A weblog for Pete Ellertsen's mass communications students at Benedictine University Springfield.

Thursday, December 08, 2011

COMM 150: Last day of classes

Some last points about our subject matter in COMM 150, and a couple of housekeeping matters relating to the final exam, grades, etc.

  1. Some information on copyright is posted below. Click here to open a new window, or just scroll dow to the next item. Bottom line: You don't have to worry about copyright for school, since you're covered by the "fair use" exemption for educational purposes. But if you publish anything away from school, including on your own blog, you have to be careful. My quick-and-dirty post tells you how to be careful.
  2. Your final exam is posted below. Click here if you want to see it in a new window, or just scroll down a couple of posts.
  3. If you have a solid A in the class, you don't have to take the final. See me after class. If I don't have all your papers, see me after class. If you're not sure what's going on and don't know where you fit in, see me after class.
  4. I like to close my classes with a YouTube video (which of course I'm using under the "fair use" copyright exemption for educational purposes, right)? This semester's is embedded below.

"Hallelujah Chorus," Christmas Food Court Flash Mob

Earlier this semester we watched a "flash mob" organized by the Copenhagen Philharmonic in Denmark. This flash mob, in a shopping center food court in Canada, was also superbly organized, choreographed and recorded by Alphabet Photography of Niagra Falls, Ontario. To read more about the agency, link here to their About Us page. Cooperating were Robert Cooper and Chorus Niagara, The Welland Seaway Mall and Fagan Media Group. According to its website (which features a picture from the flash mob, "Fagan Media Group integrates the strengths of like-minded associates who believe in quality production values and captivating content, offering a one-stop portal for all media services including, broadcast, corporate, website, social media and software design." They certainly demonstrate quality production values in the food court video project.



Some of you may also consider the message of the song appropriate to the end of the semester.

COMM 150: A quick-and-dirty guide to copyright law for journalism students

It pays to know something about copyright.

For example, country singer Willie Nelson sold his rights to a song called "Family Bible" for $50 when he was just starting out in Nashville. He needed the money right away. But over the long run, he got screwed blue. Don't laugh. The song has been worth millions in royalties over the years.

But not for Willie Nelson.

Let's give it a working definition: "Copyright" boils down to this, it's the right to make a copy of something you created. Most of the stuff that most of us write - that would include me, by the way - isn't worth enough money to copyright. Sad, but true. Worrying too much about copyright, e.g. registering your rhymed verse about Aunt Gertrude that begins "Roses are red, violets are blue / Aunt Gertrude rocks, / Through and through" with the U.S. government can be interpreted as the sign of an amateur.

For an unusually clear introduction to the whole copyright schmear, go to the Washington State University copyright page at http://publishing.wsu.edu/copyright/ ...

Some points for writers (that would be us), distilled from Washington State and elsewhere:a

  • You don't have to register a work with the Library of Congress anymore. You just publish it. "Publish," by the way, means something different in copyright law than it does in libel law. In this case, it is "the distribution of copies or phonorecords of a work to the public by sale or other transfer of ownership, or by rental, lease, or lending. " Job tip: Little inconsistencies like that make work for lawyers!
  • It's still a good idea to register with the Copyright Office of the Library of Congress. Its Web site at http://www.copyright.gov/ tells how.
  • Books should be registered with a company called Bowker, which issues them an International Standard Book Number (ISBN) and gets them listed in an authoritative catalog of "Books In Print" available at most libraries (including Becker) and on line.
  • When you sell an article to a magazine, they buy the right to copy it unless you specifically negotiate secondary rights. If you write something on the job, the law assumes you assign all rights to your employer unless you negotiate a more favorable arrangement. That arrangement is called "work for hire," and it's what most professionals are bound by.


Some points for users of copyrighted material. Copyright infringement, unlike plagiarism, is a violation of the law. It is similar to plagiarism in that it consists of the use of another person's intellectual property without permission. It is different in that you can be sued if you violate copyright. [Also see the footnote about fair use and plagiarism below.] The practices you learned in school about avoiding plagiarism, however, will help you avoid infringement. Giving credit, not quoting too much, etc. Here are some things I learned on the job:

