10 Words You Mispronounce That Make People Think You’re an Idiot
It’s been said, though we’re not sure by whom, that it is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt. But sometimes we’ve got to open our mouths so use this handy guide to make sure, at the very least, you’re saying the words right.
» By Justin Brown
Don’t worry, I won’t waste your time with the elementary school lessons about how to accurately pronounce “library,” “February,” or “arctic”… although I will take this opportunity to note that if you’re discussing a library and still dropping the first ‘R’, there’s a very good chance that your friends and/or colleagues are laughing at you behind your back.
I won’t trouble you with a lecture covering how some of the words you use actually aren’t words at all. If you’re using words like “snuck”, “brang”, or “irregardless” (no, none of those are real words), a magazine article – much less one written by me – is not going to solve your problems.
What I will do is offer up a rudimentary form of help, in terms of how to properly pronounce relatively common words that are bound to show up in your daily life. These tips will not seal the deal in a job interview or on a date (I can especially vouch for the “date” scenario) but if pronunciation continues to be a potential chink in your armor, your problems will soon be solved.
Thus, behold, People of the Internet… the ten most important words you should learn to pronounce, if you would like to appear reasonably knowledgeable about your own language.
ATHLETE
Incorrect pronunciation: ath – a – leet
Correct pronunciation: ath – leet
This may have been more helpful before the media blitz that was the Summer Olympics but it is a very valuable lesson to have for the future. It applies to “athlete” and any derivative (biathlon, triathlon, decathlon, etc.) and, honestly, I’m sad that I even have to point this out: there is no vowel between the ‘H’ and the ‘L’ in any of these words. There never has been. Let the dream die.
ESCAPE / ESPRESSO / ET CETERA
Incorrect pronunciation: ex – cape / ex – presso / ex – set – err – uh
Correct pronunciation: ess – cape / ess – presso / ett – set – err – uh
Yes, a three-for-one deal, but only because this one is dually very common and very simple to fix. For some reason, we of the English tongue have an obsession with changing any ‘S’ to an ‘X’, if it follows an ‘E’ sound; call it the Exxon Indoctrination. These words are spelled phonetically… let’s try to respect that.
Also: the yuppie kids will really respect you, if you master “espresso” and “et cetera” – what more motivation do you need?
NUCLEAR
Incorrect pronunciation: nuke – you – lerr
Correct pronunciation: new – clee – err
I’m going to try to get through this one without a President Bush joke. All right, so, despite the fact that it’s 2008, this is a word with which we’re somehow still struggling. Like most of the words on this list, “nuclear” is spelled EXACTLY AS IT IS SUPPOSED TO BE PRONOUNCED and yet, people continue to screw it up worse than the War in Iraq… oh, dammit.
PRESCRIPTION / PREROGATIVE
Incorrect pronunciation: purr – scrip – shun / purr – ogg – uh – tiv
Correct pronunciation: pre – scrip – shun / pre – rogg – uh – tiv
Overlooking the fact that many people also seem to have precisely no idea as to the latter word’s true definition (I’ve had several conversations where people bizarrely substitute “prerogative” for words like “agenda”), this is another problem that can be attributed to ignorance in the arena of “Sound It Out, You Lummox.” The ‘R’ comes before the ‘E’ in both of these words. Please ercognize this erality. Sorry.
UTMOST
Incorrect pronunciation: up – most
Correct pronunciation: utt – most
In a bizarre twist, people actually became so certain of this word’s meaning that they alter its pronunciation to reflect that definition. Yes, “utmost” is an adjective synonymous with “greatest” (a term that immediately calls to mind some tangible Mount Olympus-type of vertical hierarchy and the word “upper”) but that second letter? It’s still a ‘T’.
CANDIDATE
Incorrect pronunciation: can – uh – dett
Correct pronunciation: can – da – dett
Mastering this word will help you at least sound educated in your excruciating political debates as we approach November 3. I cannot explain it any more simply than my second grade teacher once did: “You always want to have a good candidate for your CANDY DATE.” Candy date. It’s sweet and simple.
SHERBET
Incorrect pronunciation: sherr – berrt
Correct pronunciation: sherr – bet
This is one of those words that ultimately had to abandon its crusade for righteousness and now has been corrupted to the point where dictionaries may list the incorrect pronunciation as acceptable because of just how rampant the ignorance grew to be. But there’s only one ‘R’ in “sherbet,” America… no matter how awesome the rainbow flavor is, there’s still only one ‘R’.
AWRY
Incorrect pronunciation: aww – ree
Correct pronunciation: uh – rye
Up until very recently, I could not even conceive a situation where someone would mispronounce this word; it always seemed very simple, to me. However, I have heard three different people – in the world of talk radio, no less – pronounce it inaccurately in the last few months. It’s like… it’s like the mechanism that allows people to speak in an educated fashion went awry (see what I did there?).
FOR ALL INTENTS AND PURPOSES
Incorrect pronunciation: “for all intensive purposes”
Correct pronunciation: “for all intents and purposes”
All right, yes, I cheated a little bit here (for posterity’s sake, I should note that a phrase and a word are not the same thing) but this is still a very popular pronunciation mistake and one that I really feel must be addressed in a public forum. While “intensive” is absolutely a word, the clichéd saying that most people are trying to channel is all about intent. As for the rumor that I, as a younger man, frequently employed the incorrect pronunciation… no comment.
OFTEN
Incorrect pronunciation: off – ten
Correct pronunciation: off – en
If there is a bigger red flag for “I am misinformed about how to pronounce something” in our language, I have yet to encounter it. This word and its evolutionary course in American vernacular could be a cultural study unto itself.
For a while, nobody was aware that the ‘T’ was silent; this sneaky caveat had to be beaten into our brains for years and years in school. But then – in what can best be described as the greatest grammatical epiphany since someone decided that we needed a contraction to turn “I am” into a single word – people seemed to universally scream out “We get it! A silent ‘T’!”. It was a glorious day.
However, this euphoria was ultimately fleeting. At some point, the rational people of Earth decided to flip over the Buffet Table of Reason at the Banquet for Intellectual Hope and thought it best to, once again, simply start pronouncing the ‘T’ in “often.” I do not know whether this was brought on by an innate human desire to flout the rules of our world or just a collective hatred for all things associated with the establishment but it is now arguably the most frequent linguistic speed bump in the history of hyperbole. And I would like to lead the charge to restore balance.
Wednesday, December 28, 2011
Tuesday, December 27, 2011
How do Journalists Cope After Covering Tragedies?
From the Fort Wayne News-Sentinel, 12/26/11:
Community Voice: How do journalists cope after covering frontline tragedies?
By Mark Massé
for The News-Sentinel
With U.S. military involvement in Iraq ending and troops coming home, news coverage rightfully focuses on the lives of these men and women and their adjustment to noncombat roles. Notable stories document the challenges facing veterans who cope with physical and mental health injuries, including depression and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
However, what is typically missing in the analysis of postwar issues are accounts of the print and broadcast journalists who have spent extended time embedded with troops and borne witness to death and destruction while working in harm's way. Several recent research studies have documented that news media workers may suffer from stress, burnout and mental anguish, in percentages comparable to military personnel and other first responders, as a result of being brutally close to the action.
Steve Bell, former ABC News correspondent/anchor and Vietnam War reporter who recently taught at Ball State, notes: “Imagine, journalists are human, too! But until recent years, few thought about the psychological perils of experiencing and reporting on traumatic events.”
How do journalists cope after covering war, conflict, disaster and other frontline tragedies? Although most reporters are resilient to the stresses and dangers they face, crisis coverage can have significant, enduring effects. As trauma psychiatrist Anthony Feinstein states: “Resilience in the face of adversity is not, however, synonymous with immunity.”
Former Washington Post reporter Jackie Spinner's 2006 memoir, “Tell Them I Didn't Cry: A Young Journalist's Story of Joy, Loss, and Survival in Iraq,” describes her nine months in 2004-05 as a war correspondent, having no prior experience in a combat zone.
Spinner returned to the U.S. with postwar trauma: “I did not want to talk about this with my colleagues who had been in Iraq because I feared their judgment of me as weak.”
Spinner was “angry at everything” and felt guilty about the Iraqi staff she had left behind with no promises for the future. She shunned her friends in favor of family “because they asked no questions and surrounded me in unconditional love.”
In his compelling memoir, “The Cat from Hué,” former CBS TV correspondent John Laurence described the personal cost of covering the Vietnam War. For years, he was embedded with U.S. soldiers and Marines in major battles. He wrote of the “narrow separation between life and death in this place.” As he noted in his book, “Reporters and photographers were killed and wounded in the same proportion as the frontline troops they accompanied.”
According to Laurence, being a war correspondent was a “great adventure: fascinating, frightening, fulfilling — more high drama than I expected for a lifetime.” He wrote that at 28 he thought he was tough-minded enough to handle what he experienced as a journalist. But he was naïve. “I had no idea that my involvement was far from over, that I would be going back again and again, repeatedly, indefinitely.”
Decades after he left Vietnam, Laurence endured nightmares, anxiety and other emotional problems associated with his years of war reporting. He admitted counseling helped him cope. However, in 2003, he returned to Iraq as a freelance correspondent, and the familiar demons of depression scuttled back. “I have never felt cured,” he noted in an interview with journalist Judith Matloff in the November/December 2004 issue of Columbia Journalism Review.
Photojournalist and documentary filmmaker Molly Bingham has covered conflict, violence and tragedy across Africa, Afghanistan, Iraq and the Middle East for nearly two decades. She joined a “rarified group of people” who risk their lives to tell dangerous stories that otherwise wouldn't be told. In the process, she had been detained, imprisoned and threatened (“shot at is more accurate”) by both enemy and “friendly” armed forces. She says a journalist's resilience in covering difficult stories is more about the person's physical and emotional states than about professional craft attitudes or newsroom credos. Bingham also believes it is a positive development that today more journalists are willing to discuss the psychological impact of reporting on tragedy and trauma.
Major news organizations such as CNN, the Associated Press and the BBC are using the knowledge, experience and resources of advocacy groups such as the Committee to Protect Journalists, the International News Safety Institute and the Dart Center for Journalism & Trauma in addressing journalist safety/welfare issues, including proactive training and postevent debriefing and counseling programs. An integral part of this international reform effort is an enhanced awareness of the emotional impact of conflict and crisis coverage on the victims, their families and loved ones, their communities, as well as on the journalists whose job it is to tell these stories.
Mark H. Massé, a professor of literary journalism at Ball State University, is the author of the recently published book, “Trauma Journalism: On Deadline in Harm's Way.”
Community Voice: How do journalists cope after covering frontline tragedies?
By Mark Massé
for The News-Sentinel
With U.S. military involvement in Iraq ending and troops coming home, news coverage rightfully focuses on the lives of these men and women and their adjustment to noncombat roles. Notable stories document the challenges facing veterans who cope with physical and mental health injuries, including depression and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
However, what is typically missing in the analysis of postwar issues are accounts of the print and broadcast journalists who have spent extended time embedded with troops and borne witness to death and destruction while working in harm's way. Several recent research studies have documented that news media workers may suffer from stress, burnout and mental anguish, in percentages comparable to military personnel and other first responders, as a result of being brutally close to the action.
Steve Bell, former ABC News correspondent/anchor and Vietnam War reporter who recently taught at Ball State, notes: “Imagine, journalists are human, too! But until recent years, few thought about the psychological perils of experiencing and reporting on traumatic events.”
How do journalists cope after covering war, conflict, disaster and other frontline tragedies? Although most reporters are resilient to the stresses and dangers they face, crisis coverage can have significant, enduring effects. As trauma psychiatrist Anthony Feinstein states: “Resilience in the face of adversity is not, however, synonymous with immunity.”
Former Washington Post reporter Jackie Spinner's 2006 memoir, “Tell Them I Didn't Cry: A Young Journalist's Story of Joy, Loss, and Survival in Iraq,” describes her nine months in 2004-05 as a war correspondent, having no prior experience in a combat zone.
Spinner returned to the U.S. with postwar trauma: “I did not want to talk about this with my colleagues who had been in Iraq because I feared their judgment of me as weak.”
Spinner was “angry at everything” and felt guilty about the Iraqi staff she had left behind with no promises for the future. She shunned her friends in favor of family “because they asked no questions and surrounded me in unconditional love.”
In his compelling memoir, “The Cat from Hué,” former CBS TV correspondent John Laurence described the personal cost of covering the Vietnam War. For years, he was embedded with U.S. soldiers and Marines in major battles. He wrote of the “narrow separation between life and death in this place.” As he noted in his book, “Reporters and photographers were killed and wounded in the same proportion as the frontline troops they accompanied.”
According to Laurence, being a war correspondent was a “great adventure: fascinating, frightening, fulfilling — more high drama than I expected for a lifetime.” He wrote that at 28 he thought he was tough-minded enough to handle what he experienced as a journalist. But he was naïve. “I had no idea that my involvement was far from over, that I would be going back again and again, repeatedly, indefinitely.”
Decades after he left Vietnam, Laurence endured nightmares, anxiety and other emotional problems associated with his years of war reporting. He admitted counseling helped him cope. However, in 2003, he returned to Iraq as a freelance correspondent, and the familiar demons of depression scuttled back. “I have never felt cured,” he noted in an interview with journalist Judith Matloff in the November/December 2004 issue of Columbia Journalism Review.
Photojournalist and documentary filmmaker Molly Bingham has covered conflict, violence and tragedy across Africa, Afghanistan, Iraq and the Middle East for nearly two decades. She joined a “rarified group of people” who risk their lives to tell dangerous stories that otherwise wouldn't be told. In the process, she had been detained, imprisoned and threatened (“shot at is more accurate”) by both enemy and “friendly” armed forces. She says a journalist's resilience in covering difficult stories is more about the person's physical and emotional states than about professional craft attitudes or newsroom credos. Bingham also believes it is a positive development that today more journalists are willing to discuss the psychological impact of reporting on tragedy and trauma.
Major news organizations such as CNN, the Associated Press and the BBC are using the knowledge, experience and resources of advocacy groups such as the Committee to Protect Journalists, the International News Safety Institute and the Dart Center for Journalism & Trauma in addressing journalist safety/welfare issues, including proactive training and postevent debriefing and counseling programs. An integral part of this international reform effort is an enhanced awareness of the emotional impact of conflict and crisis coverage on the victims, their families and loved ones, their communities, as well as on the journalists whose job it is to tell these stories.
Mark H. Massé, a professor of literary journalism at Ball State University, is the author of the recently published book, “Trauma Journalism: On Deadline in Harm's Way.”
Friday, December 23, 2011
Authorship and Changing Lightbulbs
AUTHORSHIP AND CHANGING LIGHTBULBS
How many publishers does it take to change a light bulb?
Three. One to change it and two to hold down the author.
How many editors does it take to change a light bulb?
"Do we have to get author's approval for this?"
Two, one to change the bulb and one to issue a rejection slip to the old bulb.
How many proofreaders does it take to change a light bulb?
Proofreaders aren't supposed to change light bulbs. They should just query them.
How many mystery writers does it take to screw in a light bulb?
Two. One to screw it in almost all the way in and the other to give it a surprising twist at the end.
How many writers does it take to change a light bulb?
Two. One to change the bulb and one to tell a long story about it.
How many literary critics does it take to change a light bulb?
Literary critics don't know how, but rest assured they'll find something wrong with the way you do it.
How many publishers does it take to change a light bulb?
Three. One to change it and two to hold down the author.
How many editors does it take to change a light bulb?
"Do we have to get author's approval for this?"
Two, one to change the bulb and one to issue a rejection slip to the old bulb.
How many proofreaders does it take to change a light bulb?
Proofreaders aren't supposed to change light bulbs. They should just query them.
How many mystery writers does it take to screw in a light bulb?
Two. One to screw it in almost all the way in and the other to give it a surprising twist at the end.
How many writers does it take to change a light bulb?
Two. One to change the bulb and one to tell a long story about it.
How many literary critics does it take to change a light bulb?
Literary critics don't know how, but rest assured they'll find something wrong with the way you do it.
Monday, December 19, 2011
Magazine Launches up 24% in 2011
Good news for those who'd like to freelance for magazines!
Magazine Launches Up 23.8 Percent in 2011
Total number of new titles rose from 193 in 2010 to 239 this year.
By Ioanna Opidee
12/14/2011
The number of magazines launched in 2011 jumped 23.8 percent, from 193 to 239, compared to 2010, according to magazine database Mediafinder.com. Meanwhile, the number of closures fell 13.6 percent, from 176 in 2010 to 152 this year.
Like last year, the food category saw the biggest gains, with 25 new titles joining the 28 from last year. Also like last year, regional magazines followed with the second-highest number of launches, at 20, though the category also saw the largest number of closures, with 21 titles folding. Bridal publications took the second-biggest hit, with 19 titles shuttered, including regional editions of Condé Nast’s Brides as well as Atlanta, Georgia-based Get Married.
