crash blossoms

What better way to gear up for a new year of teaching journalism than to point out what goes wrong with it.

In this case: crash blossoms, or the goofy headlines that result when words go missing or turn up in the wrong place. Wonder where the term itself came from? The New York Times Magazine's Ben Zimmer explained it all:

For years, there was no good name for these double-take headlines. Last August, however, one emerged in the Testy Copy Editors online discussion forum. Mike O’Connell, an American editor based in Sapporo, Japan, spotted the headline “Violinist Linked to JAL Crash Blossoms” and wondered, “What’s a crash blossom?” (The article, from the newspaper Japan Today, described the successful musical career of Diana Yukawa, whose father died in a 1985 Japan Airlines plane crash.) Another participant in the forum, Dan Bloom, suggested that “crash blossoms” could be used as a label for such infelicitous headlines that encourage alternate readings, and news of the neologism quickly spread.

According to Zimmer, once he blogged about crash blossoms on a linguistics blog, examples came pouring in. Let's check:

One of my favorite crash blossoms is this gem from the Associated Press, first noted by the Yale linguistics professor Stephen R. Anderson last September: “McDonald’s Fries the Holy Grail for Potato Farmers.” If you take “fries” as a verb instead of a noun, you’re left wondering why a fast-food chain is cooking up sacred vessels. Or consider this headline, spotted earlier this month by Rick Rubenstein on the Total Telecom Web site: “Google Fans Phone Expectations by Scheduling Android Event.” Here, if you read “fans” as a plural noun, then you might think “phone” is a verb, and you’ve been led down a path where Google devotees are calling in their hopes.

Nouns that can be misconstrued as verbs and vice versa are, in fact, the hallmarks of the crash blossom. Take this headline, often attributed to The Guardian: “British Left Waffles on Falklands.” In the correct reading, “left” is a noun and “waffles” is a verb, but it’s much more entertaining to reverse the two, conjuring the image of breakfast food hastily abandoned in the South Atlantic. Similarly, crossword enthusiasts laughed nervously at a May 2006 headline on AOL News, “Gator Attacks Puzzle Experts.”

Much of the silliness results when headline writers leave out articles and such in an effort to save space, a trick that may have originated with the telegraph, which leads us again, back to Zimmer:

One clever (though possibly apocryphal) example once appeared in the pages of Time magazine: Cary Grant received a telegram from an editor inquiring, “HOW OLD CARY GRANT?” — to which he responded: “OLD CARY GRANT FINE. HOW YOU?”

All of which would seem pretty archaic until, you know, you think of Twitter. bk

tell me again why ...

.. philanthropy -- and short staffs -- will succeed where others have failed?

The latest from the LA Times on the Warren Hellman-sponsored news project in the San Francisco Bay Area:

When the Bay Area News Project launches its website in late spring or early summer, it will be just the latest -- and perhaps the most ambitious -- nonprofit venture among a string of similar start-ups. Now all it must do is figure out how to provide coverage for a nine-county region, starting with only 15 employees.

Still confused as to why a wealthy businessman, who clearly has ties to corporate interests, would be less likely to interfere with the news than, well, corporate interests. Seems to me, if you believe that journalists are influenced by the need to stay on the good side of their funders -- and I do NOT believe that good ones are -- what difference does it make who does the funding?

Also wonder why it's assumed that a short staff -- or worse yet, amateurs equipped with cell phones and twitter accounts -- will do a better job than professionals. But that's another issue. Entirely. bk

you can't HANDLE the truth...

In the wake of the Ft. Hood shootings last week, Tech Crunch columnist Paul Carr addressed the issue of citizen journalism with regard to the first reports of the massacre -- tweets from the Twitter account of one Tearah Moore, a soldier from Linden, Michigan who is based at Fort Hood, having recently returned from Iraq.

To read the whole account, go to the link above. But the upshot is that the tweets were bullshit. Moore was actually tweeting from the hospital -- rather than the room where the massacre took place.

He uses this as an example of his point that first, citizen journalism -- isn't. And that the real-time web is turning us all into egotists. He writes:

In the actions of Tearah Moore at Fort Hood, we have the perfect example of both kinds of selfishness.