  • Be very, very careful with the words to songs. Best bet: Always seek permission to quote song lyrics, and never quote more than two or three lines. stuff. Musicians and recording companies are most vigilant about protecting their copyright because the words to a hit song, obviously (think about it), have value.
  • If you're publishing to the Internet, for example blogging, be very careful. (Are you beginning to see a pattern here?) You can link to other pages without permission, but if you want to copy their stuff, email them and obtain permission first.
  • Seek permission for anything you use. See the pattern?
  • Some stuff is copyright free. Examples: U.S. government documents (but not necessarily state government, so be careful). An interesting development in Web publishing is Creative Commons licensing. It's not really mainstream yet, but it's especially useful for bloggers. There's a post on how I use Creative Commons on the Mackerel Wrapper for March 31, 2009.
Two big exceptions for journalism students fall under the legal doctrine of fair use (which is not the same as fair comment in libel law). Fair use, according to Wikipedia, "... allows limited use of copyrighted material without requiring permission from the rights holders, such as use for scholarship or review." And covering the news.

So if you're writing a review of a published work for publication, you can quote from it under the doctrine of fair use. (You can say mean and nasty things about it under the doctrine of fair comment, but that's another issue.) Practically everything you write for class falls under fair use, because it's considered scholarship. But if you publish your old term paper, you have to secure permission for extended quotation, pictures and other intellectual property.

Footnote on plagiarism. Quoted from Wikipedia's discussion of fair use: "While plagiarism and copyright violation are related matters—-both can, at times, involve failure to properly credit sources—-they are not identical. Copyright law protects exact expression, not ideas: for example, a distant paraphrase that lays out the same argument as a copyrighted essay is in little danger of being deemed a copyright violation, but it could still be plagiarism. On the other hand, one can plagiarize even a work that is not protected by copyright, such as trying to pass off a line from Shakespeare as one's own. Plagiarism—using someone's words, ideas, images, etc. without acknowledgment—is a matter of professional ethics. Copyright is a matter of law. Citing sources generally prevents accusations of plagiarism, but is not a sufficient defense against copyright violations (otherwise, anyone could legally reprint an entire copyrighted book just by citing who wrote it)."

COMM 150 - final exam




Communications 150: Intro to Mass Comm.
Benedictine University at Springfield
Instructor: Pete Ellertsen eellertsen@ben.edu

Final Exam, Fall Semester 2011

Below are one 50-point essay question and two 25-point short essay questions. Please write at least four pages (1,000 words) on the 50-point essay and two pages (500 words) on each of the 25-point essays. Due at the regularly scheduled time for our exam, 10:30 a.m., Friday, Dec. 16.

Question 1 (50-points). In "Media of Mass Communication," John Vivian says since the 1980s, "sophisticated low-cost recording and mixing equipment gave garage bands a means to control their art" because they were less dependent on studios (119-20). "The result," Vivian says, "was liberation for creativity." Since Johannes Gutenberg's printing press, new technologies have given writers, artists and other creators of content new ways to get around the "gatekeepers" and get taheir art and information to the public. How have technological changes in radio, television and the internet given content creators more direct ways of reaching their audiences? Cite specific examples. Remember: An unsupported generalization is sudden death in college writing. Be specific!

Question 2A (25 points). Self-reflective essay: What do you consider the most important thing you have you learned in COMM 150 that you didn’t know before? Why do you say it is the most important? Be specific in your discussion of how it might fit into your career decisions, or your plans for further study (whether you plan to major in communication arts, another field or are undecided). Consider it in the context of what you knew at the beginning of the course and what you know now. In grading this essay, I will evaluate the relevance of your discussion to the main goals and objectives of the course; the specific detail you cite to support or illustrate your points; and the specific connections you make.

Question 2B (25 points). How does John Vivian define the marketplace of ideas? How does the concept play out in the interpretation of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and in the ethics and day-to-day practice of professionals in the Society of Professional Journalists and the Public Relations Society of America? How is it reflected in the philosophy behind an "multilingual, web-based, free-content encyclopedia project based on an openly editable model" like Wikipedia? Cite specific examples from Vivian, from the codes of ethics and from your own reading. Be specific.

Wednesday, December 07, 2011

COMM 337: Before we ride off into the sunset ...