The b-to-b sector appears to have seen a much healthier 2011, with 62 new titles expanding the segment, compared to just 34 in 2010. Last year, b-to-b saw more magazines fold than launch, with 47 closures in 2010 compared to 38 this year.
High-profile launches this year include crossover brands such as Hearst’s HGTV Magazine, an offshoot of the television network, and Condé Nast’s Style.com/Print, an extension of a formerly-standalone website.
Magazine Launches Up 23.8 Percent in 2011
Total number of new titles rose from 193 in 2010 to 239 this year.
By Ioanna Opidee
12/14/2011
The number of magazines launched in 2011 jumped 23.8 percent, from 193 to 239, compared to 2010, according to magazine database Mediafinder.com. Meanwhile, the number of closures fell 13.6 percent, from 176 in 2010 to 152 this year.
Like last year, the food category saw the biggest gains, with 25 new titles joining the 28 from last year. Also like last year, regional magazines followed with the second-highest number of launches, at 20, though the category also saw the largest number of closures, with 21 titles folding. Bridal publications took the second-biggest hit, with 19 titles shuttered, including regional editions of Condé Nast’s Brides as well as Atlanta, Georgia-based Get Married.
The b-to-b sector appears to have seen a much healthier 2011, with 62 new titles expanding the segment, compared to just 34 in 2010. Last year, b-to-b saw more magazines fold than launch, with 47 closures in 2010 compared to 38 this year.
High-profile launches this year include crossover brands such as Hearst’s HGTV Magazine, an offshoot of the television network, and Condé Nast’s Style.com/Print, an extension of a formerly-standalone website.
Wednesday, December 14, 2011
Crucial Reference Works
From Jerry Jenkins' blog:
Crucial Reference Works
Almanacs and atlases are wonderful, inexpensive investments. A world almanac is a must for any serious writer, and if you can find one you like on disk, so much the better; you’ll be relieved of the tiny print in the paperback versions, and you’ll decrease look-up time.
World almanacs list about anything you could ever want for basic research. I use them even for character names. When naming a foreign character, I’ll look up his country of origin, scan the current government leaders for a last name, combine that with the first name from the country’s history (say, a war hero), and bingo, I have a legitimate, ethnically accurate name.
I use a world atlas, primarily because my characters travel the globe, and to be believable, I have to know time zones, current country names, monetary units, populations, average temperatures, and the like.
Atlases provide detailed maps, and Internet atlases even offer street maps — crucial to realistic action scenes. But almanacs also give the gross national product, offer tourism tidbits, and list major industries and resources. In the Left Behind series, I set some scenes in Greece, a country I hadn’t visited (until last year). The almanac told me one of Greece’s natural resources is lignite. A couple of more keystrokes in Google, and I discover that lignite is a type of coal used to generate electricity. I needed an occupation for a wealthy Greek. So he became a lignite magnate.
Almanacs also show which countries are on the metric system, so when my character is racing through a metrics-using country in a rental car, he’ll buy fuel in liters. Getting minuscule details right makes for a more entertaining read. And when you get them wrong, suddenly they’re no longer minuscule.
You can find free almanacs, dictionaries, and encyclopedias online. Simply Google almanac or dictionary and investigate your options. Some sites require a subscription, but before you pay, make sure you’ll actually use the product.
I use an electronic thesaurus, which is a good aid but also merits a caution: Never let it be obvious you’ve consulted a thesaurus.
Novice writers tend to seek the most exotic word, when the best use of a thesaurus is to remind yourself of alternative ordinary words. Avoid the obtuse and find the ordinary one that best conveys your meaning.
Believe me, readers can tell when you’ve fallen into a rut and overused a favorite word. They’ll let you know.
Crucial Reference Works
Almanacs and atlases are wonderful, inexpensive investments. A world almanac is a must for any serious writer, and if you can find one you like on disk, so much the better; you’ll be relieved of the tiny print in the paperback versions, and you’ll decrease look-up time.
World almanacs list about anything you could ever want for basic research. I use them even for character names. When naming a foreign character, I’ll look up his country of origin, scan the current government leaders for a last name, combine that with the first name from the country’s history (say, a war hero), and bingo, I have a legitimate, ethnically accurate name.
I use a world atlas, primarily because my characters travel the globe, and to be believable, I have to know time zones, current country names, monetary units, populations, average temperatures, and the like.
Atlases provide detailed maps, and Internet atlases even offer street maps — crucial to realistic action scenes. But almanacs also give the gross national product, offer tourism tidbits, and list major industries and resources. In the Left Behind series, I set some scenes in Greece, a country I hadn’t visited (until last year). The almanac told me one of Greece’s natural resources is lignite. A couple of more keystrokes in Google, and I discover that lignite is a type of coal used to generate electricity. I needed an occupation for a wealthy Greek. So he became a lignite magnate.
Almanacs also show which countries are on the metric system, so when my character is racing through a metrics-using country in a rental car, he’ll buy fuel in liters. Getting minuscule details right makes for a more entertaining read. And when you get them wrong, suddenly they’re no longer minuscule.
You can find free almanacs, dictionaries, and encyclopedias online. Simply Google almanac or dictionary and investigate your options. Some sites require a subscription, but before you pay, make sure you’ll actually use the product.
I use an electronic thesaurus, which is a good aid but also merits a caution: Never let it be obvious you’ve consulted a thesaurus.
Novice writers tend to seek the most exotic word, when the best use of a thesaurus is to remind yourself of alternative ordinary words. Avoid the obtuse and find the ordinary one that best conveys your meaning.
Believe me, readers can tell when you’ve fallen into a rut and overused a favorite word. They’ll let you know.
Tuesday, December 13, 2011
Lee Enterprises Files for Bankruptcy
Newspaper group Lee Enterprises files for bankruptcy
6:03 p.m. EST, December 12, 2011
(Reuters) - Lee Enterprises Inc , which publishes 48 daily newspapers including St. Louis Post-Dispatch, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection to refinance nearly $1 billion in debt, as newspapers struggle with falling advertisement dollars and dwindling readership.
In a filing with Delaware bankruptcy court, Lee Enterprises listed liabilities of $994.5 million and assets of $1.15 billion.
The bankruptcy filing plan comes two months after the company had reached an agreement with most its lenders to refinance $769.5 million of its distressed loans.
Most local newspaper publishers in the United States have been hit by dropping circulation and falling advertising revenue, forcing them to sell off or shut several publications.
Tribune Co, the owner of the Los Angeles Times and Chicago Tribune newspapers, had earlier filed a third reorganization plan with the U.S. bankruptcy court.
Lee was founded in 1890 in Ottumwa, Iowa, by A.W. Lee. Most of the company's newspapers trace their beginnings to the mid-1800s. Among Lee's alumni are Mark Twain, Willa Cather and Thornton Wilder.
The case is: Lee Enterprises, Case No. 11-13918, U.S. bankruptcy court, District of Delaware.
6:03 p.m. EST, December 12, 2011
(Reuters) - Lee Enterprises Inc , which publishes 48 daily newspapers including St. Louis Post-Dispatch, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection to refinance nearly $1 billion in debt, as newspapers struggle with falling advertisement dollars and dwindling readership.
In a filing with Delaware bankruptcy court, Lee Enterprises listed liabilities of $994.5 million and assets of $1.15 billion.
The bankruptcy filing plan comes two months after the company had reached an agreement with most its lenders to refinance $769.5 million of its distressed loans.
Most local newspaper publishers in the United States have been hit by dropping circulation and falling advertising revenue, forcing them to sell off or shut several publications.
Tribune Co, the owner of the Los Angeles Times and Chicago Tribune newspapers, had earlier filed a third reorganization plan with the U.S. bankruptcy court.
Lee was founded in 1890 in Ottumwa, Iowa, by A.W. Lee. Most of the company's newspapers trace their beginnings to the mid-1800s. Among Lee's alumni are Mark Twain, Willa Cather and Thornton Wilder.
The case is: Lee Enterprises, Case No. 11-13918, U.S. bankruptcy court, District of Delaware.
Wednesday, December 7, 2011
Court: Blogger not Journalist
Court Says Blogger Isn’t a ‘Journalist’ — Implications for Hyperlocal
1 Comment and 0 Reactions 06 December 2011 by Brian Dengler
A federal judge in Portland, Oregon has declared that a local “investigative blogger,” doesn’t qualify as a journalist — calling into question whether online hyperlocal news publishers should be treated differently than traditional media.
Chrystal Cox calls herself an “investigative blogger” and runs sites “exposing corruption.” Obsidian Finance Group filed a $10 million defamation claim against Cox in Portland, alleging that she made several defamatory postings against Obsidian and its co-founder, Kevin Padrick. Cox defended herself in federal court but lost. According to a report by Seattle Weekly, she faces a $2.5 million judgment.
Cox claimed her information for the Obsidian postings came from a confidential source, and, therefore, Oregon’s Shield Law protected her from disclosing her source at trial. In an opinion filed on November 30, 2011, Federal Judge Marco Hernandez disagreed, ruling that Oregon’s Shield Law was limited to traditional media like newspapers, broadcast stations, magazines, and news services — but not to an “investigative blogger” who was not affiliated with traditional media.
The court further concluded that Cox was not entitled to claim other defenses against damages that could be raised by traditional media because she failed to prove she was a bona fide journalist. “Defendant fails to bring forth any evidence suggestive of her status as a journalist,” Judge Hernandez wrote. Hernandez ruled that Cox failed to show, among other things, that she had any education in journalism or “any credential of proof of any affiliation with an recognized news entity.” Cox told Seattle Weekly that she plans to appeal the ruling.
Last June 2011, the New Jersey Supreme Court ruled that a journalist’s posting on an online discussion board was not entitled to protection under New Jersey’s Shield law. The court concluded that message boards were not similar to traditional new organizations protected by the law.
Although Cox was not a hyperlocal news publisher, the decisions raise concern on whether online hyperlocal news sites, some of them published in blog format, should be viewed and treated differently than traditional media. That question remains unresolved, but it serves as a reminder that getting the facts right is paramount in avoiding trouble.
This article is provided for information only and does not provide legal advice.
1 Comment and 0 Reactions 06 December 2011 by Brian Dengler
A federal judge in Portland, Oregon has declared that a local “investigative blogger,” doesn’t qualify as a journalist — calling into question whether online hyperlocal news publishers should be treated differently than traditional media.
Chrystal Cox calls herself an “investigative blogger” and runs sites “exposing corruption.” Obsidian Finance Group filed a $10 million defamation claim against Cox in Portland, alleging that she made several defamatory postings against Obsidian and its co-founder, Kevin Padrick. Cox defended herself in federal court but lost. According to a report by Seattle Weekly, she faces a $2.5 million judgment.
Cox claimed her information for the Obsidian postings came from a confidential source, and, therefore, Oregon’s Shield Law protected her from disclosing her source at trial. In an opinion filed on November 30, 2011, Federal Judge Marco Hernandez disagreed, ruling that Oregon’s Shield Law was limited to traditional media like newspapers, broadcast stations, magazines, and news services — but not to an “investigative blogger” who was not affiliated with traditional media.
The court further concluded that Cox was not entitled to claim other defenses against damages that could be raised by traditional media because she failed to prove she was a bona fide journalist. “Defendant fails to bring forth any evidence suggestive of her status as a journalist,” Judge Hernandez wrote. Hernandez ruled that Cox failed to show, among other things, that she had any education in journalism or “any credential of proof of any affiliation with an recognized news entity.” Cox told Seattle Weekly that she plans to appeal the ruling.
Last June 2011, the New Jersey Supreme Court ruled that a journalist’s posting on an online discussion board was not entitled to protection under New Jersey’s Shield law. The court concluded that message boards were not similar to traditional new organizations protected by the law.
Although Cox was not a hyperlocal news publisher, the decisions raise concern on whether online hyperlocal news sites, some of them published in blog format, should be viewed and treated differently than traditional media. That question remains unresolved, but it serves as a reminder that getting the facts right is paramount in avoiding trouble.
This article is provided for information only and does not provide legal advice.
Monday, December 5, 2011
AP Does Xmas
12/05/2011
AP Advisory
AP compiles Holiday Style Guide
The Associated Press has compiled a Holiday Style Guide of words, phrases and definitions to help its members and subscribers with spelling and usage of traditional terms for religious and cultural holidays in December and January. The guidance, compiled by the AP Stylebook and Lifestyles teams, encompasses Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa and New Year’s festivities. Some terms are taken from the AP Stylebook. Others are common usage in holiday stories transmitted by AP. Below, see a list of traditional terms sent in an advisory Dec. 5 to AP members and subscribers.
#
Advent
The four Sundays preceding Christmas.
“Auld Lang Syne”
Sung to greet the New Year, poem by Robert Burns set to Scottish music.
BETHLEHEM, West Bank (AP) --
Dateline for AP stories from the biblical site of Jesus’ birth.
Bible
Capitalize in reference to the Scriptures; lowercase biblical in all uses.
Boxing Day
Post-Christmas holiday Dec. 26 In British Commonwealth countries.
Champagne
Capitalize sparkling wine from the French region uncorked to celebrate New Year’s.
Christmas Eve, Christmas Day
Capitalize Dec. 24 and Dec. 25 Christian feast marking the birth of Jesus.
Christmastime
One word.
Christmas tree
Lowercase tree and other seasonal terms with Christmas: card, wreath, carol, etc. Exception: National Christmas Tree.
dreidel
Toy spinning top for Jewish celebrations.
hallelujah
Lowercase the biblical praise to God, but capitalize in composition titles: Handel's "Hallelujah" chorus.
Hanukkah
Eight-day Jewish Festival of Lights starting Dec. 20 this year.
Jesus, Jesus Christ
Pronouns referring to him are lowercase, as is savior.
happy holidays, merry Christmas, season’s greetings
Such phrases are generally spelled lowercase, though Christmas is always capitalized.
Holy Land
Capitalize the biblical region.
Kriss Kringle
Not Kris. Derived from the German word, Christkindl, or baby Jesus.
Kwanzaa
African-American and Pan-African celebration of family, community and culture, Dec. 26-Jan. 1.
Magi
Three wise men who brought gifts to the infant Jesus at Epiphany, celebrated Jan. 6.
menorah
Candelabrum with nine branches used for Hanukkah.
Messiah
Capitalized in references to Jesus or to the promised deliverer in Judaism.
Nativity scene
Only the first word is capitalized.
New Year’s Eve, New Year’s Day
Capitalized for Dec. 31 and Jan. 1.
North Pole
Mythical home of Santa Claus.
poinsettia
Decorative plant for Christmas; note the “ia.”
regifting
Passing along an unwanted present to someone else.
Santa Claus
Brings toys to children in a sleigh pulled by reindeer on Christmas Eve.
“A Visit From St. Nicholas”
Beloved poem by Clement Clarke Moore that begins, “ 'Twas the night before Christmas ...”
"The Twelve Days of Christmas”
Spell the numeral in the Christmas carol.
yule
Old English name for Christmas season; yuletide is also lowercase.
Xmas
Don’t use this abbreviation for Christmas.
AP Advisory
AP compiles Holiday Style Guide
The Associated Press has compiled a Holiday Style Guide of words, phrases and definitions to help its members and subscribers with spelling and usage of traditional terms for religious and cultural holidays in December and January. The guidance, compiled by the AP Stylebook and Lifestyles teams, encompasses Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa and New Year’s festivities. Some terms are taken from the AP Stylebook. Others are common usage in holiday stories transmitted by AP. Below, see a list of traditional terms sent in an advisory Dec. 5 to AP members and subscribers.
#
Advent
The four Sundays preceding Christmas.
“Auld Lang Syne”
Sung to greet the New Year, poem by Robert Burns set to Scottish music.
BETHLEHEM, West Bank (AP) --
Dateline for AP stories from the biblical site of Jesus’ birth.
Bible
Capitalize in reference to the Scriptures; lowercase biblical in all uses.
Boxing Day
Post-Christmas holiday Dec. 26 In British Commonwealth countries.
Champagne
Capitalize sparkling wine from the French region uncorked to celebrate New Year’s.
Christmas Eve, Christmas Day
Capitalize Dec. 24 and Dec. 25 Christian feast marking the birth of Jesus.
Christmastime
One word.
Christmas tree
Lowercase tree and other seasonal terms with Christmas: card, wreath, carol, etc. Exception: National Christmas Tree.
dreidel
Toy spinning top for Jewish celebrations.
hallelujah
Lowercase the biblical praise to God, but capitalize in composition titles: Handel's "Hallelujah" chorus.
Hanukkah
Eight-day Jewish Festival of Lights starting Dec. 20 this year.
Jesus, Jesus Christ
Pronouns referring to him are lowercase, as is savior.
happy holidays, merry Christmas, season’s greetings
Such phrases are generally spelled lowercase, though Christmas is always capitalized.
Holy Land
Capitalize the biblical region.
