COMM 337: Watch this space for your 3rd analyical assignment

UPDATE: Oct. 17. Please see new assignment sheet posted today (Monday, Oct. 17). I am now combining this assignment with the fourth analytical paper. Instead of two separate 1,000-word analyses of feature stories, I will be asking you to write one 1,500-word analysis of two related articles by Michael Lewis. Instead of Oct. 27, it will now be due Monday, Nov. 1. The draft that I posted below, which I am revising to reflect the new assignment, will still give you valuable background that will help you do a better analysis.

It'll be due Thursday, on Oct. 27 Tuesday, Nov 1. That'll give you two weeks. I will post specific questions to The Mackerel Wrapper, but first I want to finish reading the assigned material so I can give you some intelligent questions to think about.

In the meantime, we can read ahead ...

Michael Lewis, a contributing editor at Vanity Fair and author of several books about the financial markets, has a new book out titled "Boomerang: Travels in the New Third World Economy." He's promoting it heavily on a book tour, and it's in the news a lot these days. Also, as Paul Williams puts it in The Washington Post Lewis "offer[s] a crash course on understanding the European economic crisis." The American economy, too, for that matter.

Lewis' thesis, if you can call it that, is that the financial crisis that began in 2007 and 2008 is devastating the European economy and is spreading back to where it began in America. "Boomerang" is based on a series of articles linked to his profile page on the Vanity Fair website. I'll get back to them later.

But first, in order to give us some background, here are links to a couple of reviews:

• In a very positive review in The New York Times, Michiko Kakutani summarizes Lewis' overall theme as "the utter folly and madness that spread across both sides of the Atlantic during the last decade, as individuals, institutions and entire nations mindlessly embraced instant gratification over long-term planning, the too good to be true over common sense."
  
  
• In a decidedly less friendly blog post on MoJo.com, a self-styled progressive website, Kevin Drum says of the part on Germany, "it's is a great read ... [but] there's practically nothing there." Drum isn't impressed with Lewis' pop sociology, either. "I don't care how many people call his latest piece brilliant, the truth is that it's just lazy."
  
  
• In a generally balanced review in the business magazine Forbes, Kyle Smith of the New York Daily News says Lewis takes some cheap shots but adds, "The most vital writing about finance requires what Lewis has — a sure sense of the absurd." His overall assessment: "... both the details of Lewis’s reportage and the big picture look unanswerable."

For your next analysis, I will assign you to read one of Lewis' articles and analyze how it is reported and written. I don't agree with everything Lewis says, and I don't expect you to either - as long as you back up whatever you say with quotes and/or factual evidence. ...

This next bit is new today (Oct. 17), and it's important. Which is why I'm putting it into boldface. Capice? In addition to the questions about art, craftsmanship and Donald Murry's advice to writing students that I've been asking you to discuss in your other analytical pieces, I want you to focus on the way Lewis makes himself a character in the stories he tells. His articles aren't just about the economy - they're about the way he went about reporting the story, the people he met, how he reacted to them, what they told him. How effective is that technique? Does it add to the story? If so, what does it add? Does it detract? If so, what? Or does it both add and detract? If so, precisely what? Feel free to include your estimation of Lewis as a reporter.

COMM 337: Link to my free-lance story in Dulcimer Sessions magazine, and an example of a query letter

In addition to teaching, I write free-lance articles. And a new story in the online magazine Mel Bay Dulcimer Sessions came out today. I wrote the story, and Mike Thomas of Springfield arranged the music. It's titled "'Children of the Heavenly Father' – A Swedish-American Hymn Arranged for Mountain Dulcimer, and it's available at http://dulcimersessions.com/?p=297 ...

Nice blurb on the homepage, too, by editor Lois Hornbostel:

A beautifully written article, music, mountain dulcimer tablature, and sound file from Peter Ellertsen and Michael Thomas on a lovely, historic Swedish-American hymn that plays beautifully on the mountain dulcimer – “Children of the Heavenly Father” from Jenny Lind.

In COMM 337, I'll walk you through the story and talk about the strategies I used writing it, the things that worked and some things that didn't.