Odds and ends for the last day of class ...
  1. Your final exam is posted below. If you have questions about it, or anything else, please don't hesitate to contact me by email. My Yahoo! account is best, peterellertsen - at - yahoo.com (please note spelling of last name or copy and paste it from here).
  2. I've posted some information to the blog about COMM 353, an advanced seminar I'll be offering in the spring. I believe it's required for Writing and Publishing program students and an elective for Comm Arts. It's also about magazines, geared more to editing and production.
  3. Links at the end of this post to a couple of articles about the European economic crisis we've been reading about this semester. As usual, you're encouraged to take them with a grain of salt. But the crisis isn't going away now the semester's over.
  4. My favorite political blog, Capitol Fax at target="_blank">http://capitolfax.com/, often closes out the week by posting a music video on Fridays. Since we're closing out the semester, I'll do the same.
So here's some Christmas cheer by one of my favorite bands, an Irish traditional group with punk rock overtones called the Pogues. The song is "Fairytale of New York". It was recorded in 1987 by Pogues frontman Shane MacGowan and guest vocalist Kristy McColl. It regularly tops the charts in Ireland and the U.K. at Christmastime, and it's getting to be kind of a tradition in my fall semester classes.

"Fairytale of New York," the Pogues & Kirsty McColl



The other one has more to do with COMM 337. If there's one major point I've wanted to make this semester that isn't on the syllabus, it's that I think the world belongs to people who have the drive and talent to be entreprenueral.

And the people who put this 2010 video together were nothing if not entrepreneurial.

Something to think about as you graduate and begin your careers.

"Hallelujah Chorus," Christmas Food Court Flash Mob

This flash mob was superbly organized, choreographed and recorded by http://www.AlphabetPhotography.com of Niagra Falls, Ontario. To read more about the agency, link here to their About Us page. Cooperating were Robert Cooper and Chorus Niagara, The Welland Seaway Mall and Fagan Media Group. Vickie Fagan describes the group as a "one-stop portal for all media services including, broadcast, corporate, website, social media and software design." Some of you may consider the song appropriate to the end of the semester, as well.



Footnote on European (and U.S.) sovereign debt crisis. Niall Ferguson, controversial and usually quite conservative economic historian, has a discouraging take on the sovereign debt crisis we've been reading about this semester. It's titled "The Fed's Critics Are Wrong: We Need to Avert Depression" and it's in this week's issue of Newsweek. Ferguson has plenty of critics, but most of them are on the left, and it will be interesting (at least to those of us who care about economic history) to see what the reaction is to this article. At any rate, in Newsweek Ferguson says:
What was the root cause of the financial crisis? Greed? Deregulation? No. It was ignorance of financial history.

Last week the world’s central banks—including the American Federal Reserve—acted in concert to try to prevent history from repeating itself. Their critics on both sides of the Atlantic showed a dangerous ignorance, and not for the first time.
Author of "The Cash Nexus: Money and Power in the Modern World, 1700-2000" and several histories of the Rothschild banking house over the centuries, Ferguson says "In normal times it would be legitimate to worry about the consequences of money printing and outsize debts. But history tells us these are anything but normal times." Instead, he fears a repeat of 1931 when tight money policies made the Great Depression inevitable:
We are indeed fortunate that at least the world’s leading central bankers have studied this history: not only [U.S. Federal Reserve chairman] Ben Bernanke but also the heads of the Bank of England, the Bank of Canada, and the European Central Bank.

The bad news is that so few politicians and voters understand what they are trying to do, or why. The even worse news is that central bankers by themselves may not be able to stop our depression from turning great.
Time will tell. I'm convinced by the parallels to the Great Depression, but I've been worried about things like that before and they haven't come to pass. In the meantime, scary headlines do sell magazines.

There's another story in Newsweek I plan to read. It's by Simon Schama, another British historian who teaches in America, and it's titled "Why America Should Care About the Collapse of European Unity" ... not exactly cheerful holiday reading, either, but I think these things are important.

COMM 337: Final exam

Self-reflective essay (100 points). Write an essay of at least 1,250 words (five typed pages) in response to the questions below. Please feel free (or compelled) to quote freely, and attribute your quotes. Write as if you were submitting your essay for publication. Strive for a conversational tone. The essay is due Thursday, Dec. 15, at 1:30 p.m., at the regularly scheduled time for our final. Email it to me and/or give it to me in person - but let's make sure I get it.

What have you learned in Communications 337 that surprised you the most? How, specifically, did it surprise you? Here are some questions to get you started thinking about your writing. Try to focus your essay on this issue of surprise and work in your thoughts on the questions below. Don’t try to answer them all (but you will, of course, want to convince me of the depth and breadth of your reading in our texts as well as the articles we’ve posted to The Mackerel Wrapper)!