Kriss Kringle
Not Kris. Derived from the German word, Christkindl, or baby Jesus.
Kwanzaa
African-American and Pan-African celebration of family, community and culture, Dec. 26-Jan. 1.
Magi
Three wise men who brought gifts to the infant Jesus at Epiphany, celebrated Jan. 6.
menorah
Candelabrum with nine branches used for Hanukkah.
Messiah
Capitalized in references to Jesus or to the promised deliverer in Judaism.
Nativity scene
Only the first word is capitalized.
New Year’s Eve, New Year’s Day
Capitalized for Dec. 31 and Jan. 1.
North Pole
Mythical home of Santa Claus.
poinsettia
Decorative plant for Christmas; note the “ia.”
regifting
Passing along an unwanted present to someone else.
Santa Claus
Brings toys to children in a sleigh pulled by reindeer on Christmas Eve.
“A Visit From St. Nicholas”
Beloved poem by Clement Clarke Moore that begins, “ 'Twas the night before Christmas ...”
"The Twelve Days of Christmas”
Spell the numeral in the Christmas carol.
yule
Old English name for Christmas season; yuletide is also lowercase.
Xmas
Don’t use this abbreviation for Christmas.
Monday, November 21, 2011
Publishing Jobs Available
Recent Openings at the ECPA Career Center
• Associate Marketing Manager, Abingdon Press/UMPH, Nashville, TN
• Executive Director, Theological Book Network, Grand Rapids, MI
• Vice President of Marketing, Bibles, Zondervan, Grand Rapids, MI
• Editor/Proofreader, Kregel Publications, Grand Rapids, MI
• Typesetter, Kregel Publications, Grand Rapids, MI
• Content Editor, FamilyLife, Little Rock, Arkansas
• Production Coordinator, FamilyLife, Little Rock, Arkansas
• Production Design Coordinator, FamilyLife, Little Rock, Arkansas
• Project Editor, FamilyLife, Little Rock, Arkansas
• Acquisitions Editor - Nonfiction, Bethany House Publishers, Bloomington, MN
• Copy Editor for Publications and Bible Study Magazine, Logos Bible Software, Bellingham, WA
• Original Languages Copy Editor, Logos Bible Software, Bellingham, WA
• Account Executive, FrontGate Media, Rancho Santa Margarita, CA
[View and apply online at the CareerCenterForChristianPublishing.com]
• Associate Marketing Manager, Abingdon Press/UMPH, Nashville, TN
• Executive Director, Theological Book Network, Grand Rapids, MI
• Vice President of Marketing, Bibles, Zondervan, Grand Rapids, MI
• Editor/Proofreader, Kregel Publications, Grand Rapids, MI
• Typesetter, Kregel Publications, Grand Rapids, MI
• Content Editor, FamilyLife, Little Rock, Arkansas
• Production Coordinator, FamilyLife, Little Rock, Arkansas
• Production Design Coordinator, FamilyLife, Little Rock, Arkansas
• Project Editor, FamilyLife, Little Rock, Arkansas
• Acquisitions Editor - Nonfiction, Bethany House Publishers, Bloomington, MN
• Copy Editor for Publications and Bible Study Magazine, Logos Bible Software, Bellingham, WA
• Original Languages Copy Editor, Logos Bible Software, Bellingham, WA
• Account Executive, FrontGate Media, Rancho Santa Margarita, CA
[View and apply online at the CareerCenterForChristianPublishing.com]
Wednesday, November 16, 2011
Journalism Scholarships Available
Journalists, Editors Eligible for $5,000 Scholarships for Religion Courses
Study Islam, Religion and Politics, War, Theology -- on us
COLUMBIA, Mo., Nov. 16, 2011 /Christian Newswire/ -- RELIGION | NEWSWRITERS invites all journalists to apply to its Lilly Scholarships in Religion Program. The scholarships give full-time journalists up to $5,000 to take any college religion courses at any accredited institution at any time.
Religion headlines are dominating news coverage -- sex abuse, religion and politics, Islam in America, Post-9/11 -- now is the perfect time to dig deeper into today's hottest stories. More than 200 people have already taken advantage of RELIGION | NEWSWRITERS' Lilly Scholarships in Religion Program for Journalists.
Topics reporters have studied include: Islamic Movements, God & Politics, Christianity and Culture, Religious Tradition and Scientific Inquiry, Buddhism and Science, Violence and Liberation, Religion and Medicine and many more.
"The courses led to dozens of story ideas and new resources. I came out a sharper researcher and writer, two benefits I was not expecting going in," said Eric Marrapodi of CNN who took four Lilly scholarship courses in the last three years at Georgetown University.
The scholarships can be used at accredited colleges, universities, seminaries or similar institutions. Journalists can choose any religion, spirituality or ethics course. Scholarships cover tuition, books, registration fees, parking and other course-related costs. Online and travel classes are also eligible (as long as travel costs are part of the curriculum).
All full-time journalists working in the general circulation news media -- including reporters, editors, designers, copy editors, editorial writers, news directors, researchers and producers -- are eligible, regardless of their beat.
The next scholarship application deadline is Jan. 1, 2012. Scholarships must be used within three academic quarters of their award date.
RELIGION | NEWSWRITERS is the world's only association for journalists who write about religion in the mainstream news media. The scholarships are offered through its non-profit arm, the Religion Newswriters Foundation, with funding from the Lilly Endowment, Inc.
Complete information about the Lilly Scholarships in Religion program is available at bit.ly/j8MOOg. Direct questions to Amy Schiska at 573-355-5201 ext. 3#, or Schiska@RNA.org.
RELIGION | NEWSWRITERS offers training and tools to help journalists cover religion with balance, accuracy and insight. Visit www.RNA.org to learn more about our RELIGION | LINK story ideas, Religion stylebook and primer, contests for religion reporting, annual conference and more.
Study Islam, Religion and Politics, War, Theology -- on us
COLUMBIA, Mo., Nov. 16, 2011 /Christian Newswire/ -- RELIGION | NEWSWRITERS invites all journalists to apply to its Lilly Scholarships in Religion Program. The scholarships give full-time journalists up to $5,000 to take any college religion courses at any accredited institution at any time.
Religion headlines are dominating news coverage -- sex abuse, religion and politics, Islam in America, Post-9/11 -- now is the perfect time to dig deeper into today's hottest stories. More than 200 people have already taken advantage of RELIGION | NEWSWRITERS' Lilly Scholarships in Religion Program for Journalists.
Topics reporters have studied include: Islamic Movements, God & Politics, Christianity and Culture, Religious Tradition and Scientific Inquiry, Buddhism and Science, Violence and Liberation, Religion and Medicine and many more.
"The courses led to dozens of story ideas and new resources. I came out a sharper researcher and writer, two benefits I was not expecting going in," said Eric Marrapodi of CNN who took four Lilly scholarship courses in the last three years at Georgetown University.
The scholarships can be used at accredited colleges, universities, seminaries or similar institutions. Journalists can choose any religion, spirituality or ethics course. Scholarships cover tuition, books, registration fees, parking and other course-related costs. Online and travel classes are also eligible (as long as travel costs are part of the curriculum).
All full-time journalists working in the general circulation news media -- including reporters, editors, designers, copy editors, editorial writers, news directors, researchers and producers -- are eligible, regardless of their beat.
The next scholarship application deadline is Jan. 1, 2012. Scholarships must be used within three academic quarters of their award date.
RELIGION | NEWSWRITERS is the world's only association for journalists who write about religion in the mainstream news media. The scholarships are offered through its non-profit arm, the Religion Newswriters Foundation, with funding from the Lilly Endowment, Inc.
Complete information about the Lilly Scholarships in Religion program is available at bit.ly/j8MOOg. Direct questions to Amy Schiska at 573-355-5201 ext. 3#, or Schiska@RNA.org.
RELIGION | NEWSWRITERS offers training and tools to help journalists cover religion with balance, accuracy and insight. Visit www.RNA.org to learn more about our RELIGION | LINK story ideas, Religion stylebook and primer, contests for religion reporting, annual conference and more.
Wednesday, November 9, 2011
I Am A Journalist
Want a first-hand look at what young journalists are saying about their jobs?
Check this out:
http://wearejournalists.tumblr.com/
Check this out:
http://wearejournalists.tumblr.com/
Tuesday, November 8, 2011
Twin Cities TV Station Loses Defamation Suit
KSTP hit with $1 million defamation verdict
Article by: HERÓN MÁRQUEZ ESTRADA , Star Tribune
Updated: November 8, 2011 - 7:14 AM
A holistic healer said she was defamed by a 2009 news story.
A Dakota County jury has awarded a holistic healer from Hudson, Wis., $1 million in compensatory damages from KSTP-TV for a March 2009 story it aired about her treatment of a patient, attorneys for both sides said Monday night.
The jury's award is believed to be the largest verdict ever in a Minnesota defamation lawsuit.
Jurors made the award Friday after a weeklong trial before District Judge Richard Spicer, and returned Monday to deliberate on punitive damages. They declined to issue a punitive award.
Attorney Paul Hannah, who represented KSTP, said he based his argument against punitive damages on the fact that the $1 million compensatory award was the largest in state history for such a case and therefore sufficient punishment for the broadcaster.
"I believe that to be the case, that this is the largest," said Hannah, a prominent Minneapolis media law attorney who expects that KSTP, Channel 5 in the Twin Cities, will appeal the verdict and file motions to get it reduced or overturned.
The lawsuit also named as defendants Cheryl and Eric Blaha, former patients of the holistic healer, but the jury found that they were not liable for monetary damages.
The gist of KSTP's story was that Susan Anderson, then known as Susan Wahl, a Hudson doctor of naturopathy, had "de-prescribed" anti-anxiety medication to Cheryl Blaha. Cheryl Blaha then claimed to KSTP in interviews that she had tried to commit suicide as a result of being weaned from the medicine by Anderson.
The story was reported by KSTP's Jennifer Griswold, who declined to comment Monday night when reached by phone, saying any reaction would have to come from Hannah. Hannah said he is not sure whether KSTP plans to issue any statement regarding the verdict.
Naturopathy is an alternative medicine based on the belief that vital energy or vital forces help the body regulate such things as metabolism, reproduction and growth.
In her suit, Anderson claimed medical records indicated that Blaha's own medical doctor had reduced the medication and that there was no proof of the alleged suicide attempt, said Patrick Tierney, Anderson's lawyer.
"That was certainly the heart of it," Tierney said Monday night. "KSTP bought [Blaha's story] hook, line and sinker, and that's what this case was about."
Jury found 'actual malice'
Tierney said he has handled other defamation cases that resulted in verdicts in the high six figures, but none as large as the one against KSTP.
"It's significant," he said, noting that the jury found "actual malice" in its verdict against KSTP, which he said would make it almost impossible for the award to be overturned or reduced.
But Hannah said he will file motions in coming weeks attempting to do just that. He would not elaborate, but the possible grounds for making such post-verdict motions are that the instructions to the jury regarding the law were incorrect or that the facts did not merit such a high award.
Anderson, in a memorandum in support of the suit, claimed KSTP "knew that the story ... was false," as evidenced by pages and pages of medical records dating back to 2007.
Tierney stated that a week after the alleged suicide attempt, the woman met with her doctor "and never mentioned any suicide attempt."
He said the same records also indicate that KSTP knew the claim that Blaha's doctor did not know Blaha was weaning herself from the anti-anxiety medication was false.
Tierney said the jury awarded Anderson about $100,000 for lost earnings, past and future, and $900,000 for damage to her reputation as a result of the broadcast story.
KSTP "created a report instead of reporting on something," he said.
Minneapolis media attorney John Borger said that, although he could not say with absolute certainty that the $1 million verdict is the highest in state history, he could not think of a higher one.
Tierney, Hannah and Borger all said they know of awards in the $700,000 range, but nothing to equal this one.
"If this is not the highest, it's certainly right up there," Borger said.
Article by: HERÓN MÁRQUEZ ESTRADA , Star Tribune
Updated: November 8, 2011 - 7:14 AM
A holistic healer said she was defamed by a 2009 news story.
A Dakota County jury has awarded a holistic healer from Hudson, Wis., $1 million in compensatory damages from KSTP-TV for a March 2009 story it aired about her treatment of a patient, attorneys for both sides said Monday night.
The jury's award is believed to be the largest verdict ever in a Minnesota defamation lawsuit.
Jurors made the award Friday after a weeklong trial before District Judge Richard Spicer, and returned Monday to deliberate on punitive damages. They declined to issue a punitive award.
Attorney Paul Hannah, who represented KSTP, said he based his argument against punitive damages on the fact that the $1 million compensatory award was the largest in state history for such a case and therefore sufficient punishment for the broadcaster.
"I believe that to be the case, that this is the largest," said Hannah, a prominent Minneapolis media law attorney who expects that KSTP, Channel 5 in the Twin Cities, will appeal the verdict and file motions to get it reduced or overturned.
The lawsuit also named as defendants Cheryl and Eric Blaha, former patients of the holistic healer, but the jury found that they were not liable for monetary damages.
The gist of KSTP's story was that Susan Anderson, then known as Susan Wahl, a Hudson doctor of naturopathy, had "de-prescribed" anti-anxiety medication to Cheryl Blaha. Cheryl Blaha then claimed to KSTP in interviews that she had tried to commit suicide as a result of being weaned from the medicine by Anderson.
The story was reported by KSTP's Jennifer Griswold, who declined to comment Monday night when reached by phone, saying any reaction would have to come from Hannah. Hannah said he is not sure whether KSTP plans to issue any statement regarding the verdict.
Naturopathy is an alternative medicine based on the belief that vital energy or vital forces help the body regulate such things as metabolism, reproduction and growth.
In her suit, Anderson claimed medical records indicated that Blaha's own medical doctor had reduced the medication and that there was no proof of the alleged suicide attempt, said Patrick Tierney, Anderson's lawyer.
"That was certainly the heart of it," Tierney said Monday night. "KSTP bought [Blaha's story] hook, line and sinker, and that's what this case was about."
Jury found 'actual malice'
Tierney said he has handled other defamation cases that resulted in verdicts in the high six figures, but none as large as the one against KSTP.
"It's significant," he said, noting that the jury found "actual malice" in its verdict against KSTP, which he said would make it almost impossible for the award to be overturned or reduced.
But Hannah said he will file motions in coming weeks attempting to do just that. He would not elaborate, but the possible grounds for making such post-verdict motions are that the instructions to the jury regarding the law were incorrect or that the facts did not merit such a high award.
Anderson, in a memorandum in support of the suit, claimed KSTP "knew that the story ... was false," as evidenced by pages and pages of medical records dating back to 2007.
Tierney stated that a week after the alleged suicide attempt, the woman met with her doctor "and never mentioned any suicide attempt."
He said the same records also indicate that KSTP knew the claim that Blaha's doctor did not know Blaha was weaning herself from the anti-anxiety medication was false.
Tierney said the jury awarded Anderson about $100,000 for lost earnings, past and future, and $900,000 for damage to her reputation as a result of the broadcast story.
KSTP "created a report instead of reporting on something," he said.
Minneapolis media attorney John Borger said that, although he could not say with absolute certainty that the $1 million verdict is the highest in state history, he could not think of a higher one.
Tierney, Hannah and Borger all said they know of awards in the $700,000 range, but nothing to equal this one.
"If this is not the highest, it's certainly right up there," Borger said.
Monday, October 31, 2011
StarTrib Joins Paywall Club
From Minneapolis StarTribune on 10/31/11
Newspapers ask online readers to pay
Article by: DAVID PHELPS , Star Tribune
Updated: October 31, 2011 - 7:09 AM
This week the Star Tribune joins the wave of media outlets that have adopted a digital subscription model.
Newspapers are beginning to ask online readers to pay for something that for years they have gotten for free -- the news.
Within the past year, newspapers including the New York Times, Boston Globe and Dallas Morning News have adopted various digital subscription plans, or "paywalls," that require customers to be paid subscribers for unlimited access to the newspapers' content.
While there's a risk that consumers will reject paying for news online, it's one that traditional media finally are willing to take.
"It's become OK to pay for [digital] material," said Chris Wexler, group planning director for media buyer Compass Point. "As that becomes the norm, newspapers have an opportunity to do that as well."
This week, the Star Tribune will introduce a metered paywall, similar to the New York Times model, that allows readers 20 free views of articles or blogs per month before requiring a paid subscription to read further. Most Star Tribune print subscribers already get unlimited digital access.
"There was no reason not to do this from the onset [of news websites]," said Star Tribune Publisher Michael Klingensmith. "It was a mistake to go down the path that was taken. I never saw the common sense of it, to turn your back on your subscribers."
Klingensmith estimated that digital subscriptions can add 8 to 10 percent in additional revenue. In the case of the Star Tribune, that would be $3 million to $4 million a year, once the subscription model is fully functional. "It's very meaningful money with a basically marginal contribution," he said.