Query. A query letter is a sales pitch - a document that's designed to get an editor interested in your story. They're designed to: (1) hook the editor's interest; (2) tell what the story's about; and (3) say why you're qualified to write it. We'll learn how to write queries later on this semester. In the meantime, here's the query letter I emailed in for this story:

Lois Hornbostel, Editor
Dulcimer Sessions

Dear Lois:

Along with the polkas, schottisches and waltzes Scandinavian-Americans have contributed to the mosiac of American music, is a rich heritage of chorales and beloved 19th-century gospel songs sung by a cappella choirs and congregations everywhere. In the early days, Swedish and Norwegian immigrants used a box zither in little churches out on the Midwestern prairies that couldn't yet afford an organ. The instrument, which is called a psalmodikon and looks a lot like a dulcimer, is enjoying a modest revival these days in connection with the Nordic roots music revival in the upper Midwest. And the songs, often set to catchy folk melodies, are perfect for the dulcimer. Attached for your consideration for publication in Dulcimer Sessions are an article and mountain dulcimer tablature for a popular Swedish hymn.

In a way, the story grows out of your ethnic music workshop at the Indiana Dulcimer Festival. It started me thinking more about the music of my Norwegian-American heritage, and I decided it would be fun to write an article the folks who read Dulcimer Sessions might enjoy. I'm an old newspaper guy, and now that I've retired from full-time teaching, I've been looking for more free-lance writing assignments. (My resume is available on my blog Hogfiddle at http://hogfiddle.blogspot.com/2010/05/resume.html). I've written for Dulcimer Players News and the EverythingDulcimer.com website, and I have several articles on music history in regional magazines in the Midwest.

Attached are: (1) a PDF file of mountain dulcimer tablature, arranged by Mike Thomas of our dulcimer club in Springfield, of a Swedish-American hymn called "Children of the Heavenly Father"; and (2) my 1,250-word article that tells about the song, the immigrants who sang it, their musical instruments and how different artists have interpreted it. At the end of the article are pictures taken this year at Swedish-American festivals in Bishop Hill, Illinois, and copies of 19th-century psalmodikon tablature and an 1894 choral arrangement showing the dynamics of "Children of the Heavenly Father." The pictures are mine, and the music is in the public domain. While the pictures are embedded in the attached Microsoft Word document, I can send you separate JPEG files in order to facilitate editing. I can also replace the HTML links in this draft with new ones that open in a separate window.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Sincerely,

Pete

COMM 150: Social media, Iran, Arab Spring and Wall Street demonstrations

LATER [Monday]: I posted this item Sunday, before I realized we weren't going to meet class till Wednesday. (I learned about Monday's midsemester holiday, by the way, from a message on Facebook ... another sign of how important social media are, I guess!) Some of it will probably be out of date by then, but it still gives the best account I've seen of how new media are involved in the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations.

STILL LATER [Wednesday morning]: The Christian Science Monitor has related story, headlined "Social media drive Occupy Wall Street. Do they also divulge its secrets?" and and a Time magazine blog has a post headed "linked below. Its focus is different as the corporate, or "mainstream," media try to get a handle on the protests. - pe

This week's assignment in John Vivian's "Media of Mass Communication" begins with a two-page discussion of the rioting in Tehran when the authorities cracked down after the 2009 election there. Says Vivian:

At that point in what is now being called the "twitter Revolution," everyone recame a reporter. Ordinary Iranians sent real-time updates to Twitter about the protest marches. They took video from their windowns of governament agents beating protesting citizens. As people walked the streets, they used their cell phones to shoot images of people shouting from the rooftops. (185)

More recently, Twitter and other social media played a major role in the "Arab Spring" demonstrations that toppled governments in Tunisia and Egypt and this summer's riots in London.

Now we are seeing new media, mostly on the internet, being used in much the same way in New York City. Beth Carter, an intern at Wired magazine, has a report today (Sunday) with one of those headlines that says it all: "‘Arab Spring’ on the Hudson: Social Media’s The Same The World Over" ... in class let's read Carter's report and watch a companion video produced by Mark Riffee with additional reporting by Dawm Lim and Sasha Conley. Platform convergence, anyone?

