's Chicago Tribune:

* I told subscribers about this late Friday morning…

Gov. Pat Quinn plans to issue layoff notices to thousands of state workers this week as he deals with a budget shortfall he pegs in the hundreds of millions of dollars, a state government source with knowledge of the situation told the Tribune.

The governor also intends to announce the closing of several state facilities, including a prison, juvenile detention center and homes for the mentally ill and developmentally disabled, sources confirmed. Without action, Quinn’s budget office says, several agencies would run out of money by the spring. ...

Miller has two links. One is to the story in this morning's Trib. The other is to the item he ran in Friday's blog:

Protected: SUBSCRIBERS ONLY: This just in, Part 2… Friday, Sep 2, 2011
This post is password protected. To view it please enter your password below:

Password: __________ Submit

- Posted by Rich Miller

Enter your password to view comments.

Like many business people, bloggers advertise their product by giving away samples. But the savvy ones also remind potential customers they can get more when they pay for the service.

COMM 337: Assignment for Thursday - reporting for surprise

Students please note: The assignment for Thursday has been updated and highlighted in red type.

Reporting is at the heart of a news story. Interviewing real people provides the meat of a good story -- quotes of what they said. Talking to people often leads to unexpected information that can take a story in a whole different direction. And people often tell wonderful stories, called anecdotes, to illustrate what they are talking about.

It is reporting that makes a news story so different from other forms of writing. And it is meeting people and learning surprising, unexpected -- and sometimes amazing -- things that makes reporting so rewarding. And any of those ingredients will make your news story interesting.

- Lawrence Surtees

Since our course is designed to develop your skills in selected "major styles of journalistic writing beyond newswriting," we have to begin with newswriting. And one of the best reviews of basic newswriting I've found anywhere is by Larry Surtees, communications research vice president of a Canadian consulting firm called International Data Corp. But before that, he was a reporter for 17 years on the Toronto Globe and Mail, arguably Canada's most prestigious newspaper. He wrote the tip sheet I'm assigning you to read for a distance learning program called SNN Newsroom.

It's called "How to Write a Great News Story" ... I've been been using in my journalism classes as long as I've been teaching them. I also look at it sometimes to help my own reporting when I feel like I need a reminder of basic skills and attitudes. It's that good.

Surtees' main point is the one quoted above - "Reporting is the heart of a news story." Substitute "advanced journalism" for "news," and you've got my basic attitude to COMM 337.

Your assignment for Thursday:

• Read Surtees' how-to piece.
  
  
• Think about it. (This step is essential. Don't leave it out!)
  
  
• Answer the questions below.
  
  
• Post your answers to your new blog.
  
  
• As you write your answers, ask yourself: Do these words sound like me? Are they in my voice? What do I mean when I say "my voice" anyway? What is my voice?

Don't be afraid to use the language to the best of your ability as you post to the blog. You don't have to sound like Shakespeare. You probably shouldn't even try! Be content to sound like yourself. (That's harder.) If you like clear and concise, go for clear and concise. If you like conversational, go for conversational. I think the best commercial writing is conversational. Clear, too. And concise. It's your blog, though, and I've only got two requirements insofar as tone and style of writing are concerned: (1) Be professional; and (2) don't use the blog to flame each other.

Here are the questions:

1. What's the difference between "hard news" and "soft news?" Give a couple of examples of each? Which would you rather write? Why? What does Surtees mean by the terms "hard lead" and "soft lead?" Which kind of *lede would you rather read? [See tangent below to see why I spell it differently from Surtees.]
   
   
2. How many different ways does Surtees say a good reporter likes to be surprised, and then surprises his reader? Do you like surprises?
   
   
3. Surtees quotes a guy named Don Murray. Have you heard that name before? BTW, have you ordered "the little green book that never goes away" yet?
   
   
4. What did you learn from reading Surtees' tip sheet that surprised you? Why? How can you use this to help find - or fine-tune - your own voice as a writer?

__________

* Tangent No. 1. In his section on the organization of a news story, Surtees says the "lead" of a news story is pronounced like the verb, "to lead." Then a couple of **grafs later, he says, "The inverted pyramid arose during the era of movable lead type." That's lead, like in the metal they used to cast type with, and it's pronounced like "led." Since the standard spelling is ambiguous, some newspaper oldtimers still spell it "lede" when they mean the first graf of a story and "lead" when they mean the metal used in typesetting - or just about anything else. Your instructor is one of those oldtimers.

** Tangent No 2. By now you've figured out what a "graf" is, right? In fact, you already knew if you've been around professional writers enough. It's short for "paragraph."

COMM 337: A basic story format, with links to stories about a food bank and a drag queen

This is also part of Thursday's assignment, and I've highlighted the questions in red below. Post your answers as comments to this post.

For Thursday. Read this post AFTER you read the piece on how to report and organize a news story by Larry Surtees above. It will give you a very useful way of how to write a "soft lede" on any story [don't worry - those terms will be defined in Surtees' piece - at least it's one I've found useful in my own writing.