Growing revenue from digital subscriptions would be a huge boost for the newspaper industry, which has suffered declines in advertising and circulation, particularly in the aftermath of the Great Recession.
Since the mid-1990s, the industry has wrestled with how to build online sales, while technological advances allowed an array of competitors to siphon readers and advertising revenue. As a result, the newspaper industry is now a generation removed from the days when print was the dominant way to distribute news.
The shift by newspapers to charging for digital content has become even more critical in a technological world dominated by smartphones and digital tablets that allow readers to get their news anytime and anyplace. Those devices are compatible with pay-as-you-go subscription models. Today, consumers pay for music from the iTunes store, order electronic books or stream movies from Netflix.
Regional newspapers like the Star Tribune will have to continue providing premium coverage in areas such as local government, business, state politics, the arts community and high school sports, experts said. Investigative reporting and lively feature writing are critical as well to attracting digital subscribers.
"Sports is a big differentiator," Wexler said. "The Vikings, the Twins. Major League Baseball has a paywall that is huge. For power users, you charge for enhanced elements like video or the ability to operate on different platforms."
Dan Sullivan, a professor at the University of Minnesota's School of Journalism and Mass Communication, said smaller community newspapers also could benefit from a paywall because they do something that other major media do not -- news reporting at a grass-roots level.
"Small-town papers can pitch a paywall as a community-building activity that makes people feel more part of the community," Sullivan said.
The St. Paul Pioneer Press did not respond to inquiries about whether it would seek digital subscriptions or continue providing free content.
One advantage of a paywall is the ability of newspapers to do targeted advertising by getting more information from subscribers, similar to Google and Facebook. "Then you can track their behavior -- what stories are they reading, what are they interested in," Sullivan said. "You can marry behavior with identity."
For newspapers, however, a more fundamental question persists: Will online readers pay for the news?
A study released last week by the Pew Research Center concluded that the potential for subscription revenue from tablet users "may be limited." Only 14 percent of tablet readers will pay for news on their device, while just 25 percent said they would be willing to pay $5 a month if that was the only way to access their favorite source, the study said.
"Information is very sketchy so far," said Klingensmith. "But this is part of a transformation that needs to happen to our business model."
Earlier this year, the news website Mashable concluded that traffic on the New York Times website declined 5 to 10 percent after a paywall was implemented. But since then, the Times has seen its Sunday print circulation rise, as it bundled print and digital subscription plans.
Ultimately, part of the impact on readership will depend on how much free access the newspaper allows and how much it charges once the paywall has been reached, said Bill Mitchell of the Poynte Institute.
"If the meter is set up in a way that is annoying, you can diminish the audience," he said. "All of these pitfalls are serious, but news organizations are beginning to figure out how to adjust the meter to avoid those pitfalls."
Klingensmith is optimistic that the subscription model for digital news is here to stay. "No one has done it and canceled it," he said.
Newspapers ask online readers to pay
Article by: DAVID PHELPS , Star Tribune
Updated: October 31, 2011 - 7:09 AM
This week the Star Tribune joins the wave of media outlets that have adopted a digital subscription model.
Newspapers are beginning to ask online readers to pay for something that for years they have gotten for free -- the news.
Within the past year, newspapers including the New York Times, Boston Globe and Dallas Morning News have adopted various digital subscription plans, or "paywalls," that require customers to be paid subscribers for unlimited access to the newspapers' content.
While there's a risk that consumers will reject paying for news online, it's one that traditional media finally are willing to take.
"It's become OK to pay for [digital] material," said Chris Wexler, group planning director for media buyer Compass Point. "As that becomes the norm, newspapers have an opportunity to do that as well."
This week, the Star Tribune will introduce a metered paywall, similar to the New York Times model, that allows readers 20 free views of articles or blogs per month before requiring a paid subscription to read further. Most Star Tribune print subscribers already get unlimited digital access.
"There was no reason not to do this from the onset [of news websites]," said Star Tribune Publisher Michael Klingensmith. "It was a mistake to go down the path that was taken. I never saw the common sense of it, to turn your back on your subscribers."
Klingensmith estimated that digital subscriptions can add 8 to 10 percent in additional revenue. In the case of the Star Tribune, that would be $3 million to $4 million a year, once the subscription model is fully functional. "It's very meaningful money with a basically marginal contribution," he said.
Growing revenue from digital subscriptions would be a huge boost for the newspaper industry, which has suffered declines in advertising and circulation, particularly in the aftermath of the Great Recession.
Since the mid-1990s, the industry has wrestled with how to build online sales, while technological advances allowed an array of competitors to siphon readers and advertising revenue. As a result, the newspaper industry is now a generation removed from the days when print was the dominant way to distribute news.
The shift by newspapers to charging for digital content has become even more critical in a technological world dominated by smartphones and digital tablets that allow readers to get their news anytime and anyplace. Those devices are compatible with pay-as-you-go subscription models. Today, consumers pay for music from the iTunes store, order electronic books or stream movies from Netflix.
Regional newspapers like the Star Tribune will have to continue providing premium coverage in areas such as local government, business, state politics, the arts community and high school sports, experts said. Investigative reporting and lively feature writing are critical as well to attracting digital subscribers.
"Sports is a big differentiator," Wexler said. "The Vikings, the Twins. Major League Baseball has a paywall that is huge. For power users, you charge for enhanced elements like video or the ability to operate on different platforms."
Dan Sullivan, a professor at the University of Minnesota's School of Journalism and Mass Communication, said smaller community newspapers also could benefit from a paywall because they do something that other major media do not -- news reporting at a grass-roots level.
"Small-town papers can pitch a paywall as a community-building activity that makes people feel more part of the community," Sullivan said.
The St. Paul Pioneer Press did not respond to inquiries about whether it would seek digital subscriptions or continue providing free content.
One advantage of a paywall is the ability of newspapers to do targeted advertising by getting more information from subscribers, similar to Google and Facebook. "Then you can track their behavior -- what stories are they reading, what are they interested in," Sullivan said. "You can marry behavior with identity."
For newspapers, however, a more fundamental question persists: Will online readers pay for the news?
A study released last week by the Pew Research Center concluded that the potential for subscription revenue from tablet users "may be limited." Only 14 percent of tablet readers will pay for news on their device, while just 25 percent said they would be willing to pay $5 a month if that was the only way to access their favorite source, the study said.
"Information is very sketchy so far," said Klingensmith. "But this is part of a transformation that needs to happen to our business model."
Earlier this year, the news website Mashable concluded that traffic on the New York Times website declined 5 to 10 percent after a paywall was implemented. But since then, the Times has seen its Sunday print circulation rise, as it bundled print and digital subscription plans.
Ultimately, part of the impact on readership will depend on how much free access the newspaper allows and how much it charges once the paywall has been reached, said Bill Mitchell of the Poynte Institute.
"If the meter is set up in a way that is annoying, you can diminish the audience," he said. "All of these pitfalls are serious, but news organizations are beginning to figure out how to adjust the meter to avoid those pitfalls."
Klingensmith is optimistic that the subscription model for digital news is here to stay. "No one has done it and canceled it," he said.
Sunday, October 9, 2011
What Skills Do Journalists of the Future Need?
Here is a short excerpt from a post on the skills needed by future journalists. To see the entire article, click here.
For the past two years, OurBlook.com has been conducting interviews with top experts in journalism and media about the future of journalism. In my previous post for MediaShift, I offered a collection of views about where the industry and profession is headed.
We recently began asking interviewees to outline what they see as the role and skillset of the journalist. Overall, experts agreed that the future journalist will be:
A multitasker, juggling various responsibilities and roles, many which may have nothing to do with "traditional" journalism.
Technologically savvy, having at least a basic understanding of programming, web tools, and web culture.
A gatekeeper for a particular beat, directing readers to the most current and trustworthy news, regardless of who wrote it or where it's housed.
A versatile storyteller, who knows how to present a story online in various formats.
A brand and a community manager, who cultivates a constant and interactive conversation with their readership.
For the past two years, OurBlook.com has been conducting interviews with top experts in journalism and media about the future of journalism. In my previous post for MediaShift, I offered a collection of views about where the industry and profession is headed.
We recently began asking interviewees to outline what they see as the role and skillset of the journalist. Overall, experts agreed that the future journalist will be:
A multitasker, juggling various responsibilities and roles, many which may have nothing to do with "traditional" journalism.
Technologically savvy, having at least a basic understanding of programming, web tools, and web culture.
A gatekeeper for a particular beat, directing readers to the most current and trustworthy news, regardless of who wrote it or where it's housed.
A versatile storyteller, who knows how to present a story online in various formats.
A brand and a community manager, who cultivates a constant and interactive conversation with their readership.
Thursday, October 6, 2011
Watergate Figure Kenneth Dahlberg Dies
Kenneth Dahlberg died this week. Because of his role in Watergate, and because you saw the film "All the President's Men," I thought you might be interested in this portion of an article on him from the Mpls StarTribune.
During an eventful life that spanned nearly a century, Kenneth H. Dahlberg went from a one-room schoolhouse to aerial heroism during World War II and then to vast success as a Twin Cities businessman.
But it was his brief cameo role in the Watergate scandal nearly 40 years ago that remained a footnote to his life that never really went away.
Dahlberg, a Deephaven resident who founded what became the Miracle-Ear hearing aid company and bankrolled other companies, died Tuesday. He was 94.
"His attitude was that Watergate made good copy, and that's how journalism works," said Warren Mack, who wrote a biography of Dahlberg. "Ken understood that, and even though it was a source of pain for [his wife], Ken never really saw it that way."
Paul Waldon, who worked for Dahlberg nearly 25 years, remembered him as "a patriot, businessperson and entrepreneur who was always trying to do the right thing. ... He was the real deal."
A daughter, Dede Disbrow, also called Dahlberg "a patriot -- he bled red, white and blue."
Born in St. Paul, Dahlberg grew up on a farm near Wilson, Wis., attending a one-room school before moving back to the city to finish his education at an accredited high school. After working for several years in the hotel industry, he was drafted shortly before the United States entered the war.
Shot down three times
He became a fighter pilot and on June 2, 1944, four days before D-Day, he arrived in England to join the 354th Fighter Group, flying P-51 Mustangs to support the invasion.
Credited with 15 aerial victories, Dahlberg was shot down three times behind enemy lines, escaped twice and sat out the last few months of the war as a POW in Stalag VII-A near Munich. Among other military honors, he received a Distinguished Flying Cross.
After the war, he went to work for a firm called Telex, which made hearing aids and other communications equipment. He started his own company in 1948, which became Miracle-Ear, a firm he later sold to go into the venture capital business. Among the companies he invested in was the Buffalo Wild Wings restaurant chain.
"He comes out of World War II with a thousand dollars of back pay [from] when he was a POW and was willing and able to do anything," Waldon said. "He wanted to do whatever he could to make the republic better."
In his years working for Dahlberg, Waldon recalls what he called "Ken-isms," including: "He always lived life on the edge and said if you're not, you're not using up your allotted space."
He also dabbled in politics. Dahlberg's political activities grew out of a wartime friendship with Barry Goldwater, who had been one of his aviation instructors. Dahlberg was a deputy chairman of fundraising for the Arizona Republican's presidential campaign in 1964.
No Watergate wrongdoing
As the Midwest finance chairman of President Richard Nixon's 1972 re-election campaign, Dahlberg was pulled into the Watergate scandal even though he engaged in no wrongdoing. He became linked to the scandal after a $25,000 check he delivered to the Nixon campaign turned up in a Watergate burglar's bank account, tying Nixon to the break-in.
The contribution, which was legal, had come from Dwayne Andreas, a native of Worthington, Minn., who was former chairman of Archer-Daniels-Midland.
Dahlberg was cleared by a grand jury of any wrongdoing, but his role in Watergate was parlayed into a moment of high drama in the movie that documented the scandal, "All the President's Men."
One scene shows Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward phoning Dahlberg to ask about the check, eliciting a tense standoff, though no allegations are made against Dahlberg.
At one point, as the White House tapes later revealed, Nixon's chief of staff, H.R. Haldeman, mentioned Dahlberg's role to Nixon, to which the president responded, "Who the hell is Ken Dahlberg?"
Mack, a longtime friend of Dahlberg who wrote his biography, "One Step Forward: The Life of Ken Dahlberg," said that he didn't mention Watergate in the book "because it's still uncomfortable for Betty Jayne [Dahlberg's wife]. There was always this implication that he did something wrong."
Mack added that Dahlberg himself lamented that Watergate overshadowed his accomplishments in battle and in business. "He was just the victim of circumstance," Mack said.
'Flying right up to the end'
Flying remained a passion throughout Dahlberg's life. He served with the Minnesota Air National Guard until 1951, was inducted into the Minnesota and Arizona Aviation Halls of Fame, and continued flying -- either as pilot or co-pilot -- into his 90s.
"He was flying right up to the end -- he was still so good at it," Disbrow said. "And he was a funny guy -- I'd take him for rides around the lake in a convertible and he'd ask why I couldn't afford a car with a roof."
Along with his wife of 64 years and Disbrow, survivors include another daughter, Nancy Dahlberg; son K. Jeffrey Dahlberg; brother Arnold Dahlberg, and sisters Marcella Savage and Harriet Dolny.
During an eventful life that spanned nearly a century, Kenneth H. Dahlberg went from a one-room schoolhouse to aerial heroism during World War II and then to vast success as a Twin Cities businessman.
But it was his brief cameo role in the Watergate scandal nearly 40 years ago that remained a footnote to his life that never really went away.
Dahlberg, a Deephaven resident who founded what became the Miracle-Ear hearing aid company and bankrolled other companies, died Tuesday. He was 94.
"His attitude was that Watergate made good copy, and that's how journalism works," said Warren Mack, who wrote a biography of Dahlberg. "Ken understood that, and even though it was a source of pain for [his wife], Ken never really saw it that way."
Paul Waldon, who worked for Dahlberg nearly 25 years, remembered him as "a patriot, businessperson and entrepreneur who was always trying to do the right thing. ... He was the real deal."
A daughter, Dede Disbrow, also called Dahlberg "a patriot -- he bled red, white and blue."
Born in St. Paul, Dahlberg grew up on a farm near Wilson, Wis., attending a one-room school before moving back to the city to finish his education at an accredited high school. After working for several years in the hotel industry, he was drafted shortly before the United States entered the war.
Shot down three times
He became a fighter pilot and on June 2, 1944, four days before D-Day, he arrived in England to join the 354th Fighter Group, flying P-51 Mustangs to support the invasion.
Credited with 15 aerial victories, Dahlberg was shot down three times behind enemy lines, escaped twice and sat out the last few months of the war as a POW in Stalag VII-A near Munich. Among other military honors, he received a Distinguished Flying Cross.
After the war, he went to work for a firm called Telex, which made hearing aids and other communications equipment. He started his own company in 1948, which became Miracle-Ear, a firm he later sold to go into the venture capital business. Among the companies he invested in was the Buffalo Wild Wings restaurant chain.
"He comes out of World War II with a thousand dollars of back pay [from] when he was a POW and was willing and able to do anything," Waldon said. "He wanted to do whatever he could to make the republic better."
In his years working for Dahlberg, Waldon recalls what he called "Ken-isms," including: "He always lived life on the edge and said if you're not, you're not using up your allotted space."
He also dabbled in politics. Dahlberg's political activities grew out of a wartime friendship with Barry Goldwater, who had been one of his aviation instructors. Dahlberg was a deputy chairman of fundraising for the Arizona Republican's presidential campaign in 1964.
No Watergate wrongdoing
As the Midwest finance chairman of President Richard Nixon's 1972 re-election campaign, Dahlberg was pulled into the Watergate scandal even though he engaged in no wrongdoing. He became linked to the scandal after a $25,000 check he delivered to the Nixon campaign turned up in a Watergate burglar's bank account, tying Nixon to the break-in.
The contribution, which was legal, had come from Dwayne Andreas, a native of Worthington, Minn., who was former chairman of Archer-Daniels-Midland.
Dahlberg was cleared by a grand jury of any wrongdoing, but his role in Watergate was parlayed into a moment of high drama in the movie that documented the scandal, "All the President's Men."
One scene shows Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward phoning Dahlberg to ask about the check, eliciting a tense standoff, though no allegations are made against Dahlberg.
At one point, as the White House tapes later revealed, Nixon's chief of staff, H.R. Haldeman, mentioned Dahlberg's role to Nixon, to which the president responded, "Who the hell is Ken Dahlberg?"
Mack, a longtime friend of Dahlberg who wrote his biography, "One Step Forward: The Life of Ken Dahlberg," said that he didn't mention Watergate in the book "because it's still uncomfortable for Betty Jayne [Dahlberg's wife]. There was always this implication that he did something wrong."
Mack added that Dahlberg himself lamented that Watergate overshadowed his accomplishments in battle and in business. "He was just the victim of circumstance," Mack said.