A journalism student at New York University, Carter visited the demonstrations in the city's nearby financial district. Here's what she found:

... this isn’t Cairo or Tunis, where earlier this year mass protests ignited the “Arab Spring” and the Tunisian and Egyptian people overthrew dictators in a matter of (semi) peaceful weeks. This is Liberty Square in downtown Manhattan, the center of American finance. The movement is “Occupy Wall Street.” The sound bite is “we are the 99%.” The demands are … unclear

OWS — #occupywallstreet in the parlance that really matters in the age of Twitter — started small. On September 17, the first day of the protests, the fledgling group’s one loudspeaker was stolen mischievously by a passer-by, organizers were clueless when asked how food would be distributed, and police were content just to watch and wait. The feeling for some was that there wouldn’t be a real revolution unless they were actually being attacked. In the dismayed words of one Anonymous member there, “this is a hippie jam fest.”

But the demonstration grew and matured over three weeks, and is now spreading to other cities, even overseas. There is talk of an “Occupy the FED” demonstration — and the similarities earlier Middle East uprisings don’t end there: Many got the word to join the protest via social media, and organizers are maintaining momentum and keeping tabs on thing the same way.

As in the Middle East and London, the mainstream commercial media don't know quite what to make of the demonstrations. And there's no way of predicting how they'll play out in the end. But Wired is in a good position to explain how they got started. Now a subsidiary of Condé Nast, Wired started in 1993 as an independent magazine that explored the effect of new technologies on American society and culture. (Like so many indies, it was bought out by a media conglomorate but retains its name and brand identity.)

Carter notes that OWS demonstrations are spreading. "Twitter and Facebook proved to be, and continue to be, a way to move information quickly, personally, and largely under the radar. Feeds and pages have materialized all over the country in solidarity of the OWS movement, each group now reaching a different, more localized audience." Not all of her readers see much significance to it, however. "Am I the only one baffled by the comparisons between this and the Arab Spring? It's not as if these protesters are being shot at," said one, who called himself Pops_K.

Carter says "the outcome isn’t clear — to anyone." But no matter what it is, it'll have a Twitter hashtag.

A corporate media perspective. This morning's Christian Science Monitor has a bylined story by Gloria Goodale quoting public relations consultants, political operatives and professors as they try to get a handle on the demonstrations.

Every day, millions of tweets, posts, and texts swell the global chat around the topic, creating, in essence, a living and evolving database of raw information about the protest movement, its supporters, and its possible goals.

As this cyberchatter burgeons, more and more individuals – and organizations – are tuning in and trying to make sense of what they hear in order to formulate strategies and make decisions, say media analysts, researchers, and political strategists.

Time's blog post by Ishaan Tharoor is headed "Occupy Wall Street: A New Era of Dissent in America?" Quoting David Graeber, an anthropologist who took part in the anti-globablization protests, and Todd Gitlin, a professor who led anti-war protests in the 1960s, Tharoor says it's too soon to know:

On the ground, uncertainty over what's to come mirrors the palpable excitement of those committed to camp out in the park indefinitely. “It's clear many aren't going to leave [Zuccotti Park] after a piece of legislation [gets passed],” says Gitlin. “They're after a more transcendent sense of change.” When asked what it would take to empty Zuccotti Park now, Graeber echoes the steely sense of purpose of many of the protesters: “It's not going to empty by itself. Maybe when [the police] come with guns. And maybe not even then."

Both are worth reading, as the establishment plays catchup.

COMM 337: Journalists, students and the "marketplace of ideas"

In class Thursday, I tried to ad lib an explanation of the "marketplace of ideas," and the only thing I made clear was why I need to do a little class prep before opening my mouth! So here is something I wrote for another class in 2007, revised, updated and expanded for COMM 337 a couple of years later.

One of the important premises of public discourse in America is that we participate in a "marketplace of ideas." It's more of an analogy or a metaphor than a rigorous philosophy, and it isn't usually spelled out. According to Wat Hopkins of Virginia Tech, that may be because the U.S. Supreme Court justices who talk about it accept the idea so implicitly, they don't feel like they have to spell it out. "Indeed," Hopbins says, "they seem to have accepted without question that the metaphor is effective because the rationale upon which it is built - that the best way to discover truth is though a robust competition of a multitude of voices - is sound."

Hopkins says the underlying comparison, of public debate to a market, "has few friends among nonjurists," but we also find it in the newspaper business. And its premise, that we best arrive at the truth by exploring alternatives, is basic to Western scholarship as well.

It's basic critical thinking, too. The kind of thing we learn in freshman English and never ought to forget. Arguing issues, in the sense of staking out a position and citing evidence to back it up, is how scholarship works. So a university can be described as a marketplace where ideas are exchanged, and buyers have the freedom to choose the best among competing ideas.