How did you see yourself as a writer before you took the course, and how would you see yourself now you have taken it? Has your writing changed as a result of the course? What worked when you wrote your feature story? What didn’t work? Which of the articles we read for class helped you as a writer, i.e. suggested techniques you might try in your own writing? Which suggested things you want to avoid at all costs! What did you learn from Donald Murray’s “Writing to Deadline” (the little green book that wouldn’t go away) and “The Writer's Digest Handbook of Magazine Article Writing?” What was beneficial? What wasn’t?

How beneficial was the material on free-lance writing and selling your work to paying markets? Did you get any useful tips? More importantly, did it help change the way you think of yourself as an aspiring professional writer? Do you feel like you're ready to start looking for markets that are open to entry-level writers and writing articles for them? Have you been able to find any such markets? If so, what are they and what specific article(s) can you try to get them to publish?

Here are some questions, adapted from an English course at the University of Colorado-Denver, to help you think about your development as a writer:
  • How has your writing changed during this semester?
  • What do you see as your greatest strengths as a writer?
  • What areas of your writing are you still working on?
  • What do you think of as “good writing?” How do you evaluate your own writing and that of others?
In grading this essay, as always, I will evaluate the relevance of your discussion to the main goals and objectives of the course; the detail you cite to support or illustrate your points; and the connections you make. Be specific.

COMM 150: Advertising ethics and marketplace of ideads

http://www.aef.com/on_campus/classroom/speaker_pres/data/3001

excerpts from a speech by Chris Moore of Ogilvy & Mather

... People in advertising spend a lot of their time dealing with ethical choices, and those choices are almost never black and white. They're subtle, shades-of-gray choices, juicy enough for a Philosophy major.

---

truth

---

what else? Read and reflect. What is the role of advertisers in a marketplace of ideas?

COMM 337: A shameless sales pitch for COMM 353 and an old editor's note from The Sleepy Weasel


Spring semester I'll be offering another 300-level course at Benedictine. It's an advanced seminar, and it'll focus on magazine editing. Details are not yet final, but it's shaping up to be an another opportunity for you to learn some more about how to get your stuff in print. (Have you read Chapter 10 yet in the "Writer's Digest Guide for Free-Lance Writers?" It's about working with editors.) COMM 353 can also give you a portfolio piece, either for your senior portfolio or for the professional portfolios you'll be schlepping around as you look for communications work. Here's the catalog description:
COMM-353 (3). Advanced Seminar in Writing, Editing and Page Design for Publications. In this seminar, students work on a major publications project, engage in critical reading of media content, discuss writing, editing and page design strategies, have drafts of their work critiqued in class, and develop a professional portfolio of the work. Prerequisite: COMM-150, COMM-207, COMM-208 and COMM-209.
Here's my description, from an editor's note in an old copy of The Sleepy Weasel, a campus magazine I used to coordinate as faculty adviser and de facto production manager. Editing, I said, is "the art of making others look good [in print] without leaving any tracks of your own." Making yourself look good in print, too. (The picture above of a clip art ferret on a stack of books is from an old Sleepy Weasel home page. No animals were harmed in the production of the webpage.) In COMM 353, we'll edit each other's work and we'll get out a demonstration magazine. We'll design it, copyfit it and get the words on paper - or in PDF files - so they can go in your portfolios.

Oh, I almost forgot the reading.

We'll read two little paperback books, the kind that don't go away. One is Carol Fisher Saller, "The Subversive Copy Editor: Advice from Chicago" (Chicago, 2009). When she says "Chicago," she means the University of Chicago Press. Its stylebook is the editorial standard for magazine and book publishing. The other is James Thurber, "The Years with Ross" (ed. Adam Gopnik, HarperCollins Perennial Classics edition, 2001). It's about Harold Ross, a legendary editor of The New Yorker in the 1930s and 1940s. Long time ago, but it was sort of a Golden Age in American culture - and The New Yorker was arguably the best of the best. We can learn a lot about craftsmanship, and art and other things that matter from reading it.

We'll also keep up with The New Yorker online. It's still around, and it's still good. Check it out at http://www.newyorker.com/.