'Flying right up to the end'
Flying remained a passion throughout Dahlberg's life. He served with the Minnesota Air National Guard until 1951, was inducted into the Minnesota and Arizona Aviation Halls of Fame, and continued flying -- either as pilot or co-pilot -- into his 90s.
"He was flying right up to the end -- he was still so good at it," Disbrow said. "And he was a funny guy -- I'd take him for rides around the lake in a convertible and he'd ask why I couldn't afford a car with a roof."
Along with his wife of 64 years and Disbrow, survivors include another daughter, Nancy Dahlberg; son K. Jeffrey Dahlberg; brother Arnold Dahlberg, and sisters Marcella Savage and Harriet Dolny.
Wednesday, October 5, 2011
Young White Girls--Sex, Violence, and the Media
Here's a really interesting analysis of the public's fascination (and the journalists' judgment) about young women and crime stories:
"Foxy Knoxy": Sex, violence and media hysteria
Editor's Note: Sarah Stillman, a visiting scholar at New York University's Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute, is the recipient of their inaugural Reporting Award. She recently published The Invisible Army in The New Yorker. Check out her website here.
By Sarah Stillman – Special to CNN
There is something about pretty white girls, bloody knives and the slightest whiff of sex that gets the international news machine humming like nothing else. All three factors merged explosively Monday in a crowded appeals court in Perugia, Italy. There, before several hundred journalists and other spectators, American college student Amanda Knox, 24, was cleared of murdering her study-abroad roommate, Meredith Kercher, in a sexually-motivated crime four years ago. Already, feature film rights to Knox’s story are flying, and book publishers, too, are salivating.
Until recently, the prevailing explanation for “Foxy Knoxy’s” guilt had been a surreal one. A game of rough sex went terribly wrong that evening in 2007, alleged Italian prosecutors. The young American student, her boyfriend and a local immigrant man were behind the perverse ordeal - or so echoed tabloids and reputable papers on both sides of the Atlantic - ending up in Kercher’s bloody death.
This orgy-centered narrative was bandied about by lawyers in the Italian courtroom, as were terms like “she-devil” and “witch.” But was any of it true? After four years of Knox’s incarceration based on an increasingly shaky set of extracted confessions and problematic forensic evidence, prosecutors’ made-for-late-night version of the crime has finally been snuffed this week. Knox, now officially freed, is heading home to Seattle.
All this has left the press to ask, somewhat sheepishly: were mainstream theories about Knox’s guilt driven primarily, as Slate.com’s Katie Crouch argued last month, by our collective lust for a kinky tale?
This hypothesis, it turns out, does have some historical weight behind it. Since the advent of the penny press nearly two centuries ago, American journalists have done some of their briskest business when selling tales of unlikely female perpetrators - the more frail and photogenic, the better. With each successive decade, the “girl killer” genre of true crime reporting has hewed more and more closely to the fading industry model of d-list porn films: a sloppy mash-up of stock characters (the femme fatale, the lesbian psycho-slasher, etc.) prone either to overly-hasty climaxes, or, inversely, to long, drawn-out sagas that test the stamina of even the most dedicated voyeurs.
Here, briefly, are four women in American history whose sensational murder and assault trials became, much like Knox’s, vehicles for serving our most base collective appetites, sometimes spawning whole industries unto themselves and often reflecting larger cultural battles.
1. Alice Mitchell: “Girl Slays Girl”
On January 25th, 1892, a young Memphis teen named Alice Mitchell allegedly attacked her former “girl lover,” Freda Ward, with a knife, slitting her throat. Her motivation? Perverted love sickness, according to the feverish press coverage that began locally but quickly spread across the state, and then the country. American readers, it turned out, were fascinated by the prospect of female sexual deviance at the turn of the century, at a time when young women were first entering public life en masse as workers, consumers, and sexual agents, increasingly bending the rules of traditional gender roles.
The trial sparked the production of hundreds of lurid articles about the two lovers (“Girl Slays Girl”!), medical studies on the disputed topic of Ward’s insanity, folk ballads and a whole raft of other cultural products detailed in Lisa Duggan’s brilliant Sapphic Slashers: Sex, Violence, and American Modernity. It ultimately culminated in Mitchell’s conviction, followed by her psychiatric hospitalization, with the judge calling the crime “the most atrocious and malignant ever perpetrated by a woman.”
2. Lizzie Borden: The Girl of Forty Whacks
Just one year later, America was gripped by an even more sensationalized trial: that of Lizzie Borden, a young woman from Fall River, Massachusetts, charged with killing her father and stepmother with a hatchet. Borden’s case, too, sparked a veritable cottage industry of commentary, with hundreds of reporters covering each twist in the trial and dozens more writing books about Borden’s surprising acquittal. Again, speculation after the trial was rife about Borden’s sexual identity (was she dating female silent film star Nance O’Neil?!), as well as her sanity.
More than a century later, Borden still features in children’s jump rope rhymes (“Lizzie Borden took an axe/and gave her mother forty whacks…”), academic dissertations, award-winning documentaries, themed bed-and-breakfast retreats and a well-reviewed punk rock musical, “Lizzie Borden: A Musical Tragedy in Two Axe.” Most recently, HBO announced the development of a mini-series based around the lurid murder, starring Hollywood it-girl Chloe Sevigny, who apparently regards Borden as a “countercultural icon.”
3. Patty Hearst: Good Girl Gone Armed
How did Patty Hearst cross the line from being a perfect girl-victim to an unforgivable girl-perpetrator? Around 9 pm on February 4th, 1974, the 19-year-old heiress to the Hearst family publishing fortune was kidnapped from her apartment in Berkeley, California, where she sat with her fiancé in her blue bathrobe. After ten weeks of captivity in the hands of the radical Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA), Hearst was photographed participating in the armed robbery of a San Francisco bank; in a stunning turnaround, she appeared to have joined her captors as a self-proclaimed “urban guerilla.” Next came a sensational courtroom drama that many deemed “the trial of the century,” in which Hearst was found guilty of bank robbery despite pleas of having been brainwashed and sexually traumatized by the SLA.
Her case helped to popularize the psychological theory of “Stockholm syndrome,” sparking a national debate about its legitimacy as a legal defense. In Patty’s Got a Gun: Patricia Hearst in 1970s America, William Graebner, Hearst’s biographer, contends that the case also caught on because it provided audiences with a convenient symbol of what many Americans, particularly those on the right, feared most about 1970’s counterculture: “[F]eminism run amok, armed and sexualized; the pathology of left-wing politics; the arrogance of the moneyed elite; the coddling of criminals,” and so much more.
4. Casey Anthony: Murderous “Tot Mom”
The most recent contender for the category of femme fatale of the century, Casey Anthony, is still woefully fresh in the American consciousness. This past summer, the pert young single mom from Florida stood accused of killing her two-year-old daughter, Caylee. When Anthony was acquitted in early July, many pundits visibly seethed at their certitude that a villainous “tot mom” had escaped her rightful due, with cable news star Nancy Grace erupting in an impassioned anti-Anthony tantrum that went viral.
But Anthony’s saga, and all the attention it garnered, also sparked a counter-trend: vocal and often eloquent critiques of the 24/7 news cycle that has made a lucrative enterprise of sensationalizing stories of young white female victims and perpetrators, while ignoring countless other cases of equal moral gravity (say, crimes committed against non-white, non-poster-child populations).
So perhaps kink doesn’t get the last word. Knox’s acquittal in Italian appeals court seems, at least for the moment, to mark the defeat of a racy narrative that privileged Hustler-ready “let’s imagine if…’s” over solid facts. It may even portend that accountability in well-publicized cases like hers - and, in a more surprising way, the recent case of Troy Davis - is now, more than ever, susceptible to global intervention, not just by lawyers and mainstream journalists, but also by a growing cadre of bloggers, social media users, and all manner of citizen journalists who’ve come to realize that justice doesn’t always coincide with the juiciest story.
The views expressed in this article are solely those of Sarah Stillman.
Saturday, October 1, 2011
Who Has Faster Internet Than the U.S.?
Guess who has faster Internet than the U.S.
South Korea, Moldova and Congo, just to name a few. There are 25 countries with faster Internet than the US. We’re ranked right behind Hungary.
A new report, from online content delivery service Pando Networks, notes that the U.S. now ranks 26th worldwide for Internet speed, putting it just behind Hungary. That country’s gross domestic product of $129 billion, according to the most recent data from the International Monetary Fund, makes it the 56th-largest economy in the world, sandwiched between Qatar and Bangladesh. (The U.S., the world’s largest economy, has a GDP of $14.6 trillion.)
South Korea, with a GDP of $1 trillion, has the fastest Internet speeds in the world.
South Korea, Moldova and Congo, just to name a few. There are 25 countries with faster Internet than the US. We’re ranked right behind Hungary.
A new report, from online content delivery service Pando Networks, notes that the U.S. now ranks 26th worldwide for Internet speed, putting it just behind Hungary. That country’s gross domestic product of $129 billion, according to the most recent data from the International Monetary Fund, makes it the 56th-largest economy in the world, sandwiched between Qatar and Bangladesh. (The U.S., the world’s largest economy, has a GDP of $14.6 trillion.)
South Korea, with a GDP of $1 trillion, has the fastest Internet speeds in the world.
Tuesday, September 27, 2011
What do Facebook Changes Mean for Journalists?
Here is an interesting article on how the recent changes in Facebook will affect journalists (mostly positive). This is justhttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif the first several paragraphs--to read the entire article,
Facebook has released several updates in the last month that will affect how journalists use the platform for reporting and storytelling. Many of these new features will make it easier for journalists to distribute their content and keep up with sources of information.
Some of the relevant changes for journalists include Subscribe, which enables readers to subscribe to journalists’ public updates, and a redesigned News Feed — complete with a newly introduced Ticker for real-time updates that makes it easier to keep up with the news that’s most important to you. The new lists also make it easier for you to target updates to a specific group of people, and to see a customized stream of news from them.
Facebook has released several updates in the last month that will affect how journalists use the platform for reporting and storytelling. Many of these new features will make it easier for journalists to distribute their content and keep up with sources of information.
Some of the relevant changes for journalists include Subscribe, which enables readers to subscribe to journalists’ public updates, and a redesigned News Feed — complete with a newly introduced Ticker for real-time updates that makes it easier to keep up with the news that’s most important to you. The new lists also make it easier for you to target updates to a specific group of people, and to see a customized stream of news from them.
Monday, September 26, 2011
New Pew Study on Where People Get News
Note the paragraphs on the newspaper:
‘Word of mouth,’ as news source, gains on local TV broadcasts, Pew says
By Paul Farhi, Published: September 25
It’s hardly news that local TV newscasts are the most popular source of community information. Surveys and Nielsen ratings have shown that for years.
But the second most widely followed source of local news isn’t the newspaper, radio or the Internet. It’s the oldest and most basic form of human communication: word of mouth.
The importance of neighbors, friends and co-workers as information transmitters is highlighted in a new study that suggests that the dinner table, the back fence and the water cooler make up the ultimate social network, over which some of the most important and relevant news is transmitted.
Word of mouth outranked every new and traditional form of news media except local TV news as the most frequently consulted news source in the study, released Monday by the Pew Research Center and the Knight Foundation. Their report suggests people get news about their communities through a complex “information ecology” that involves multiple sources and media, some mass and some interpersonal.
The role of human-to-human communication in news is both obvious — people have always told stories to one another — and revelatory, primarily because data and studies have long focused on the news media, not on all of the ways news actually gets around.
Local TV news still sits atop the information pyramid, according to the study, but its role is narrow and even fading. In a nationwide survey of 2,251 people, 74 percent said they turned to local TV news at least once a week to get information about their community, more than any other source.
Word of mouth ranked second (55 percent), followed by radio (51), newspapers (50) and the Internet (47). The latter category includes search engines, social networks such as Facebook, and blogs and Web sites not associated with a traditional media source such as a TV station or newspaper.
Marketers have always known that word-of-mouth advertising, or buzz, is critical to selling a product, but its role in news hasn’t been well studied.
The quality of word-of-mouth information, of course, varies considerably from the kind one gets via professional reporters (as the wildly inaccurate character who reports “Second-Hand News” on “Saturday Night Live” demonstrates).
On the other hand, interpersonal news usually comes from a known and trusted source, and helps people “triangulate” or vet information that may have been reported by the mass media, said Tom Rosenstiel, director of the Project for Excellence in Journalism, one of two Pew-funded organizations behind the research. It also may be far more specific and personal than anything the media can provide, he said, such as who’s the best fourth-grade teacher at the local school.
Local TV news ranked as the leading information source in the study primarily because it’s the go-to medium for the handful of subjects people said they followed most: weather, breaking news, politics and crime. Weather was, by far, the most widely followed among the 16 topics researchers asked about, with 89 percent of adults saying they keep up with weather news.
But TV ranks low as a source on many other topics, such as news about businesses, schools, government and cultural events. And its appeal is primarily to people over 40; younger people say they are increasingly getting their news from other sources, such as the Internet and mobile phones.
Newspapers, meanwhile, were the most widely cited source for a wide variety of topics, though the topics were generally of lesser interest. Newspapers (print and online) ranked first or tied for first in 11 of the 16 news categories that researchers asked about, such as government, cultural events, schools and housing (sports was not on the list because researchers determined the term implied too many variables, including professional, college, high school, youth and participant sports).
Despite this, the news for newspapers seems ominous. Some 69 percent of the people surveyed said that if their local paper no longer existed, it wouldn’t have a major impact on their ability to learn about news in their community.
Word-of-mouth information tends to fill in gaps in the media infrastructure. Its importance rises the less a subject is covered. A Brookings Institution study this year, for example, found that “family and friends” were the most popular and highly regarded providers of education news.
“People rely on people they know because there’s no other source for a lot of this information,” said Russ Whitehurst, a co-author of the Brookings report. The track record of a local school or teacher “isn’t in the newspaper or online.”
The poll in Pew’s study, “How People Learn About Their Local Community,” has a margin of error of plus or minus 2 percentage points.
‘Word of mouth,’ as news source, gains on local TV broadcasts, Pew says
By Paul Farhi, Published: September 25
It’s hardly news that local TV newscasts are the most popular source of community information. Surveys and Nielsen ratings have shown that for years.
But the second most widely followed source of local news isn’t the newspaper, radio or the Internet. It’s the oldest and most basic form of human communication: word of mouth.
The importance of neighbors, friends and co-workers as information transmitters is highlighted in a new study that suggests that the dinner table, the back fence and the water cooler make up the ultimate social network, over which some of the most important and relevant news is transmitted.
Word of mouth outranked every new and traditional form of news media except local TV news as the most frequently consulted news source in the study, released Monday by the Pew Research Center and the Knight Foundation. Their report suggests people get news about their communities through a complex “information ecology” that involves multiple sources and media, some mass and some interpersonal.
The role of human-to-human communication in news is both obvious — people have always told stories to one another — and revelatory, primarily because data and studies have long focused on the news media, not on all of the ways news actually gets around.
Local TV news still sits atop the information pyramid, according to the study, but its role is narrow and even fading. In a nationwide survey of 2,251 people, 74 percent said they turned to local TV news at least once a week to get information about their community, more than any other source.
Word of mouth ranked second (55 percent), followed by radio (51), newspapers (50) and the Internet (47). The latter category includes search engines, social networks such as Facebook, and blogs and Web sites not associated with a traditional media source such as a TV station or newspaper.
Marketers have always known that word-of-mouth advertising, or buzz, is critical to selling a product, but its role in news hasn’t been well studied.
The quality of word-of-mouth information, of course, varies considerably from the kind one gets via professional reporters (as the wildly inaccurate character who reports “Second-Hand News” on “Saturday Night Live” demonstrates).
On the other hand, interpersonal news usually comes from a known and trusted source, and helps people “triangulate” or vet information that may have been reported by the mass media, said Tom Rosenstiel, director of the Project for Excellence in Journalism, one of two Pew-funded organizations behind the research. It also may be far more specific and personal than anything the media can provide, he said, such as who’s the best fourth-grade teacher at the local school.
Local TV news ranked as the leading information source in the study primarily because it’s the go-to medium for the handful of subjects people said they followed most: weather, breaking news, politics and crime. Weather was, by far, the most widely followed among the 16 topics researchers asked about, with 89 percent of adults saying they keep up with weather news.
But TV ranks low as a source on many other topics, such as news about businesses, schools, government and cultural events. And its appeal is primarily to people over 40; younger people say they are increasingly getting their news from other sources, such as the Internet and mobile phones.
Newspapers, meanwhile, were the most widely cited source for a wide variety of topics, though the topics were generally of lesser interest. Newspapers (print and online) ranked first or tied for first in 11 of the 16 news categories that researchers asked about, such as government, cultural events, schools and housing (sports was not on the list because researchers determined the term implied too many variables, including professional, college, high school, youth and participant sports).
Despite this, the news for newspapers seems ominous. Some 69 percent of the people surveyed said that if their local paper no longer existed, it wouldn’t have a major impact on their ability to learn about news in their community.