In modern America, the concept is usually traced back to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, who said in his dissenting (minority) opinion in Abrams v. United States, a First Amendment case decided in 1919:

If you have no doubt of your premises or your power and want a certain result with all your heart you naturally express your wishes in law and sweep away all opposition...But when men have realized that time has upset many fighting faiths, they may come to believe even more than they believe the very foundations of their own conduct that the ultimate good desired is better reached by free trade in ideas ... that the best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market, and that truth is the only ground upon which their wishes safely can be carried out.

Holmes' stated the idea in The idea and its application in the classroom are explained further in the Wikipedia article on the "Marketplace of Ideas." The Wikipedia article adds, "The Socratic Method can be seen as the pedagogical embodiment of the 'marketplace of ideas'." I think that's true, and I would add that the scientific method is based on the same basic line of reasoning. New hypotheses are tested, and confirmed or modified as other scholars try to replicate them.

In political thought, the underlying concept is also associated with Thomas Jefferson, who wanted the University of Virginia which he helped establish, to be "be based upon the illimitable freedom of the human mind. For here we are not afraid to follow truth wherever it may lead, nor to tolerate any error so long as reason is left free to combat it." In this, Jefferson was clearly influenced by English poet John Milton, who in 1644 wrote a tract called Areopagitica: A speech of Mr. John Milton for the liberty of unlicensed printing to the Parliament of England.

... though all the winds of doctrine were let loose to play on the earth, so Truth be in the field, we do injuriously, by licensing and prohibiting, to misdoubt her strength. Let her and Falsehood grapple; who ever knew Truth put to the worse, in a free and open encounter?

On the continent of Europe, the 18th-century French philosopher Voltaire added a very important wrinkle: We don't have to agree with everybody else in the marketplace. If fact, if we did the marketplace couldn't function.

Famously, Voltaire wrote another philosopher, (an abbot), saying, "Monsieur l'abbé, I detest what you write, but I would give my life to make it possible for you to continue to write." (The quote is usually given as, "I may not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it. The exact quote is threshed out by educator Bill Chapman on his website Classroom Tools. Chapman also quotes Voltaire's "Essay on Tolerance" published in 1755: Think for yourselves and let others enjoy the privilege to do so too. That's what I want us to strive for in COMM 337.

One of the best things I've seen on the marketplace concept in journalism is an article that ran Jan. 8, 2011, in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Headline: "Our job: Keep the marketplace of ideas stocked." In it, editorial page editor David D. Haynes quoted Holmes' dissent in Abrams v. U.S. and added:

When you read these [editorial and op-ed] pages, you're browsing in that market.

You're here because you're interested in ideas and want to engage in a thoughtful conversation about them.

This simple act - that of reading opinion - is essential to representative democracy. Citizens must be informed and, once informed, must decide what they think about the policy questions of their day. Reading the opinions of others helps them to decide.

Haynes explained the Journal Sentinel's policy like this:

We do not dictate to readers and, in any case, could not do so even if we desired. What we do is help fill the marketplace so that readers can sample a variety of ideas and decide for themselves what they think.

The late [editor] Harry J. Grant once summed up a philosophy that I firmly embrace. Grant, who died in 1963, was for many years the top executive of this company. He was famous for his unbridled independence. On his watch, The Milwaukee Journal peeled the paint off politicians ranging from the notorious Sen. Joseph McCarthy to the progressive La Follettes.

Grant had this to say:

"Go to the truth, wherever you find it, and to hell with right and left."

My promise: We will be fiercely independent. And we will offer a marketplace of ideas from which you can choose as you like.

Like mission statements, editorial policies can sound a little too good to be true - they tend to reflect goals we aspire to rather than the day-to-day realities we have to deal with. But The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel is considered one of the top 10 newspapers in the United States, and repeatedly wins Pulitzer Prizes, most recently in 2008, 2010 and 2011. So there is something of substance behind the rhetoric.

Further reading:

Wat W. Hopkins, "The Supreme Court Defines the Market Place of Ideas. Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly 73.1 (Spring 1996). http://www.comm.umd.edu/faculty/tpg/HopkinsWeekSeven.pdf

John Kearnes. Democratic Theory and the Disadvantages of Truth in the Contemporary Market Place of Ideas: The Constitutional Jurisprudence of Freedom of Expression. Paper prepared for delivery at annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, Sept. 1-4, 1994. http://www.cjsocpols.armstrong.edu/kearnes/democratictheoryandthedisadvantages.pdf

COMM 150, 337: Ever thought about tech writing as a career?