There surely can’t be a human being left in the civilised world who doesn’t know that cellphones must be switched off in hospitals, and yet not only did Moore leave hers on but she actually used it to photograph patients, and broadcast the images to the world. Just think about that for a second. Rather than offering to help the wounded, or getting the hell out of the way of those trying to do their jobs, Moore actually pointed a cell-phone at a wounded soldier, uploaded it to twitpic and added a caption saying that the victim “got shot in the balls”.

Her behaviour had nothing to do with getting the word out; it wasn’t about preventing harm to others, but rather a simple case of – as I said two weeks ago – “look at me looking at this.”

and ...

And so it was at Fort Hood. For all the sound and fury, citizen journalism once again did nothing but spread misinformation at a time when thousands people with family at the base would have been freaking out already, and breach the privacy of those who had been killed or wounded. We learned not a single new fact, nor was a single life saved.

What’s most alarming about Moore’s behaviour is that she probably thought she was doing the right thing. Certainly, looking at her MySpace page and her Twitter account (before the army finally forced her to lock it down) we see the portrait of a patriot. Someone who clearly cares a great deal about others, and who – despite the rhetorical question “remind me why I joined the army again” on her profile – is proud to serve her country. In tweeting from the scene, and calling out the media for not reporting the rumours from inside the base, I’m sure she genuinely believed she was helping get the real truth out, and making an actual difference.

And that’s precisely the problem: none of us think we’re being selfish or egotistic when we tweet something, or post a video on YouTube or check-in using someone’s address on Foursquare. It’s just what we do now, no matter whether we’re heading out for dinner or witnessing a massacre on an Army base. Like Lord of the Flies, or the Stanford Prison Experiment, as long as we’re all losing our perspective at the same time – which, as a generation growing up with social media we are – then we don’t realise that our humanity is leaking away until its too late.

As I’ve already said – and I’m even starting to bore myself now – the answer isn’t censorship (which won’t work), but rather in our social evolution catching up with the state of technology. We need to get back to a point as a society where – without thinking – we put our humanity before our ego.

And that we should realize that not everyone with a cellphone, despite the best intentions, is trained to be a journalist. The debate -- between Carr and Jeff Jarvis, a longtime advocate of citizen journalism -- continued Monday on New York's NPR station WNAC. By all accounts, Carr won. Go here to listen to the podcast. bk

tweeting 101

Coming soon to a j-school near you: The art of the tweet. And not just for twits.

Okay, getting too cute.

Mashable reports that Australia’s Griffith University has made Twitter-Ed part of the curriculum for j-students. This is true. You gotta love this quote:

According to a senior lecturer at the University, “Some students’ tweets are not as in depth as you might like.” The solution? Make Twitter writing practice a compulsory part of the course curriculum for would-be journalists.

No depth in 140 characters? Imagine that.

According to the report, the university cooked up the class in response to employers who want hires who do social media -- and know how to tweet.

Now we've all heard that Twitter has provided up-to-the-second dispatches during disasters and important global events. But I just can't imagine a job listing that reads: Reporter: Provide resume, clips and tweets.

On the other hand, how stoked would you be if you were a j-kid and were required to write, oh, a 20-word final? bk

sometimes it's funny ...

... when people who clearly have never worked in a newsroom pontificate about journalism. In this case, specifically, a TechCrunch piece by MG Siegler, on new WaPo rules relegating tweets to the social media no-no list.

Seigler finds this laughable:

Obviously, WaPo is doing this to try and maintain what it perceives to be its journalistic integrity. That’s great. But as we’ve discussed recently, the idea that any kind of reporting lacks any kind of bias on some level is laughable. It’s fine if you want your organization to only present the facts with no opinions, but the notion that those reporters do not have their own opinions is absurd. WaPo can try to hide those opinions all they want, but they exist, regardless.