Word-of-mouth information tends to fill in gaps in the media infrastructure. Its importance rises the less a subject is covered. A Brookings Institution study this year, for example, found that “family and friends” were the most popular and highly regarded providers of education news.
“People rely on people they know because there’s no other source for a lot of this information,” said Russ Whitehurst, a co-author of the Brookings report. The track record of a local school or teacher “isn’t in the newspaper or online.”
The poll in Pew’s study, “How People Learn About Their Local Community,” has a margin of error of plus or minus 2 percentage points.
Working Hard and Owning the Business
Here's a very interesting post from a seasoned journalist who has some very accurate observations about the issue of startupshttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif, working for a hyperlocal news site, and having your own business. See the original by clicking here.
You should only work this hard if you own the business
Posted on September 24, 2011 by Howard Owens
The list of duties for Patch editors in this Romenesko post is pretty much the job description for every local news site owner I know, at least the ones making a living at it.
When I’ve written about the number of hours I put into my business critics have said I don’t have a business model, my business isn’t “sustainable,” and so on.
Of course, this is coming from people who probably don’t want to work that hard, preferring the good old corporatism days of journalism with secure 9-5 jobs, two weeks paid vacation and dental coverage. Those days are disappearing, but the knock against hyperlocal start ups is that they’re not staffed as bodaciously as the newsrooms they may or may not replace.
To the second point, my response remains: Newspapers started small, cheap and with different standards. No newspaper started with staffs of dozens and a raft of Pulitzers. To hold an online-only start up to those standards is just plain daft.
To the issue of hard work, yes it’s hard work to start your own business, and I figure the critics of the online start ups have never dealt much with small business owners.
I deal with them every day, and for any of them that started their own businesses, they will readily tell you of the 100-hour work weeks, the weeks of just barely getting by and the impossibly long to-do lists. The hardships and sacrifices just go with the territory of starting your own business.
But here’s the thing about the work load for Patch editors: They’re not owners. They are expected to do all of the things they would have to do if they owned their own web sites, but merely in service of building wealth for AOL shareholders. Sure, work hard and keep your job is a nice benefit, and as a former corporate employee I think employees have an ethical obligation to help build shareholder value. That’s what they’re paid to do.
I’ve also been critical of corporate employees who aren’t willing to put in a little extra effort to help a project succeed.
However, if what we’re hearing is true about the Patch workload, I can only ask: Why are you doing it?
Patch editors should know that what they’re being asked to do on salary they could do for themselves far more successfully and with some chance of building a valuable business for themselves and their families.
I’m not writing this to wish Patch ill. I am not one to hope for anyone’s failure. I’m writing this for the sake of the seemingly overburdened Patch editors, and asking, “Why not just start your own local news site?”
Jump on in, the water’s fine.
You should only work this hard if you own the business
Posted on September 24, 2011 by Howard Owens
The list of duties for Patch editors in this Romenesko post is pretty much the job description for every local news site owner I know, at least the ones making a living at it.
When I’ve written about the number of hours I put into my business critics have said I don’t have a business model, my business isn’t “sustainable,” and so on.
Of course, this is coming from people who probably don’t want to work that hard, preferring the good old corporatism days of journalism with secure 9-5 jobs, two weeks paid vacation and dental coverage. Those days are disappearing, but the knock against hyperlocal start ups is that they’re not staffed as bodaciously as the newsrooms they may or may not replace.
To the second point, my response remains: Newspapers started small, cheap and with different standards. No newspaper started with staffs of dozens and a raft of Pulitzers. To hold an online-only start up to those standards is just plain daft.
To the issue of hard work, yes it’s hard work to start your own business, and I figure the critics of the online start ups have never dealt much with small business owners.
I deal with them every day, and for any of them that started their own businesses, they will readily tell you of the 100-hour work weeks, the weeks of just barely getting by and the impossibly long to-do lists. The hardships and sacrifices just go with the territory of starting your own business.
But here’s the thing about the work load for Patch editors: They’re not owners. They are expected to do all of the things they would have to do if they owned their own web sites, but merely in service of building wealth for AOL shareholders. Sure, work hard and keep your job is a nice benefit, and as a former corporate employee I think employees have an ethical obligation to help build shareholder value. That’s what they’re paid to do.
I’ve also been critical of corporate employees who aren’t willing to put in a little extra effort to help a project succeed.
However, if what we’re hearing is true about the Patch workload, I can only ask: Why are you doing it?
Patch editors should know that what they’re being asked to do on salary they could do for themselves far more successfully and with some chance of building a valuable business for themselves and their families.
I’m not writing this to wish Patch ill. I am not one to hope for anyone’s failure. I’m writing this for the sake of the seemingly overburdened Patch editors, and asking, “Why not just start your own local news site?”
Jump on in, the water’s fine.
Sunday, September 25, 2011
On This Day . . . 1690 and 1789
From Garrison Keillor's Writer's Almanac for Sunday, September 25:
On this day in 1690, the colonies' first multipaged newspaper was printed in Boston, named Publick Occurrences Both Foreign and Domestick.
It was also its last printing; gossip about the immoralities of the King of France and a denouncement of the mistreatment of French captives in the French and Indian War angered the local government. Four days after the paper's distribution, the governor and council issued a statement that the paper be "Suppressed and called in," and decreed that any future publications must be first authorized. America's first paper was also its first to be censored.
On this day in 1789, the First Federal Congress of the United States proposed 12 amendments to the recently ratified Constitution. Ten of them were ultimately adopted to become what's known as the Bill of Rights.
The amendments were the result of a major compromise between opposing factions, the Federalists — who thought the Constitution was a sound and sufficient document — and the Anti-Federalists, who worried that it gave far too much power to the central government and didn't protect individual freedoms. The two sides were at an impasse, and the Constitution was at risk of being rejected, until an agreement was reached that, if the Constitution was ratified, Congress would add on a bill of rights.
The Federalists believed the addition was unnecessary, and the anti-Federalists believed it wasn't enough ... but both sides conceded for the sake of the common good.
The first two amendments, concerning the number of constituents and the payment for Congressmen, were rejected.
The other 10, each a single sentence, provided for such rights as the freedom of speech and religion, the right to bear arms, the right to a speedy trial by jury without cruel or unusual punishment, and the right of states to govern themselves in any way not expressly prohibited by the Constitution.
An additional 17 amendments have been added to the Constitution since then. The most recent one, passed in 1992, was that second article proposed and rejected back in 1789, delaying any change to Congress's pay until the following session. The very first article proposed is still pending before state legislatures.
As the anonymous saying goes, "Democracy is cumbersome, slow and inefficient, but in due time, the voice of the people will be heard and their latent wisdom will prevail."
On this day in 1690, the colonies' first multipaged newspaper was printed in Boston, named Publick Occurrences Both Foreign and Domestick.
It was also its last printing; gossip about the immoralities of the King of France and a denouncement of the mistreatment of French captives in the French and Indian War angered the local government. Four days after the paper's distribution, the governor and council issued a statement that the paper be "Suppressed and called in," and decreed that any future publications must be first authorized. America's first paper was also its first to be censored.
On this day in 1789, the First Federal Congress of the United States proposed 12 amendments to the recently ratified Constitution. Ten of them were ultimately adopted to become what's known as the Bill of Rights.
The amendments were the result of a major compromise between opposing factions, the Federalists — who thought the Constitution was a sound and sufficient document — and the Anti-Federalists, who worried that it gave far too much power to the central government and didn't protect individual freedoms. The two sides were at an impasse, and the Constitution was at risk of being rejected, until an agreement was reached that, if the Constitution was ratified, Congress would add on a bill of rights.
The Federalists believed the addition was unnecessary, and the anti-Federalists believed it wasn't enough ... but both sides conceded for the sake of the common good.
The first two amendments, concerning the number of constituents and the payment for Congressmen, were rejected.
The other 10, each a single sentence, provided for such rights as the freedom of speech and religion, the right to bear arms, the right to a speedy trial by jury without cruel or unusual punishment, and the right of states to govern themselves in any way not expressly prohibited by the Constitution.
An additional 17 amendments have been added to the Constitution since then. The most recent one, passed in 1992, was that second article proposed and rejected back in 1789, delaying any change to Congress's pay until the following session. The very first article proposed is still pending before state legislatures.
As the anonymous saying goes, "Democracy is cumbersome, slow and inefficient, but in due time, the voice of the people will be heard and their latent wisdom will prevail."
Friday, September 23, 2011
Could Reporters Be Replaced by Computers?
Here's a really fascinating new technology which may help you a great deal in future reporting of board and council meetings, etc.
Narrative Science – Closer to a True Robot Reporter?
by Alex Salkever
The New York Times recently published an in-depth article about Narrative Science, a fascinating startup founded by two computer scientists who are also journalism professors at Northwestern University, and a veteran executive from DoubleClick. Their product is a software engine that can, given a box score, a crime log, or a real estate transaction, generate a brief , well-written news article in the classic who-what-when-where-why canon. While not works of art, these articles are credible and often beat what human scribes have to offer.
I wrote about Narrative Science a back in June for Street Fight, contemplating whether its application would fuel a truly 100% automated hyperlocal paper. In the Times piece, we got some more tantalizing detail. A Y Combinator backed startup called Market Brief is now using Narrative Science to turn thousands of daily Securities and Exchange Commission filings into moderately readable, albeit grindingly bland briefs. (In all fairness to Narrative Science, consider the original source of the information.)This is very interesting. but also highlights a major weakness of Narrative Science as a hyperlocal news generator. The SEC articles are primarily about transactions. The Narrative Science news engine cannot make inferences or logical leaps—yet.
The articles don’t note that the executive who sold 100,000 shares of stock in his brother’s company did the same thing two months before the company reported bad earnings last year. Okay, I’m making that part up—but you get the idea. The computer could also write up transcripts of city council meetings, but could it pick out the news nuggets, the bombs hidden in the footnotes of the agenda that a human reporter might know to highlight?
Not yet, but it can allow reporters to focus on those nuggets rather than on the drudgery of turns-of-the-screw reporting that is important to put the public record in a more accessible and searchable formate. And I have confidence that the Narrative Science guys have a tricks up their sleeves still. So stay tuned.
Narrative Science – Closer to a True Robot Reporter?
by Alex Salkever
The New York Times recently published an in-depth article about Narrative Science, a fascinating startup founded by two computer scientists who are also journalism professors at Northwestern University, and a veteran executive from DoubleClick. Their product is a software engine that can, given a box score, a crime log, or a real estate transaction, generate a brief , well-written news article in the classic who-what-when-where-why canon. While not works of art, these articles are credible and often beat what human scribes have to offer.
I wrote about Narrative Science a back in June for Street Fight, contemplating whether its application would fuel a truly 100% automated hyperlocal paper. In the Times piece, we got some more tantalizing detail. A Y Combinator backed startup called Market Brief is now using Narrative Science to turn thousands of daily Securities and Exchange Commission filings into moderately readable, albeit grindingly bland briefs. (In all fairness to Narrative Science, consider the original source of the information.)This is very interesting. but also highlights a major weakness of Narrative Science as a hyperlocal news generator. The SEC articles are primarily about transactions. The Narrative Science news engine cannot make inferences or logical leaps—yet.
The articles don’t note that the executive who sold 100,000 shares of stock in his brother’s company did the same thing two months before the company reported bad earnings last year. Okay, I’m making that part up—but you get the idea. The computer could also write up transcripts of city council meetings, but could it pick out the news nuggets, the bombs hidden in the footnotes of the agenda that a human reporter might know to highlight?
Not yet, but it can allow reporters to focus on those nuggets rather than on the drudgery of turns-of-the-screw reporting that is important to put the public record in a more accessible and searchable formate. And I have confidence that the Narrative Science guys have a tricks up their sleeves still. So stay tuned.
Wednesday, September 21, 2011
Journalistic 'Oopsies'
This is great! See the video at http://www.cnn.com/2011/IREPORT/09/21/journalism.fails.irpt/index.html?hpt=hp_c2
(CNN) -- Journalism can be an unforgiving profession. Mistakes are easy to make, and they're usually made publicly, which means red faces and awkward apologies all around. The only comfort is that everybody -- EVERYBODY -- makes them at some point.
We'll prove it to you. Here are nine CNN journalists -- including anchor Brooke Baldwin, in the video above -- sharing their most embarrassing professional moments and what they learned from them.
Actually record
It doesn't matter how awesome your interview is if you don't have a record of it. Steve Goldberg, a CNN senior producer, learned that one the hard way.
"I was covering UGA for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and had a big interview lined up with the university president," he says. "I went in with my tape recorder, took only brief notes, only to get back to the office and discovered that the batteries had died and I didn't have a recording."
So Goldberg had to swallow his pride and go back to the university. "I asked sheepishly if I could redo the interview and, much to my surprise, he said yes. Lesson learned: Make sure I put in fresh batteries before the big interview!"
It's critical to make sure you're intimately familiar with your equipment before you go out in the field to avoid such mistakes.(Mistakes, by the way, that many a CNNer have admitted to making.) And along those lines, make sure you actually, you know, hit record. (Yup, we've done that, too.)
Check your facts -- and your geography
CNN.com designer Ken Uzquiano single-handedly ceded Wales to England. True story.
He created a map of the UK to go along with a crime story on CNN.com. The only problem was, he left off Wales, instead marking the country as part of England.
"Within two minutes, it was all over the blogs," Uzquiano remembers.
And indeed it was. The UK-based tech blog The Register wrote:
"We have some bad news for those of you who woke up this morning thinking you were Welsh: As of right now, you're English, and you'd just better get used to the idea. ... Although the offending map has now been removed, when we rang the Welsh Assembly this morning a very glum spokesperson admitted, 'If CNN says we're English then it must be true.' "
Always have someone -- preferably someone with knowledge of the subject -- look over your stories before you make them public. And double-check your locators, because there's a Decatur in almost every state, and you want to make sure you're talking about the right one.
Name (the right) names
CNN video producer Jo Parker had painstakingly checked her facts. She'd gotten both sides of the story. She'd included fantastic, descriptive quotes. Only one problem: She was writing about the wrong guy.
"As a fairly new reporter, I was covering my first town council meeting. I was really proud of the way I'd balanced the story and included terrific quotes," Parker remembers. "I was trying hard to gain credibility, since the previous reporter had irritated local officials by being careless with balance and fairness issues."
"The next day, the story came out. Before I could finish patting myself on the back, I realized that I'd written about a town council member -- but used the local district attorney's name." Oops.
Parker says the mistake taught her to immediately admit the error, take responsibility and apologize as soon as possible. But, perhaps most importantly, "triple-check the things you 'know,' " she says.
Listen up
If you work in TV, you know that live segments have incredible potential for embarrassing screw-ups. CNN iReport producer Rachel Rodriguez was getting ready to present a somber story when she heard the anchor give her an unexpectedly lighthearted intro.
"It was Memorial Day, and I was doing a piece about soldiers we'd lost, so it was a really sad, serious story," she says. "I don't know how the anchor got the wrong information, but she gave me an intro along the lines of 'It's a beautiful Memorial Day outside, and everyone's picnicking and enjoying the lovely weather! CNN iReport's Rachel Rodriguez has more on how people are taking advantage of this gorgeous day! Rachel!' "
Rodriguez remembers the pit in her stomach growing as she heard the intro on her earpiece.
"There was no graceful way out of it," she says. "I just had to take control and turn the conversation around as best I could without making it sound like we were making light of the deaths of soldiers."
The key to recouping? Listen. Whether you're conducting an interview or narrating a segment, make sure you're paying attention to the other person and not just mindlessly reading your notes (or the teleprompter). Chances are, you'll need to react to something they say.
Put everything in context
CNN iReport producer David Williams found a creative -- if entirely unintentional -- way to combine two hot entertainment topics in 2006: Madonna and "Snakes on a Plane."
He was filling in for the entertainment producer, and it was "at the height of the 'Snakes on a Plane' hysteria," Williams remembers. "We ran a story about snake handlers having to deal with large amounts of snake poop during production. I gave it the brilliant but juvenile headline 'Poop on a Plane' and went on with my day."
His fatal flaw? "I didn't really think about how this would look on the CNN.com homepage," he says.
"The headline above it was about Madonna causing a stir in Germany," says Williams. "It looked sort of like this: German authorities watching Madonna poop on a plane. The fine folks at Gawker had a good time with it."
Amusing, but whether you're writing headlines or choosing quotes to go in a story, the lesson is the same: Take the time to think about the context for your words. Often, that will shape how you use them.
The devil is in the details
"When CNN first started going to a system of running videos off of computer codes, it was easy to get the eight-digit numbers mixed up," says CNN senior producer Tricia Escobedo. I think you can tell where this story is going.