This morning from the Yahoo! Finance page, a Fox Business feature headed "10 Most Popular Jobs and What They Pay" caught my eye ... up there in the top 10 was this:

Technical Writer
Technical writers can work in a variety of fields and are tasked with taking complicated topics and making it understandable for a general audience.

Median annual salary: $56,000
Percentage of respondents who are satisfied: 71%

Think about it. File it away under "You don't have to starve in an attic or wait till they're hiring PR professionals again."

Steve Jobs, Feb. 24, 1955 – Oct. 5, 2011

Rather than try to pontificate, I'll just link to today's Google home page at http://www.google.com/. And to an article in PC World that explains it. Says Chloe Albanesius:

... when Apple co-founder Steve Jobs passed away yesterday, Google put differences aside and added a direct link to Apple's tribute on the Google.com homepage.

Beneath its search bar, Google posted: "Steve Jobs 1955-2011," which links directly to Apple.com.

That's it. None of the clever graphics we usually see on Google's homepage. Just the link. In body type (regular size type), centered below the logo and the search engine with nothing to draw attention to it. No bells. No whistles. Sometimes, as a famous artist once said, less is more.

Anything more on Google's part would have been superfluous. So would anything more on my part in this blog.

Other than, perhaps, one small footnote: Jobs, and Apple, certainly changed my world. Before the 1980s, for most of us, computers were big clunky things in ceiling-high metal cabinets set off in an air-conditioned room at work. My first home computer was an Apple II+ - still clunky but small enough to set up on a desk top - and I bought it because Steve Jobs and Apple had the foresight to give away Apple computers to the local schools. The idea was to develop a generation of home computer users, and it worked. One reason I bought an Apple II in 1982 was because my friends taught in the county schools down home and we could exchange files on floppy disks. (Email, blogs and social networking came much later.) In a small way it demonstrates one of the oldest ideas in business: If you want to develop a market for your product, give away samples. You can do pretty darn well by doing good.

In addition to everything else he is being remembered for today, Steve Jobs was a marketing genius.

This is not a tangent. Next week we'll go over Chapter 7 in Vivian on new media. As sort of a segue, let's find out what Jobs' role was at Walt Disney Co. one of the media conglomorates we'll track during class Friday.

This isn't a tangent, either. In broadcast media jargon, a "segue" (pronounced seg-way) is a transition from one segment of a show to another. Originally, it was a musical riff that led from one scene, act or song to the next one.

COMM 337: 2nd 1,000-word analysis - op-ed column

From our syllabus -

Students will create a web Log (blog) and write analyses professional writing of 1,000 words each of: (a) a newspaper feature story, (b) a magazine feature, (c) a piece of public affairs reporting and (d) an opinion or op-ed piece on the blog.

Your assignment: Write an analysis of the op-ed column linked below. Post it to your blog and turn in a hard copy, either in person or by email in Microsoft Word format, to me by the beginning of class Tuesday, Oct. 18.

Our opinion piece is a recent column on a neighborhood dispute by Mary Schmich of The Chicago Tribune ... it's not at all like your standard editorial, that harumphs around about some political issue and comes to some kind of conclusion. For that, you can go to the Trib, Chicago Sun-Times or Springfield's own State Journal-Register, or any other newspaper in the land, any day of athe week. I like this one much better. It reads more like a feature story. And it doesn't come right out and state an opinion till the very end.

When I started newspapering, somebody told me the perfect editorial would go kind of like this: "Fact. Fact. Fact. Fact. Fact. Fact. Fact. Fact. The conclusion is obvious." Schmich's is kind of like that.

Well, that's what I think.

But maybe it's a matter of opinion. Schmich is writing an opinion piece, after all. What's your opinion? Backed, of course, by witty, trenchant, well-written, well-argued analysis.

Tim Harrower, former editor of The Portland Oregonian and author of the textbook Inside 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."

And he has words of advice for columnists, too. They're on the handouts I gave you in class Tuesday, and they're on pages 130 and 131 of the book. Read them and analyze Mary Schmich's column in Harrower's terms - how does she stack up against the principles he explains? Why? Give examples. What would Don Murray think of her piece? Would he consider consider it a piece of craftsmanship or a work of art? Why? Give examples? What's your overall evaluation of the piece?