I find Siegler, well, naive. (Maybe he is confusing columnists with reporters and editors?) Sure journalists have opinions, but good ones who want to keep their jobs, not to mention their reputations, don't interject same into their reporting methods -- or final stories, unless they are validated by things called facts. That's objective journalism. Let's review: objectivity does not mean some silly kind of artificial balance. Nor does it mean neutral. And yes, point-of view journalism can be, and often is, objective journalism, so long as the news-gathering has been fair, thorough and multi-sided. In other words, the reporter (even one with opinions) went into the story willing to be proven wrong. (I could go on. Better, just plug objectivity into the search box, above.)

The twittersphere problem is that tweets can lead to the perception of bias on the part of the reader. At a time when the whole industry is on shaky ground -- and the public itself is starting to question what we do -- do we really need another reason for news-consumers to distrust the news? Ugh. bk

hello sweetheart, give me twitter

Chris Anderson, the editor-in-chief of Wired, spouts off: on the media (a word he doesn't use); on staying informed; and on the meaning of "Free." The Q-and-A with Frank Hornig was published in Der Speigel and on Salon.com, by special arrangement.

Among other things, Anderson says he prefers twitter to newspapers, rarely reads one, and suggests that "media" may become a hobby, rather than a full-time job.

Read it and weep. Can't tell whether Mr. Anderson is elitist, ignorant, just being a provacateur. Or has way too much time on his hands. Here are some excerpts:

Mr. Anderson, let's talk about the future of journalism.

This is going to be a very annoying interview. I don't use the word "journalism."

OK , how about newspapers? They are in deep trouble both in the United States and worldwide.

Sorry, I don't use the word "media." I don't use the word "news." I don't think that those words mean anything anymore. They defined publishing in the 20th century. Today, they are a barrier. They are standing in our way, like a horseless carriage.

Which other words would you use?

There are no other words. We're in one of those strange eras where the words of the last century don't have meaning. What does news mean to you, when the vast majority of news is created by amateurs? Is news coming from a newspaper, or a news group or a friend? I just cannot come up with a definition for those words. Here at Wired, we stopped using them.

Hang on a minute. So-called citizen journalists and bloggers have changed the meaning of "media." But without the traditional news media they wouldn't actually have much to do. Most of the amateurs comment on what the quality press report. So did you read a newspaper this morning?

No.

And:

So how do you stay informed?

It comes to me in many ways: via Twitter, it shows up in my in box, it shows up in my RSS base, through conversations. I don't go out looking for it....

... If something has happened in the world that's important, I'll hear about it. I heard about the protests in Iran before it was in the papers because the people who I subscribe to on Twitter care about those things.

The New York Times, CNN, Reuters and others can publish their best reporting on the Web and you'd never read it?

I read lots of articles from mainstream media but I don't go to mainstream media directly to read it. It comes to me, which is really quite common these days. More and more people are choosing social filters for their news rather than professional filters. We're tuning out television news, we're tuning out newspapers. And we still hear about the important stuff, it's just that it's not like this drumbeat of bad news. It's news that matters. I figure by the time something gets to me it's been vetted by those I trust. So the stupid stuff that doesn't matter is not going to get to me.

And:

If the audience goes online, will the revenues follow?

Yes. It's all about attention. That is the most valuable commodity. If you have attention and reputation, you can figure out how to monetize it. However, money is not the No. 1 factor anymore.

Why?

Attention and reputation are two non-monetary economies. The vast majority of people online write for free. We've tried paying some of our bloggers and they thought it was insulting. They're not doing it for the money, they're doing it for attention and reputation, or just for fun. For example, two years ago, I started this Web site called geekdad.com. It's about being a dad and being a computer geek. We're writing about how to do things that are fun for kids and fun for dads. It's a community project, everyone contributes for free but we now have an audience bigger than many newspapers. And there are an infinite number of sites like this out there.

Can classic journalism, which is obviously more expensive to produce, compete with that sort of thing?

In the past, the media was a full-time job. But maybe the media is going to be a part-time job. Maybe media won't be a job at all, but will instead be a hobby. There is no law that says that industries have to remain at any given size. Once there were blacksmiths and there were steelworkers, but things change. The question is not should journalists have jobs. The question is can people get the information they want, the way they want it? The marketplace will sort this out. If we continue to add value to the Internet we'll find a way to make money. But not everything we do has to make money.

good tweet, bad tweet

Changing the news one tweet at a time? I guess. But whether that's for good or ill remains to be seen.