"One day, when I was a TV writer for CNN International, two of the top stories were the annual 'running of the bulls' in Pamplona, Spain, and some sort of violence in the Middle East," Escobedo recalls. "I wrote the story for the anchor to read on CNNI over the video of the deadly violence, but inadvertently put in the number for the running of the bulls. I was horrified when I heard the anchor read about mayhem in the Middle East -- and saw the video of a bunch of crazed bulls chasing after some nutty tourists!"
"So the lesson is: Check those minor details and logistics," she says. "They can lead to major mess-ups."
Relax
Ah, internships. Time and scene of so many mistakes. Well, let's call them "learning experiences."
Toward the beginning of his career, CNN video copy editor James Dinan interned with the news department of a radio station in Newton, New Jersey.
"After a couple of days learning the ropes and staying out of trouble, I was offered the chance to cover one of the World Cup soccer games from Giants Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey," Dinan recalls. "It was a simple task -- do a live spot about the game itself, as well as record one or two features about the sights and sounds surrounding the game."
Remember what we said earlier about live segments having excellent potential for mess-ups? Yeah.
"It was time for my live shot, and I was prepared. Or so I thought," Dinan says. "The first words out of my mouth...
"Italy rebounded from its opening match defeat by upending Norwegia, 1-0.
"Norwegia? Wasn't that a fictitious country featured in 'Duck Soup' or a Three Stooges short?" he jokes. "I was supposed to say Norway, but I had Norwegian on the brain and, somehow, the two managed to fuse together into a made-up word."
Luckily, Dinan's boss let him cover another game, Ireland vs. Norway, and he pronounced the country's name perfectly the second time around. His slip-up is a reminder not to psych yourself out before going on camera -- and not to worry too much about the little things.
Read it out loud
Here at CNN, we get our fair share of prank phone calls with super-fun fake names. But even if it's not a prank name, it helps to stop and think about -- and pronounce out loud -- any name you come across.
"In my first job in journalism, among the many things I had to do at a teeny-tiny paper was edit an advice column written by the newsroom staff," says CNN senior editor Jan Winburn. "People called in questions, and the newsroom secretary transcribed them and handed them around to staffers to track down answers."
One day, someone called in the following question: "I would like to find out why Jack Hammers and his equipment are allowed to work at 4 a.m. on Clinkscales and Worley and disturb people's sleep." See where this is going?
"The reporter who got this question dutifully called the city public works department and wrote an answer something to the effect that no one at the department was aware of anyone working at that intersection," says Winburn. "The joke, of course, is that she transcribed the question off the phone as Jack Hammers instead of jackhammer ... and I didn't catch it!" Winburn has kept the clip for more than 10 years.
Pro tip: It always helps to read your stories out loud, even if you're writing for print. Not only does it help make the writing flow, it makes it easier to catch embarrassing errors. And always have a second person read over your story.
(CNN) -- Journalism can be an unforgiving profession. Mistakes are easy to make, and they're usually made publicly, which means red faces and awkward apologies all around. The only comfort is that everybody -- EVERYBODY -- makes them at some point.
We'll prove it to you. Here are nine CNN journalists -- including anchor Brooke Baldwin, in the video above -- sharing their most embarrassing professional moments and what they learned from them.
Actually record
It doesn't matter how awesome your interview is if you don't have a record of it. Steve Goldberg, a CNN senior producer, learned that one the hard way.
"I was covering UGA for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and had a big interview lined up with the university president," he says. "I went in with my tape recorder, took only brief notes, only to get back to the office and discovered that the batteries had died and I didn't have a recording."
So Goldberg had to swallow his pride and go back to the university. "I asked sheepishly if I could redo the interview and, much to my surprise, he said yes. Lesson learned: Make sure I put in fresh batteries before the big interview!"
It's critical to make sure you're intimately familiar with your equipment before you go out in the field to avoid such mistakes.(Mistakes, by the way, that many a CNNer have admitted to making.) And along those lines, make sure you actually, you know, hit record. (Yup, we've done that, too.)
Check your facts -- and your geography
CNN.com designer Ken Uzquiano single-handedly ceded Wales to England. True story.
He created a map of the UK to go along with a crime story on CNN.com. The only problem was, he left off Wales, instead marking the country as part of England.
"Within two minutes, it was all over the blogs," Uzquiano remembers.
And indeed it was. The UK-based tech blog The Register wrote:
"We have some bad news for those of you who woke up this morning thinking you were Welsh: As of right now, you're English, and you'd just better get used to the idea. ... Although the offending map has now been removed, when we rang the Welsh Assembly this morning a very glum spokesperson admitted, 'If CNN says we're English then it must be true.' "
Always have someone -- preferably someone with knowledge of the subject -- look over your stories before you make them public. And double-check your locators, because there's a Decatur in almost every state, and you want to make sure you're talking about the right one.
Name (the right) names
CNN video producer Jo Parker had painstakingly checked her facts. She'd gotten both sides of the story. She'd included fantastic, descriptive quotes. Only one problem: She was writing about the wrong guy.
"As a fairly new reporter, I was covering my first town council meeting. I was really proud of the way I'd balanced the story and included terrific quotes," Parker remembers. "I was trying hard to gain credibility, since the previous reporter had irritated local officials by being careless with balance and fairness issues."
"The next day, the story came out. Before I could finish patting myself on the back, I realized that I'd written about a town council member -- but used the local district attorney's name." Oops.
Parker says the mistake taught her to immediately admit the error, take responsibility and apologize as soon as possible. But, perhaps most importantly, "triple-check the things you 'know,' " she says.
Listen up
If you work in TV, you know that live segments have incredible potential for embarrassing screw-ups. CNN iReport producer Rachel Rodriguez was getting ready to present a somber story when she heard the anchor give her an unexpectedly lighthearted intro.
"It was Memorial Day, and I was doing a piece about soldiers we'd lost, so it was a really sad, serious story," she says. "I don't know how the anchor got the wrong information, but she gave me an intro along the lines of 'It's a beautiful Memorial Day outside, and everyone's picnicking and enjoying the lovely weather! CNN iReport's Rachel Rodriguez has more on how people are taking advantage of this gorgeous day! Rachel!' "
Rodriguez remembers the pit in her stomach growing as she heard the intro on her earpiece.
"There was no graceful way out of it," she says. "I just had to take control and turn the conversation around as best I could without making it sound like we were making light of the deaths of soldiers."
The key to recouping? Listen. Whether you're conducting an interview or narrating a segment, make sure you're paying attention to the other person and not just mindlessly reading your notes (or the teleprompter). Chances are, you'll need to react to something they say.
Put everything in context
CNN iReport producer David Williams found a creative -- if entirely unintentional -- way to combine two hot entertainment topics in 2006: Madonna and "Snakes on a Plane."
He was filling in for the entertainment producer, and it was "at the height of the 'Snakes on a Plane' hysteria," Williams remembers. "We ran a story about snake handlers having to deal with large amounts of snake poop during production. I gave it the brilliant but juvenile headline 'Poop on a Plane' and went on with my day."
His fatal flaw? "I didn't really think about how this would look on the CNN.com homepage," he says.
"The headline above it was about Madonna causing a stir in Germany," says Williams. "It looked sort of like this: German authorities watching Madonna poop on a plane. The fine folks at Gawker had a good time with it."
Amusing, but whether you're writing headlines or choosing quotes to go in a story, the lesson is the same: Take the time to think about the context for your words. Often, that will shape how you use them.
The devil is in the details
"When CNN first started going to a system of running videos off of computer codes, it was easy to get the eight-digit numbers mixed up," says CNN senior producer Tricia Escobedo. I think you can tell where this story is going.
"One day, when I was a TV writer for CNN International, two of the top stories were the annual 'running of the bulls' in Pamplona, Spain, and some sort of violence in the Middle East," Escobedo recalls. "I wrote the story for the anchor to read on CNNI over the video of the deadly violence, but inadvertently put in the number for the running of the bulls. I was horrified when I heard the anchor read about mayhem in the Middle East -- and saw the video of a bunch of crazed bulls chasing after some nutty tourists!"
"So the lesson is: Check those minor details and logistics," she says. "They can lead to major mess-ups."
Relax
Ah, internships. Time and scene of so many mistakes. Well, let's call them "learning experiences."
Toward the beginning of his career, CNN video copy editor James Dinan interned with the news department of a radio station in Newton, New Jersey.
"After a couple of days learning the ropes and staying out of trouble, I was offered the chance to cover one of the World Cup soccer games from Giants Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey," Dinan recalls. "It was a simple task -- do a live spot about the game itself, as well as record one or two features about the sights and sounds surrounding the game."
Remember what we said earlier about live segments having excellent potential for mess-ups? Yeah.
"It was time for my live shot, and I was prepared. Or so I thought," Dinan says. "The first words out of my mouth...
"Italy rebounded from its opening match defeat by upending Norwegia, 1-0.
"Norwegia? Wasn't that a fictitious country featured in 'Duck Soup' or a Three Stooges short?" he jokes. "I was supposed to say Norway, but I had Norwegian on the brain and, somehow, the two managed to fuse together into a made-up word."
Luckily, Dinan's boss let him cover another game, Ireland vs. Norway, and he pronounced the country's name perfectly the second time around. His slip-up is a reminder not to psych yourself out before going on camera -- and not to worry too much about the little things.
Read it out loud
Here at CNN, we get our fair share of prank phone calls with super-fun fake names. But even if it's not a prank name, it helps to stop and think about -- and pronounce out loud -- any name you come across.
"In my first job in journalism, among the many things I had to do at a teeny-tiny paper was edit an advice column written by the newsroom staff," says CNN senior editor Jan Winburn. "People called in questions, and the newsroom secretary transcribed them and handed them around to staffers to track down answers."
One day, someone called in the following question: "I would like to find out why Jack Hammers and his equipment are allowed to work at 4 a.m. on Clinkscales and Worley and disturb people's sleep." See where this is going?
"The reporter who got this question dutifully called the city public works department and wrote an answer something to the effect that no one at the department was aware of anyone working at that intersection," says Winburn. "The joke, of course, is that she transcribed the question off the phone as Jack Hammers instead of jackhammer ... and I didn't catch it!" Winburn has kept the clip for more than 10 years.
Pro tip: It always helps to read your stories out loud, even if you're writing for print. Not only does it help make the writing flow, it makes it easier to catch embarrassing errors. And always have a second person read over your story.
Monday, September 19, 2011
Sports Events This Week
If you have not yet written your sports-coverage article, here are a listing of Lancer sporting events the remainder of this week:
Tuesday, September 20
4p M Tennis Away vs. Goshen College
4p W Tennis Home vs. Goshen College
Wednesday, September 21
4p W Soccer Home vs. Holy Cross
7p M Soccer Away vs. Indiana Tech
7p W Volleyball Away vs. Marian Univ.
Friday, September 23
7p W Volleyball Home vs. Spring Arbor University
Saturday, September 24
10a JV/V Baseball Away vs. Ancilla
1p M Tennis Home vs. Huntington
1p W Volleyball Home vs. Taylor University
2p W Tennis Away vs. Huntington
3p M Soccer Away vs. Huntington
Softball Grace Tournament Home
Tuesday, September 20
4p M Tennis Away vs. Goshen College
4p W Tennis Home vs. Goshen College
Wednesday, September 21
4p W Soccer Home vs. Holy Cross
7p M Soccer Away vs. Indiana Tech
7p W Volleyball Away vs. Marian Univ.
Friday, September 23
7p W Volleyball Home vs. Spring Arbor University
Saturday, September 24
10a JV/V Baseball Away vs. Ancilla
1p M Tennis Home vs. Huntington
1p W Volleyball Home vs. Taylor University
2p W Tennis Away vs. Huntington
3p M Soccer Away vs. Huntington
Softball Grace Tournament Home
Wednesday, September 14, 2011
Press and the Future of Religion
How do you respond to this information/analysis by Chuck Colson?
The Press and the Future of Religion
By Chuck Colson | Christian Post Guest Columnist
The United States is often referred to as a “post-Christian” nation. In one sense, that is true: The moral and cultural assumptions shaped by Christianity that used to hold sway in American society, can no longer be taken for granted. They must be defended and contended for in the public square.
But that’s not the same as saying that Americans are becoming more like Europeans when it comes to matters like church attendance or belief in a personal God. In many ways the shift in cultural assumptions I just noted is taking place in spite of what Americans believe and do, not because of them.
You would be hard-pressed to know this judging from media reports. These reports seize on any bit of evidence, however suspect, to promote the thesis that Americans are becoming more “secular.” Every few months we are told about some new study that purports to show how secularism and even atheism is on the march.
We are supposed to conclude that instead of going to church our children will spend Sunday mornings reading the holographic edition of the New York Times on their iPad 15 while sipping a latte made from coffee beans grown hydroponically in zero gravity.
It’s a tidy, convenient story. But unfortunately for its tellers, it just doesn't square with the facts.
That’s what two of my favorite researchers, Rodney Stark and Byron Johnson of Baylor, recently told the Wall Street Journal. The flip side to the media’s pouncing on any finding of our alleged drift away from religion is its “yawning” over findings to the contrary.
One such finding is a Baylor survey showing that the percentage of Americans who are atheist – 4 percent – is the same as it was in 1944. And that same survey showed that “church membership has reached an all-time high.”
Again, if all you had to go on is what you read or heard in the mainstream media, both of these facts would come as a surprise to you. The media, you see, uncritically trumpets reports that “young people under 30 are deserting the church in droves,” but they don’t go on to tell you that, “once they marry . . . and especially once they have children, their attendance rates recover.”
Likewise, reports about the politics of younger evangelicals are, to put it charitably, selective in their reading of the evidence.
Neither Stark, Johnson, nor I are suggesting that some kind of conspiracy is at work. What we see here is the human tendency to view evidence in ways that comport with our worldview.
Secularists, both outside and inside the media, see decreasing religiosity as the wave of the future, an inevitable byproduct of cultural refinement and evolution. So they naturally gravitate towards stories that confirm that hypothesis.
It doesn't help that the press “doesn't get religion.” Newsrooms are filled with people who don’t know believers and, thus, don’t have real-world experience with the phenomenon they assume is on the decline. They are strikingly uninformed. So much so that they’re calling orthodox Christians “theocrats,” as I've discussed in another commentary.
But, as Stark and Johnson remind us, you can’t always believe what you read in the newspapers. The reports from the real America are very encouraging. Millions of us are practicing the faith and passing it on to our children.
That’s a fact that even bad reporting won’t be able to change.
Tuesday, September 13, 2011
'Holy Trinity' of News Helps Small-Town Papers
Newspaper Deathwatch, Newspapers
Small-Town Newspapers Thrive as the Big Boys Fade
By Matthew Fleischer on September 13, 2011 12:59 PM
USC Annenberg journalism professor Judy Muller has an op-ed in today’s LA Times lauding America’s small-town newspapers. which she says are “doing just fine, thank you,” despite the collapse of their larger, big-city brethren.
Some 8,000 weekly papers still hit the front porches and mailboxes in small towns across America every week and, for some reason, they’ve been left out of the conversation. So a couple of years ago, I decided to head back to my roots, both geographic and professional (my first job was at a weekly), to see how those community papers were faring. And what I found was both surprising and inspiring. …
The “holy trinity” of weekly papers consists of high school sports (where even losing teams benefit from positive spin), obituaries (where there’s no need to speak ill of the dead because everyone in town already knows if the deceased was a jerk) and the police blotter. The latter can be addictive, even to outsiders. These items, often lifted intact from the dispassionate log of the sheriff’s dispatcher, are the haikus of Main Street: “Caller states that there is a 9-year-old boy out mowing the lawn next door and feels that is endangering the child in doing so when the mother is perfectly capable of doing it herself.” Or: “Man calls to report wife went missing 3 months ago.”
She’s right. This Fishie hated his hometown, but still checks the police blotter of the local paper from time to time to see if anyone he knows is in there. Although apparently my local paper is bucking the trend. According to Muller most papers aren’t giving their content away for free online. Which is why they’ve been able to thrive. We’ll see how long that lasts. Probably until Patch gets its act together and figures out a way to gut their advertising base.
Looks like local papers may still have a good amount of time.
Small-Town Newspapers Thrive as the Big Boys Fade
By Matthew Fleischer on September 13, 2011 12:59 PM
USC Annenberg journalism professor Judy Muller has an op-ed in today’s LA Times lauding America’s small-town newspapers. which she says are “doing just fine, thank you,” despite the collapse of their larger, big-city brethren.
Some 8,000 weekly papers still hit the front porches and mailboxes in small towns across America every week and, for some reason, they’ve been left out of the conversation. So a couple of years ago, I decided to head back to my roots, both geographic and professional (my first job was at a weekly), to see how those community papers were faring. And what I found was both surprising and inspiring. …
The “holy trinity” of weekly papers consists of high school sports (where even losing teams benefit from positive spin), obituaries (where there’s no need to speak ill of the dead because everyone in town already knows if the deceased was a jerk) and the police blotter. The latter can be addictive, even to outsiders. These items, often lifted intact from the dispassionate log of the sheriff’s dispatcher, are the haikus of Main Street: “Caller states that there is a 9-year-old boy out mowing the lawn next door and feels that is endangering the child in doing so when the mother is perfectly capable of doing it herself.” Or: “Man calls to report wife went missing 3 months ago.”