COMM 150: Media conglomorates

Free Press and the Free Press Action Fund, an advocacy group "Through education, organizing and advocacy, we promote diverse and independent media ownership, strong public media, quality journalism and universal access to communications.

Ownership Chart: The Big Six

The U.S. media landscape is dominated by massive corporations that, through a history of mergers and acquisitions, have concentrated their control over what we see, hear and read. In many cases, these giant companies are vertically integrated, controlling everything from initial production to final distribution. In the interactive charts below we reveal who owns what.

General Electric
Walt Disney
News Corp.
TimeWarner
Viacom
CBS Corp.

COMM 150: Who owns the media? Concentration of ownership and cross-platform convergence (and a little bit on branding, brand loyalty)

In class today ... we need to divide into groups to do this.

Each group will: (1) take a category of mass media, a "platform" in other words; (2) research the following questions; and (3) write up the answers as comments to this item on the Mackerel Wrapper. You can find a lot of the information in John Vivian's textbook, but not all of it. Feel free to use the most powerful research tool in the history of humankind on a computer near you for the rest.

We'll look at these platforms:

• Books
  
• Newspapers
  
• Magazines
  
• Movies
  
• Television
  
• Radio
  
• Records

Your group may be assigned more than one. It depends on how many people we have in class.

Questions. Are as follows:

1. What corporations own the most media outlets (e.g. newspapers, stations, record labels, etc.)? What is their market share?
   
2. Where are their headquarters?
   
3. What are some of their subsidiaries? How many of them started as "indies" (i.e. independent creators of content)? Can the subsidiaries retain brand loyalty after they become part of a conglomorate? How?

Post your answers as comments below. Then the fun begins as we look at each other's posts and see what patterns we observe across platforms.

On the internet:

List of radio stations' owners at http://www.freepress.net/ownership/chart/radio

COMM 337: A feature story in the State Journal-Register

A story in Springfield's State Journal-Register over the weekend that's worth taking a look at. It's a soft-news feature about a 90-year-old woman whose dog probably kept her from dying of exposure. She fell in a field outside her home, and the dog stayed with her and kept her warm through a 40-degree night.

It's a fine example of the art, and one you can model your own writing on when you come to write your 1,500-word feature story later this semester.

Human interest columnist and feature writer Dave Bakke wrote the story about Jeane Boosinger, 90, and her dog Ally. He misspelled her first name, but otherwise it's a perfect human interest story. I think it has the texture and pacing of a good short story. Let's examine it:

Bakke's lede sets the story in motion right away. Look how he uses quotes to advance the action:

It started out to be a routine evening. Every night before turning in, Jean Boosinger takes her dog, Ally, for a walk. She did the same late last week. This time, things were about to be anything but routine.

Jean, who is 90, lives on a farm near Springfield. She was walking Ally in a field. As in most farm fields, the ground was uneven and rolling. Jean lost her balance and fell. When she did, she felt intense pain in her right arm. She would find out later that her arm was broken in the fall. But all she knew at the time was that it hurt so much she could barely move.

“Nobody was around,” she says. “I didn’t have my cell phone.”

While lying in the field, she examined her options and found out she didn’t have many. She tried using her legs to scoot along the ground, but the pain from her arm stopped that pretty quickly. With her arm useless, she couldn’t pull herself up.

She was in trouble. Soon, it was dark and getting colder. All she had on was a light jacket.

“Then I started hearing the coyotes,” she says, “to the west and to the south. I was just thinking ‘I hope you don’t find me!’ Then the geese started honking. I heard owls as they came out to hunt rabbits.”

And then she passed out.

Kind of makes you want to keep reading, doesn't it? Bakke has a nice, conversational voice. Sounds like he just pulled up a chair and he's talking to you, not writing at you.

Mostly, Bakke tells the story from Jeane Boosinger's point of view. Makes sense. That's who told him the story. But for just a little while, he got into the dog's point-of-view: "Usually when a dog hears coyotes howling, especially if they are nearby, one of two things will happen. The dog will run toward the coyotes. Or the dog will run away from the coyotes. Either way, the dog wishes to be elsewhere. Not this time." Trying to write what an animal might think is really hard to pull off. I wouldn't want to try it, and a little bit goes a long way. But Bakke is a pro, and he gets away with it.