A piece in the New York Times by Alan Cowell about the ubiquity of twitter chatter notes that most reporting out of Iran during the post-election protests came in the form of 140 characters or fewer. And much of that, in fact, made it into the mainstream press.

But then the piece quotes slate.com's tech-friendly Jack Shafer thus: “My zeal for Twitter knows a limit,” wrote Jack Shafer, editor at large of the online publication Slate, saying the welter of messages from the streets of Tehran was “more noise than signal in understanding the Iranian upheaval.”

On the other hand, but on the same subject, the New York Times' Brian Stetler sees tweets (and youtube videos) as filling the void when foreign correspondents have been called home and the powers that be may be imposing a news blackout. The cascade of citizen news that came out of Iran during those first days was a starting point for news organizations with no feet on the ground. The task then became to watch the news as it developed, sift and analyze it, and -- you hope -- vet it. Stetler writes:

“Check the source” may be the first rule of journalism. But in the coverage of the protests in Iran this month, some news organizations have adopted a different stance: publish first, ask questions later. If you still don’t know the answer, ask your readers.

In yet another story on the subject -- this one also cites twitter as the real-time source of news of Michael Jackson's death -- the AP's Jake Coyle looks at the inaccuracies or flat out lies that sometimes crop up on the twittersphere, such as the grossly exaggerated report of Jeff Goldblum's untimely demise. The problem with DIY journalism is the lack of accountability. Twits can tweet anything. He writes:

While involvement in the protests in Iran might be Twitter's most meaningful achievement thus far, some have noted that many inaccuracies were circulated.

That has raised the concern that some people or governments may use Twitter to spread disinformation even more dangerous than suggesting Jeff Goldblum is dead.

Andrew Keen, author of "The Cult of the Amateur," believes Twitter — and whatever real-time Web services follow in its wake — represents the future of both the Internet and media.

But Keen says the Iran coverage on Twitter "exposes all the weakness of the service, the fact that it's so chaotic and unreliable. Who knows who's tweeting what?"

Back to Cowell, who concedes that new forms of info-sharing does indeed make for new ways to gather news, but still suggests it adds a layer of complexity to the process. He writes:

News gathering takes time, energy, courage, people, humility, creativity and layers of editorial oversight to guarantee the authenticity of the final product. For all the human flaws of those who gather, edit, check and analyze it, news allows people to judge for themselves whether the people they voted into office merit their trust and their tax dollars.

As the Twitter revolution has shown, the ascendancy of new methods of spreading the news — a kind of digital, high-speed word-of-mouth — reinforces the need for assembling it, sifting it and trying to make sense of it.

Honest news is essential to ensuring that people know what their soldiers are doing in Iraq or Afghanistan as much as what their politicians are doing in their boudoirs or how they are composing their expense accounts. At its best, news bypasses spin to let readers know who is really winning on the far-flung killing fields of Pakistan or Gaza, just as it did in Vietnam.

We lose all that at our peril.

out of the loop

Are journalists being left out of the loop when it comes to PR? That's what Claire Cain Miller suggests in a cover story in Sunday's New York Times business section. Thanks to social media, publicists and pr folks are bypassing reporters altogether, using facebook, twitter and influential blogs to get the word out -- and letting reporters come to them.

Probably a good thing for journalism: leaves the shrinking real estate in newspapers and on newsites -- and the work of their shrinking staffs -- for real news.

On the other hand, as publicity becomes a DIY project, at least for start-ups, does it mean a whole new sector of communication grads will be destined for pink slips? Or a whole new job description that includes words like tweet, friend and digg?

From the story:

In response to dissatisfied clients and huge shifts in the media landscape, a new breed of publicist is emerging, says Brian D. Solis, a P.R. guy who writes a blog called PR 2.0. His firm, FutureWorks, has a broad definition of “writer,” a category that includes those in mainstream media as well as the tens of thousands of bloggers and Twitter users who have developed avid followings by writing about niche topics.