I'm still working on the syllabus, but here are some draft goals and objectives:
A. Goals.
• Students will learn basic editorial principles, attitudes and practices in academic and quality magazine settings
• Students will gain practical editing experience on a demonstration literary magazine.
• Students will gain metacognitive knowledge of their experience and its relation to the practices and principles detailed in their readings

B. Student Learning Objectives. Upon completion of the course, students will be able to demonstrate mastery of specific editing skills required in the preparation of articles and art for publication and in the production of a "little" magazine of literature, the arts and public affairs.
And here's an editor's column I wrote for The Weasel a couple of years ago, lightly edited. The link was dead when I checked this morning, so I copied it from an old flash drive. In spite of my shameless punning, it's a pretty good statement of what I hope my students learn from working on a magazine.

Weasel words: Hickory dickory … mission in action

By Pete Ellertsen

While we were crashing this year’s edition of The Sleepy Weasel the other day, editorial assistant Claire Keldermans asked me what I was going to say in the editor’s column. I told her I’m an old newspaper guy so I'd run out the clock, I probably wouldn’t decide till the very last minute.

“Hickory dickory dock,” she said.

Run that by me again, I asked. Real slow.

“Hickory dickory, Doc,” she replied.

My students call me “Doc,” and Claire said she thought the pun was cute.

Oh, I said.

That’s my usual response to puns. Oh. Anything more would be too effusive, would run the risk of encouraging still more puns. But a good pun, especially on deadline during final edit when we’re all a little giddy anyway, ought not to go unacknowledged.

Hence the headline.

That wasn’t the only pun. This year’s Weasel is Volume 13 of a magazine that grew out of a small group project in a freshman English composition class I taught in 1995. For their project, they put on a “Beat generation” style coffeehouse complete with red-checkered tablecloth, candle stub jammed into an empty chianti bottle and, of course, poetry. The project morphed into a poetry club, and the club quickly reinvented itself as a student publication. Over time it developed into a campus magazine showcasing the creative work of students, faculty, staff and friends of Springfield College in Illinois and now Benedictine University at Springfield.

This year has been one of transition on campus, and we’ve given some thought to what we’ve been doing with the Weasel and what we hope to do in future. Out of this process, we crafted a mission statement:
The Sleepy Weasel is a campus magazine of the arts and public affairs published by students and faculty of Springfield College and Benedictine University, on the World Wide Web at and in hard-copy format at the College's campus in Springfield. The Weasel seeks to highlight written and artistic work by our students, both in and out of class, and to help promote a sense of community on campus by providing a voice for the creative work of students, faculty, staff, alumni, and others in the Springfield-Benedictine community.

So I decided if we’re putting our mission into action, we can call it mission in action.

Oh.

I could almost read Claire’s mind.

Oh. Let’s not encourage him.

OK, OK, it wasn’t that funny. Like I said, life gets a little giddy during final edit. But the Sleepy Weasel’s mission is real, and we take it seriously.

An important part of our mission is involving students in the editing, design and production of the magazine. This year’s cover is Claire’s. A senior in mass communications, she shot the photo, worked her magic on it in a photo-editing program and designed the cover. And she caught right on to copyfitting, which I’ve heard aptly compared to cramming three pounds of text into a two-pound bag (except “text” wasn’t the word that was actually used). I especially wanted to involve her in editing creative writing for style. Judi Anderson, my colleague in the Arts and Letters Division and co-adviser to The Sleepy Weasel, is a gifted editor in the tradition of the 20th-century book doctors who brought out the best in authors as different as F. Scott Fitzgerald, Thomas Wolfe, Hemingway and Ring Lardner. So I started Claire out by studying Judi’s edited manuscripts, then turned her loose on some raw copy of her own.

You won’t notice the editors’ handiwork. By definition, good editing is invisible. It’s nothing more – or less – than the art of making others look good without leaving any tracks of your own. By semester’s end, Claire said she was mentally adding or deleting commas, correcting grammatical errors, playing with word order, tightening up copy and generally tinkering with the written word every time she saw a written word.

“I’m beginning to see edits everywhere,” she said. “It’s driving me crazy.”

[… and so on. She even saw edits when she drove past billboards on the way to campus. I’m omitting the description of stories that were in that year’s issue. - pe]

Sleepy Weasel, Vol. 13 (Spring 2009).

Saturday, December 03, 2011

COMM 337: Assignment(s) for last week of classes - ** UPDATED 2x ** and fair warning about link to final exam question(s)

** UPDATE ** UPDATED AGAIN 9:15 p.m. WEDNESDAY ** - Here are some thoughts on the final exam, which I will post before class Thursday. I don't have the final wording yet - can we call it the "final final" when I do? - but I've got a general idea of what I want you to do. It'll be a take-home essay test, due at our final exam period - 1:30 p.m. Thursday, Dec. 15. Two One questions, 50 100 points each. Email it to me, bring me a hard copy or do both.