He gets right back to the story line, too. "Jean doesn’t remember anything after hearing the owls. And nobody was around to see what happened next. But Ally not only stayed by Jean all night, she climbed onto Jean’s cold body and laid there for hours." And a bit of description: "Ally is a big dog, probably 65-70 pounds. She is big and furry and warm. She is warm like a blanket." Notice how he repeats one-syllable words "big" and "warm?" Think that happened by accident? I don't.

There's more. I'll let you read it without more of my commentary. Then Bakke ends with what I think is an effective kicker:

I asked Jean if she pulled Ally on top of her at some point, but Jean said she hadn’t done that by the time she lost consciousness, so the dog must have done it on her own.

It is only fitting that Ally saved Jean’s life, because 10 years ago, Jean saved Ally’s. Jean got the dog from Springfield’s Animal Protective League shelter. The animals that come to the shelter are usually sick, injured or stray. The APL doesn’t euthanize, but giving a shelter pet a good home is the same is saving its life.

“She saved me,” Jean says. “We saved each other.”

That makes them even.

Except for a stint with Catholic Times during the 1990s, Dave Bakke has been writing features for the J-R for decades. And it shows. He's a pro. The tag at the end of his column says, "Everybody has a story. The problem is that some of them are boring. If yours is not, contact Dave Bakke at ..." and then it gives his phone number and email address. I don't know who put that at the end of the columns, but I don't like it. I much prefer the quote from H.L. Mencken on our syllabus in COMM 337: "There are no dull subjects. There are only dull writers." But Bakke is a better reporter than the tag at the end of his columns makes him sound.

And this story is anything but boring.

Here's an opportunity to express yourself in writing! Don Murray talks a lot about the "line" of a story. What does he mean by that? (Use the index to his book and look it up, if you have to.) What, in Murray's terms, is the "line" of Dave Bakke's story here? What does Murray say about "art" and "craft?" Is Bakke's story an example of art or craft? Or both? What literary techniques and/or narrative strategies do you see in the story? Post your thoughts as comments to this blog item.

COMM 150: Branding, cross-platform convergence and giving the audience what it wants (... or needs?)

In his discussion of Tyler Perry's "House of Media Convergence," John Vivian says, "All Perry's works regardless of medium are branded with the possessive, 'Tyler Perry's ...'" and speaks of "branding his own creative output" (147). Later he discusses the Walt Disney Studio Entertainment in the same terms: "Disney had become a brand name for family-oriented entertainment [by Walt Disney's death in 1966], and for the next 20 years the mandate at Disney was to cultivate the brand" (159). This they did with theme parks and a variety of media, as corporate "managers worked to exploit the synergies, reissuing the earlier films in cyles [and] creating new ones in the Disney spirit" (159). What Vivian calls a "Disney spirit" is also called the Disney brand.

[To see how the "Disney spirit" played out in the design of Springfield's Abraham Lincoln Presidential Museum, read Andrew Ferguson's article "How To Design a Lincoln Museum: Step 1: Ask Disney for advice. Step 2: Build a roller coaster?" in Slate.com on July 4, 2007, and "How To Design a Lincoln Museum: Do you feel what Lincoln felt?" the following day. These articles are excerpts from his book Land of Lincoln: Adventures in Abe's America, by the say, so they're also an example of convergence from a print (ink-on-paper or dead tree) platform to the Internet. ]

Wikipedia's definition is precise, and has links to related concepts - so let's go there. But here's the gist of it:

The American Marketing Association defines a brand as a "name, term, design, symbol, or any other feature that identifies one seller's good or service as distinct from those of other sellers. The legal term for brand is trademark. A brand may identify one item, a family of items, or all items of that seller. If used for the firm as a whole, the preferred term is trade name." [1]

A brand can take many forms, including a name, sign, symbol, color combination or slogan. The word branding began simply as a way to tell one person's cattle from another by means of a hot iron stamp. The word brand has continued to evolve to encompass identity — it affects the personality of a product, company or service.

Let's look at the Wikipedia page on brands, and follow the links under "See also" to the discussions of brand equity and brand loyalty. They will suggest how important the issue of branding has become and how useful the concept is. Let's discuss it in class; if discussion lags, we can always write about it. How do people use branding in mass communication? In business? How does a consistent brand serve a company like Disney? How does it serve members of the audience?

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.