She’s right. This Fishie hated his hometown, but still checks the police blotter of the local paper from time to time to see if anyone he knows is in there. Although apparently my local paper is bucking the trend. According to Muller most papers aren’t giving their content away for free online. Which is why they’ve been able to thrive. We’ll see how long that lasts. Probably until Patch gets its act together and figures out a way to gut their advertising base.
Looks like local papers may still have a good amount of time.
Saturday, September 10, 2011
Disgraced Journalist Publishes Book on His Experience
From today's Fort Wayne News-Sentinel:
Ex-Bush aide's book shows power of faith, redemption
Goeglein covers plagiarism scandal and 9/11 in volume to be released this week
By Kevin Leininger
of The News-Sentinel
Tim Goeglein has written a book.
To those who somehow found perverse pleasure in the revelation three years ago that he had plagiarized portions of at least 27 columns published in The News-Sentinel – resulting in his abrupt resignation as a White House aide – those six words are sure to resurrect old snickers and sarcasm.
The 48-year-old Fort Wayne native knows that better than anyone, but is willing to endure it because he believes “Man in the Middle: an Inside Account of Faith and Politics in the George W. Bush Era” (B&H Publishing Group) contains important and timely truths about one man's redemption and an entire nation's soul.
The book's release this coming Thursday – just four days after the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks – is coincidental but perhaps also providential. The events of that day are prominent in the book, just as Goeglein, now a vice president with Focus on the Family, was prominent in shaping the administration's response in a way that foreshadowed the unexpected grace he would experience during his darkest hour seven years later.
As deputy director of the White House Office of Public Liaison, Goeglein was indeed Bush's “man in the middle” – “the reliable, loyal conduit for the president's agenda to the outside groups,” he writes – especially the Republican's conservative, religious base. Goeglein's contacts proved invaluable after 9/11, when he helped plan the prayer service at Washington's National Cathedral.
The resulting interfaith service, which featured not only Bush and Christian clerics but also Muslims, Hindus and members of other faiths, demonstrated national unity but also reaffirmed the intrinsically American notion that liberty is guaranteed not by government, but by God, he said.
In his first newspaper interview about the book, Goeglein said one of his goals was to share insights into how a president he clearly admired was guided by faith when dealing with profound issues such as stem-cell research, the appointment of two Supreme Court justices, and the terrorist attacks that claimed thousands of lives and continue to shape our domestic and foreign policies.
But Goeglein doesn't get around to 9/11 until the eighth chapter. He begins the 227-page book (after a brief prologue and a foreword by Bush political guru Karl Rove) by writing about his childhood and parents Stan and Shirley, who still live in Fort Wayne, and how he betrayed those he loved most by claiming other people's work as his own.
That lie began to unravel in 2008 when he opened an email from a reporter who wanted to know if the plagiarism rumor was true. “I knew instantly this would be the most impossible day of my life ... My only prayer was, ‘God help me,' ” he wrote. "Every one of the values I was raised by ... I had violated completely ... I resigned that afternoon, writing a personal letter of apology to the president ... (and) departed the White House, shattered and fearful.”
That fear only grew when he was unexpectedly called into the Oval Office a few days later – and was astonished to experience, perhaps as never before, the power of faith and forgiveness.
“I had embarrassed the most powerful man in the world, but he showed me remarkable mercy,” Goeglein told me. “He forgave me, and I was speechless.” As he wrote in the book, Bush's faith had helped him overcome his own demons, including alcohol, which caused the president to tell Goeglein: “I have known mercy and grace in my own life, and I am offering it to you now.”
A few days later, an apology session with News-Sentinel Editor Kerry Hubartt, turned into “yet another remarkable session of grace ... I asked for his forgiveness, which he offered unconditionally,” Goeglein wrote.
We all sin, even those who reveled in Goeglein's transgressions. But few of us have had to pay for them so openly, and fewer still have issued such a public confession.
But a power much higher than the president offers forgiveness all the time. As Goeglein writes, the knowledge that God does not give believers what they truly deserve ought to induce a deep sense of humility and gratitude.
And so he was saddened and alarmed by reports that New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg will exclude clergy from some high-profile memorial events this weekend – perhaps some of the same religious leaders he and Bush were so eager to include after 9/11, and represent the kind of grace and forgiveness that can comfort, strengthen and transform individuals and nations alike.
“Decline is a choice, but I believe America's best days are still ahead,” Goeglein said. “This is a religious republic, and you can't understand America if you don't understand that.”
The book – "I did write it," Goeglein said – aims to make certain you do.
This column is the commentary of the writer and does not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of The News-Sentinel. Email Kevin Leininger at kleininger@news-sentinel.com, or call him at 461-8355.
Ex-Bush aide's book shows power of faith, redemption
Goeglein covers plagiarism scandal and 9/11 in volume to be released this week
By Kevin Leininger
of The News-Sentinel
Tim Goeglein has written a book.
To those who somehow found perverse pleasure in the revelation three years ago that he had plagiarized portions of at least 27 columns published in The News-Sentinel – resulting in his abrupt resignation as a White House aide – those six words are sure to resurrect old snickers and sarcasm.
The 48-year-old Fort Wayne native knows that better than anyone, but is willing to endure it because he believes “Man in the Middle: an Inside Account of Faith and Politics in the George W. Bush Era” (B&H Publishing Group) contains important and timely truths about one man's redemption and an entire nation's soul.
The book's release this coming Thursday – just four days after the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks – is coincidental but perhaps also providential. The events of that day are prominent in the book, just as Goeglein, now a vice president with Focus on the Family, was prominent in shaping the administration's response in a way that foreshadowed the unexpected grace he would experience during his darkest hour seven years later.
As deputy director of the White House Office of Public Liaison, Goeglein was indeed Bush's “man in the middle” – “the reliable, loyal conduit for the president's agenda to the outside groups,” he writes – especially the Republican's conservative, religious base. Goeglein's contacts proved invaluable after 9/11, when he helped plan the prayer service at Washington's National Cathedral.
The resulting interfaith service, which featured not only Bush and Christian clerics but also Muslims, Hindus and members of other faiths, demonstrated national unity but also reaffirmed the intrinsically American notion that liberty is guaranteed not by government, but by God, he said.
In his first newspaper interview about the book, Goeglein said one of his goals was to share insights into how a president he clearly admired was guided by faith when dealing with profound issues such as stem-cell research, the appointment of two Supreme Court justices, and the terrorist attacks that claimed thousands of lives and continue to shape our domestic and foreign policies.
But Goeglein doesn't get around to 9/11 until the eighth chapter. He begins the 227-page book (after a brief prologue and a foreword by Bush political guru Karl Rove) by writing about his childhood and parents Stan and Shirley, who still live in Fort Wayne, and how he betrayed those he loved most by claiming other people's work as his own.
That lie began to unravel in 2008 when he opened an email from a reporter who wanted to know if the plagiarism rumor was true. “I knew instantly this would be the most impossible day of my life ... My only prayer was, ‘God help me,' ” he wrote. "Every one of the values I was raised by ... I had violated completely ... I resigned that afternoon, writing a personal letter of apology to the president ... (and) departed the White House, shattered and fearful.”
That fear only grew when he was unexpectedly called into the Oval Office a few days later – and was astonished to experience, perhaps as never before, the power of faith and forgiveness.
“I had embarrassed the most powerful man in the world, but he showed me remarkable mercy,” Goeglein told me. “He forgave me, and I was speechless.” As he wrote in the book, Bush's faith had helped him overcome his own demons, including alcohol, which caused the president to tell Goeglein: “I have known mercy and grace in my own life, and I am offering it to you now.”
A few days later, an apology session with News-Sentinel Editor Kerry Hubartt, turned into “yet another remarkable session of grace ... I asked for his forgiveness, which he offered unconditionally,” Goeglein wrote.
We all sin, even those who reveled in Goeglein's transgressions. But few of us have had to pay for them so openly, and fewer still have issued such a public confession.
But a power much higher than the president offers forgiveness all the time. As Goeglein writes, the knowledge that God does not give believers what they truly deserve ought to induce a deep sense of humility and gratitude.
And so he was saddened and alarmed by reports that New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg will exclude clergy from some high-profile memorial events this weekend – perhaps some of the same religious leaders he and Bush were so eager to include after 9/11, and represent the kind of grace and forgiveness that can comfort, strengthen and transform individuals and nations alike.
“Decline is a choice, but I believe America's best days are still ahead,” Goeglein said. “This is a religious republic, and you can't understand America if you don't understand that.”
The book – "I did write it," Goeglein said – aims to make certain you do.
This column is the commentary of the writer and does not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of The News-Sentinel. Email Kevin Leininger at kleininger@news-sentinel.com, or call him at 461-8355.
Friday, September 9, 2011
Building the Future of News
From the foreword of a new book entitled "Entrepreneurial Journalism" set to appear in November from CQ Press:
The opportunities are indeed endless. That is why I am a cockeyed optimist about the future of news. There is more demand for and interest in news than ever. We have more ways to gather, analyze, and distribute news than we ever could have imagined before the Internet. We have new ways to listen to the public, so we can serve them better. We have new efficiencies to exploit.
But most important, we have entrepreneurs and journalists who have the courage to try to build the future of news. And now, thanks to this book, they have a plan
The opportunities are indeed endless. That is why I am a cockeyed optimist about the future of news. There is more demand for and interest in news than ever. We have more ways to gather, analyze, and distribute news than we ever could have imagined before the Internet. We have new ways to listen to the public, so we can serve them better. We have new efficiencies to exploit.
But most important, we have entrepreneurs and journalists who have the courage to try to build the future of news. And now, thanks to this book, they have a plan
Zamperini Story Tops One Million
It may be the dawn of the age of e-books, but last week Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption by Laura Hillenbrand struck a blow for print editions by surpassing the one million copies in hardcover sales, USA Today reported.
"In this time of explosive growth in e-book sales, the mega-success of Unbroken in hardcover clearly underscores that the demand for print editions of great reads is still enormous," said Gina Centrello, Random House president and publisher.
Inventor of E-Books Dies
Here is the first portion of an article from the New York Times. The entire article may be seen by clicking here.
Michael Hart, who was widely credited with creating the first e-book when he typed the Declaration of Independence into a computer on July 4, 1971, and in so doing laid the foundations for Project Gutenberg, the oldest and largest digital library, was found dead on Tuesday at his home in Urbana, Ill. He was 64.
His death was confirmed by Gregory B. Newby, the chief executive and director of Project Gutenberg, who said that the cause had not yet been determined.
Mr. Hart found his life’s mission when the University of Illinois, where he was a student, gave him a user’s account on a Xerox Sigma V mainframe computer at the school’s Materials Research Lab.
Estimating that the computer time in his possession was worth $100 million, Mr. Hart began thinking of a project that might justify that figure. Data processing, the principal application of computers at the time, did not capture his imagination. Information sharing did.
After attending a July 4 fireworks display, he stopped in at a grocery store and received, with his purchase, a copy of the Declaration of Independence printed on parchment. He typed the text, intending to send it as an e-mail to the users of Arpanet, the government-sponsored precursor to today’s Internet, but was dissuaded by a colleague who warned that the message would crash the system. Instead, he posted a notice that the text could be downloaded, and Project Gutenberg was born.
Its goal, formulated by Mr. Hart, was “to encourage the creation and distribution of e-books” and, by making books available to computer users at no cost, “to help break down the bars of ignorance and illiteracy.”
Over the next decade, working alone, Mr. Hart typed the Bill of Rights, the Constitution, the King James Bible and “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” into the project database, the first tentative steps in a revolution that would usher in what he liked to call the fifth information age, a world of e-books, hand-held electronic devices like the Nook and Kindle, and unprecedented individual access to texts on a vast array of Internet archives.
Today, Project Gutenberg lists more than 30,000 books in 60 languages, with the emphasis on titles of interest to the general reader in three categories: “light literature,” “heavy literature” and reference works. In a 2006 e-mail to the technology writer Glyn Moody, he predicted that there would be a billion e-books in 2021, Project Gutenberg’s 50th anniversary, and that, thanks to advances in memory chips, “you will be able to carry all billion e-books in one hand.”
Nearly all the books are in the public domain, although a relatively small number of copyrighted books are reproduced with the permission of the copyright owner. The library includes two books by Mr. Hart: “A Brief History of the Internet” and “Poems and Tales from Romania.”
“It’s a paradigm shift,” he told Searcher magazine in 2002. “It’s the power of one person, alone in their basement, being able to type in their favorite books and give it to millions or billions of people. It just wasn’t even remotely possible before; not even the Gideons can say they have given away a billion Bibles in the past year.”
Michael Stern Hart was born on March 8, 1947, in Tacoma, Wash. His father was an accountant; his mother, a cryptanalyst during World War II, was the business manager for a high-end women’s store. The couple retrained to become university teachers and in 1958 found posts at the University of Illinois, in Urbana, where his father taught Shakespeare and his mother taught mathematics.
Michael began attending lectures at the university before entering high school and, following a course of individual study on human-machine interfaces, earned a bachelor of science degree in 1973.
Work on Project Gutenberg proceeded slowly at first. Adding perhaps a book a month, Mr. Hart had created only 313 e-books by 1997. “I was just waiting for the world to realize I’d knocked it over,” he told Searcher. “You’ve heard of ‘cow-tipping’? The cow had been tipped over, but it took it 17 years for it to wake up and say, ‘Moo.’ ”
Michael Hart, who was widely credited with creating the first e-book when he typed the Declaration of Independence into a computer on July 4, 1971, and in so doing laid the foundations for Project Gutenberg, the oldest and largest digital library, was found dead on Tuesday at his home in Urbana, Ill. He was 64.
His death was confirmed by Gregory B. Newby, the chief executive and director of Project Gutenberg, who said that the cause had not yet been determined.
Mr. Hart found his life’s mission when the University of Illinois, where he was a student, gave him a user’s account on a Xerox Sigma V mainframe computer at the school’s Materials Research Lab.
Estimating that the computer time in his possession was worth $100 million, Mr. Hart began thinking of a project that might justify that figure. Data processing, the principal application of computers at the time, did not capture his imagination. Information sharing did.
After attending a July 4 fireworks display, he stopped in at a grocery store and received, with his purchase, a copy of the Declaration of Independence printed on parchment. He typed the text, intending to send it as an e-mail to the users of Arpanet, the government-sponsored precursor to today’s Internet, but was dissuaded by a colleague who warned that the message would crash the system. Instead, he posted a notice that the text could be downloaded, and Project Gutenberg was born.
Its goal, formulated by Mr. Hart, was “to encourage the creation and distribution of e-books” and, by making books available to computer users at no cost, “to help break down the bars of ignorance and illiteracy.”
Over the next decade, working alone, Mr. Hart typed the Bill of Rights, the Constitution, the King James Bible and “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” into the project database, the first tentative steps in a revolution that would usher in what he liked to call the fifth information age, a world of e-books, hand-held electronic devices like the Nook and Kindle, and unprecedented individual access to texts on a vast array of Internet archives.
Today, Project Gutenberg lists more than 30,000 books in 60 languages, with the emphasis on titles of interest to the general reader in three categories: “light literature,” “heavy literature” and reference works. In a 2006 e-mail to the technology writer Glyn Moody, he predicted that there would be a billion e-books in 2021, Project Gutenberg’s 50th anniversary, and that, thanks to advances in memory chips, “you will be able to carry all billion e-books in one hand.”
Nearly all the books are in the public domain, although a relatively small number of copyrighted books are reproduced with the permission of the copyright owner. The library includes two books by Mr. Hart: “A Brief History of the Internet” and “Poems and Tales from Romania.”
“It’s a paradigm shift,” he told Searcher magazine in 2002. “It’s the power of one person, alone in their basement, being able to type in their favorite books and give it to millions or billions of people. It just wasn’t even remotely possible before; not even the Gideons can say they have given away a billion Bibles in the past year.”
Michael Stern Hart was born on March 8, 1947, in Tacoma, Wash. His father was an accountant; his mother, a cryptanalyst during World War II, was the business manager for a high-end women’s store. The couple retrained to become university teachers and in 1958 found posts at the University of Illinois, in Urbana, where his father taught Shakespeare and his mother taught mathematics.
Michael began attending lectures at the university before entering high school and, following a course of individual study on human-machine interfaces, earned a bachelor of science degree in 1973.
Work on Project Gutenberg proceeded slowly at first. Adding perhaps a book a month, Mr. Hart had created only 313 e-books by 1997. “I was just waiting for the world to realize I’d knocked it over,” he told Searcher. “You’ve heard of ‘cow-tipping’? The cow had been tipped over, but it took it 17 years for it to wake up and say, ‘Moo.’ ”
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