This format, which I sometimes call a "quote-kebab" story for reasons that will become evident, is kind of a Jell-O mold approach - you take your story and pour it into the mold. And it works for almost anything from a 300-word brief to a five-volume book. Here are the elements of a story, the way I like to explain them:

1. The lede. Watch for what Surtees says about a "soft" lede - an attention-grabbing anecdote, a graphic bit of description, sometimes (but very rarely) a quote that sets the stage for ...
   
   
2. The "nut graf." A paragraph or two that gives the "nut" or kernel of a story. It does what a thesis statement did back in freshman English. Sometimes you'll find it strung out over a couple of grafs. It holds the story together. I never wrote a story worth reading that didn't have a nut graf.
   
   
3. The body. When I was reporting for newspapers, I'd go through my notes and find my best quote and put it as high in the story as I could get it. Sometimes before the nut graf, sometimes right after. Then I'd sprinkle quotes through the rest of the story as much as I could. People like reading quotes. Writing books, including Don Murray's have elaborate advice on how to organize a story. If it works for you, follow it! But, me, I'd just string the quotes together with some transition in between like a shish-kebab. Some of my students took to calling it a "quote-kebab" story.
   
   
4. A "kicker" at the end. See what Surtees says about conclusions. In a soft news story, I'd try to give them something to think about at the end, put a little twist on it. In hard news, I didn't have time.

Below are a couple of examples:

A piece on a Texas food bank in The Guardian a respected center-left newspaper in London, England. Excerpted below are the following elements:

1. The lede. Reporter Paul Harris begins with some colorful description:

They arrived before dawn to wait for the food truck. Middle-aged men, young women with children, the elderly and the retired, mixing with the low-paid on their way to work. As the sun rose high in a blue summer sky, several hundred people clustered in precious spots of shade in Dove Springs, a suburb of the Texan capital of Austin. Some brought garden chairs to sit on.

When the truck from the Capital Area Food Bank eventually came, each person patiently waited to pick up a box containing cans of spaghetti sauce, fruit juice, a few pounds of potatoes and some pears. Connie Gonzales, an Austin city official, watched the crowds of hungry and desperate people and said that they grew bigger each week. "It is the economy. It is bad. Any help these people can get, they really need it," she said.

It is not meant to be this way. Not in Texas. After all, this is governor Rick Perry's Lone Star state. This is the Texas whose record at job creation is at the centre of Perry's bid for the Republican presidential nomination. This is the state whose economic "miracle" is being hailed as a conservative blueprint for the future of America – "Texas exceptionalism" as rightwing columnist George Will glowingly called it. This is the state of low taxes and low regulation and which is so pro-business that corporations are booming here. It is the state that dodged recession and has roared back into recovery; an oasis of jobs in a devastated US economy.

2. A good quote. Here it's incorporated into the lede, in the second graf, "It is the economy. ..."

3. Nut graf. It follows right after the lede. You could almost say it's part ofa the lede.

Yet there is a dark side. It was on stark display in Dove Springs. This is the Texas of a collapsing education system that is failing to educate its children. This is the Texas where millions have no health insurance and a growing low-wage economy means having a job is not enough to provide the basics of life. This is the hungry Texas that the food bank serves.

4. Body (quote-kebab). Read the rest of it in the Guardian. See how it works? Quote + background + quote + background + kicker. There's more background and fewer quotes in this story than in many, but notice how many people the reporter talked with.

5. Kicker. It left me thinking at the end. Also: scroll back up to the lede, and notice how Harris laid the foundation for it in the first graf. See how it ties the story together? Things like that don't happen by accident.

Ellen Tucker, a 60-year-old whose job with a local school system was cut from full-time to part-time. "had a shift to do in a school nearby that started in a few minutes."

With a worried expression she approached an organiser and asked how long it would be for her turn to come. There were still 30 people ahead of her in the line. "People come here to start waiting at 6am," the organiser said.

"Tucker nodded, sadly, saying: "I will bear that in mind next time," and walked off to her car empty-handed. She was grim-faced. She could not wait any longer for the food handout. She had to go to work instead.

For another example, I posted this charming little story to the Mackerel Wrapper on Christmas Day in 2007. I picked it up on the Los Angeles Times' website. The Times hasn't archived it, but here's the story as it appeared on the MassCops bulletin board:

Santa in a G-string gets a DUI

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

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

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

Police identified the man as Rick Carroll, 53, of Long Beach. Officers administered a Breathalyzer test at the scene, and Carroll's blood-alcohol level measured just above the legal limit of .08%, Garner said.

Carroll told police he had consumed two rum and Cokes two hours before he was arrested at 9:30 p.m., Garner said. He was later released on $5,000 bail and could not be reached for comment. His 2008 Chevy Impala was towed to an impound yard, police said.

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

Identify: (1) the lede, (2) the really good quote, (3) the nut graf, (4) the body, aka the quote-kebab, and (5) the kicker? What do the quotes add to the story? POST YOUR ANSWERS AND COMMENTS BELOW.