I'm kind of making things up as I go along, and I've been sharing some of my thoughts with students who have emailed me with questions. So in order to level the playing field, I will post the parts about the final here.

The email messages were about Question 1. In one I said:
... I think I'm going to lay another question on you for the final, and talk about it in class Thursday. It'll be to find a viable market - that's "viable" as in market that you feel like you really have a shot at getting a story published in - and doing a little research on it. Check Writer's Market, the "About Us" or "Submissions" pages on their website, etc., and plot out in detail how you'd go about contacting them and shlepping them a story.
And this ...
... So why don't you prowl around the website ... you wrote about at the beginning of the semester and see if they have any guest columns, reader blogs, etc., ways for you to break into print. Look in the "About Us" and "Submissions" pages (whatever they call them), and see if they have writer's guidelines. ... I'm thinking of having that be one of the questions on the final, along with the usual reflective essay. So it won't be time wasted.
The other question will be the usual reflective essay. Here's the exam I gave in 2008. This year's will be an updated version of that. Link here to the exam or scroll up to Wednesday, Dec. 7. I am deleting the question here, since it's posted in full above.


For Tuesday's class discussion -

Since this is an advanced journalistic writing course: Find some websites that you might be able to use as a market or an outlet for journalistic writing ... it can either be a website that might take free-lance stories on a subject you're interested in (either now of later), or one that might have career prospects for you later.

Copy and paste the website's address into a comment to this post, along with the name of the website and a very brief description, just a couple of keywords to let us know what it's about ...

For example, on down the road you might be interested in applying for work at Patch Communications at http://www.patch.com/. They are a chain of "hyperlocal" web-based publications that encourage amateurs - readers - to submit blogs and hire professionals to coordinate newsgathering as well as cover stories themselves. They want at least two years' experience, and they don't seem to hire many pros. But they are interested in communities up to 100,000 that are under-served by traditional media. Sound like anyplace you know? In the meantime, watch for it. They're mostly around Chicago now, but if they expand downstate they might come to Springfield. And they might be looking for bloggers if you're temporarily stuck in a "day job" that has nothing to do with your career goals.

Friday, December 02, 2011

COMM 150 (and 337): Here's the "marketplace of ideas" again, and the 1st Amendment - **UPDATED** IN-CLASS ASSIGNMENT

John Vivian, in our COMM 150 textbook "Media of Mass Communication," credits 17th-century the English poet John Milton with originating the concept of the "marketplace of ideas," which he defines as: "An unbridled forum for free inquiry and expression." In the pamphelet called Areopagitica (1655), Milton said, "Let Truth and Falsehood grapple: whoever knew Truth put to the worse in a free and open encounter." Says Vivian, "Milton ... saw no reason to fear any idea, no matter how subersive, because human beings inevitably will choose the best ideas and values." That all makes it sound more like a boxing ring than a marketplace, but Vivian also says:
Milton argued for a free and open exchange of information and ideas - a marketplace of ideas. Just as people at a farmers' market can pinch and insect a lot of vegetables until the find the best, so can people find the best ideas if they have a vast array from which to choose. Milton's marketplace is not a place but a concept. It exists whenever people exchange ideas, whether in conversation of letters or the printed word. (399-401. Bold type in the original)
And Vivian adds:
Milton reasoned that people would gain confidence in their ideas and values if they tested them continually against alternative views. It was an argument against censorship. People need to have the fullest possible choices in the marketplace if they are going to go home with the best product, whether vegetables or ideas. ALso, bad ideas should be present in the marketplace because, no matter how objectionable, they might contain a grain of truth.

Milton and his libertarian successors acknowledged that people sometimes err in sorting out alternatives, but these mistakes are corrected as people continually reassess their values against competing values in the marketplace. Libertarians see this truth-seeking as a never-ending, life-long human pursuit. (401)
Please post your answers to the following question as a comment below:

How does the marketplace of ideas concept play out in the interpretation of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and the codes of ethics and day-to-day practice of professionals in journalism and public relations that we studied earlier this week? How does it compare to the philosophy behind an "multilingual, web-based, free-content encyclopedia project based on an openly editable model" like Wikipedia?

UPDATE FOR WEDNESDAY: Let's everybody comment on this. What specific parts of the SPJ code for news writers and the PRSA code for PR professionals are involved with the marketplace of ideas?

ASSIGNMENT FOR FRIDAY: Read the post that I have modestly titled "Copyright: Here's What You Need to Know." I'll update it and post it to the blog, but there's an old version at http://mackerelwrapper.blogspot.com/2010/04/comm-209-copyright-heres-what-you-need.html"target="_blank" ... think of it as my little Christmas present on the last day of class, because it'll explain a way of getting art - visuals, in other words - for school papers without violating copyright.

Thursday, December 01, 2011

COMM 150, 337: Newspapering woes

http://capitolfax.com/2011/12/01/report-sj-r-may-sell-its-building-as-parent-faces-a-billion-dollar-debt-payment/

[State Journal-Register publisher Walt Lafferty’s] disclosure came during a recent newsroom meeting called to discuss the efforts of GateHouse Media, the newspaper’s owner, to turn around sagging financial fortunes. GateHouse stock, which sold for more than $20 a share during the initial public offering five years ago, is virtually worthless, selling for as little as four cents a share last week. The company has more than $1 billion in debt due in 2014.

Lafferty told the news staff that he will likely contact a broker about selling the building after Jan. 1, according to multiple sources who attended the meeting.

Rich Miller, Cap Fax editor-publisher

That company simply did itself in. It borrowed extensively to buy papers when the market was hot, and now it’s stuck with all those newspapers while the market is in a deep trough. That $1 billion debt payment next year may put it under.

…Adding… This post in no way should be meant to be seen as gloating over the SJ-R’s troubles. It’s a sad day for the paper and for Springfield. I have friends over there, and stories like this make me worry about them. Try to take this to heart in comments.

- wordslinger - Thursday, Dec 1, 11 @ 12:55 pm:

I don’t think newspapers saw how quickly and devastatingly the EBays and Craiglists of the world would take away their classified ad business. They all thought the papers would always own the local markets.

- Coach - Thursday, Dec 1, 11 @ 1:26 pm:

=== In the meantime, where is the SJR planning to locate their remaining staff? ===

In a two-bedroom apartment somewhere near the Capitol.




- Yellow Dog Democrat - Thursday, Dec 1, 11 @ 1:27 pm:

@wordslinger - you left out the 800 lb gorilla, Google. Which many newspapers still erroneously refer to as a “search engine” when in fact it is a classified ad company.

My grandmother was a reporter for the SJR back before Rich was born, and they are still one of the best sources of state policy reporting, so I wont gloat over their woes.



- Anonymous - Thursday, Dec 1, 11 @ 1:20 pm:

Gatehouse isn’t alone. Lee is in the same boat, saddled with a billion in debt from the Pulitzer purchase, and it, too, has been selling properties. And the staff downsizings continue, with fewer people asked to do more and more. It’s not that local newspapers aren’t viable, though. Lots of people think they are a defunct business model. They’re not. Local businesses still buy ads and readers still subscribe. No, I wouldn’t do what Warren Buffett just did in buying the Omaha publishing company, but there is still money to be made with the right business model, at least for a few more years. Is online the future? I don’t know. When you look at the paltry revenue that comes from online compared to the dead trees product, there’s only enough there to support an editorial staff that consists of an intern typing up press releases. I’ve been doing this for a living for 35 years, and these are difficult days, to say the least

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About Me

Springfield (Ill.), United States
I'm a retired English, journalism and cultural studies teacher at Springfield College in Illinois (acquired by Benedictine University and subsequently closed). I coordinate jam sessions for the "Clayville Pioneer Academy of Music" at Clayville Historic Site and the Prairieland Strings dulcimer club, and I sing in the choir and the contemporary praise team at Peace Lutheran Church in Springfield. On Hogfiddle I post links and video clips for our sessions and workshops on the mountain dulcimer (a.k.a. "hog fiddle"), as well as research notes on folklore and cultural studies, hymnody and traditional Anglo-Celtic and Scandinavian music. I also posted assignments and readings in my interdisciplinary humanities classes. The Mackerel Wrapper (now on hiatus), carried assignments and readings for my mass comm. students. I started teaching b/log when I chaired SCI-Benedictine's assessment committee, and reopened it as the privatization of public schools grew increasingly troubling and closer to home.