“Mommy bloggers are the new TechCrunch; they’re such an influential crowd,” Mr. Solis says.

Instead of calculating the impressions an article gets by estimating a publication’s circulation and pass-along rate, Mr. Solis counts the number of people who tweeted about a company and their combined following, the number of retweets or clicks on links, as well as traffic from Facebook and other social networks.

into the sandbox

Leslie forwards this post from Mashable on "10 ways journalism schools are teaching social media."

Some good ideas for using the tools such as facebook and its clones and twitter to enhance journalism, such as real time reporting, crowdsourcing, and even e-interviewing. Okay, a phone or face-to-face interview is still better. But...

The idea is that, rather than ends in themselves (or, ahem, time sponges), social media can be useful tools. We just have to play with them awhile to figure out their best use. At which point, they may become as transparent as computers themselves.

Reminds me of a story I did on Xerox Park many years ago on a visionary program that brought in artists to work with computer developers on state of the art technology. The geeks wrote the code. The artists played with the apps -- "we're like kids playing in the sandbox with all these toys," said one of the artists -- to help the developers think outside the box. built

Anyway. Check out the full list here. bk

leads: twittersphere style

Mashable's Ann Handley offers a comparison of twitter to journalism in this post, aptly titled: Everything I Need to Know about Twitter I learned in J School.

It's more about style than substance -- or at least purpose -- which is where the comparison ends. Nonetheless, good points if you happen to be a twit. Or follow one.

Use what you learned about leads, heads and inverted pyramids to make tweets more effective, she writes. Here's an example:

Lead with the good stuff

---

In journalism, the “inverted pyramid” style places the most important information at the top of any story, and then the ensuing narrative explains and expands on it. In other words, the first paragraph should contain enough information to give the reader a solid overview of the entire story. Approach sharing links or information on Twitter in a similar manner, giving the strongest and most compelling bit in the tweet, and then link to the rest of the story elsewhere.

more on the twittersphere

Gavin Newsom held a virtual press conference sans press today -- to announce his candidacy for governor of California simultaneously on twitter, facebook and youtube. Notably absent: reporters and/or pesky questions from the rabble.

From the piece on sfgate.com, the online version the SF Chron:

"No candidate has ever used all of these tools at once - and it had to happen with a candidate from the Bay Area. This is the capital of new media," said Newsom's political consultant Eric Jaye, who noted that San Francisco-based Twitter, Palo Alto-based Facebook and San Bruno-based YouTube, now a subsidiary of Google, are all located in the region.

Jaye said the mayor has amassed some 270,000 followers on Twitter - second only to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger - as well as 40,000 on Facebook, 150,000 names on his campaign e-mail lists, and reaches thousands of others with his regular blogs on the Huffington Post and Daily Kos, two progressive Web sites.

the blogosphere atwitter

Whether or not you like Morrissey , you will find tasty food for thought re the twittersphere in this review, written by Gordie Young for the SF Weekly, of a non-concert by the former member of the Smiths. It's a short piece, but be sure to read down to the last graf. That's where the, er, meaty J questions come in.

Here's the backstory: Apparently, Morrissey blew off a concert at the Paramount in Oakland Saturday claiming illness -- a day after cutting short a concert at Coachella because the odor of cooking meat wafted his way -- but then was seen at the very same time he was supposed to be up on stage across the Bay, watching another show at the DNA Lounge in San Francisco.

None of which is all that interesting if you're not a Morrissey fan ((FTR: I am not. I refer to a friend who once characterized his music thus: "hide the knives -- I'm feeling depressed"). What IS interesting, however, is the source of the reporting -- tweets, blogs, and cell phone pix -- and the questions that arise because of it. WAS Morrissey at the DNA lounge? DID he cut short his concert at Coachella because of burnt meat? Can you trust this reporting? Should reporters report on it? How do you verify it? Is any or all of it true?

If, as Gordie posits, the story illustrates the freakish and somewhat disturbing power of twitter, you have to wonder: why is it that, when reporters' credibility is often on the line, we are so quick to trust Susie from Ohio in 140 characters or fewer?

Gordie responds:

It's all true. There are youtube links showing him walk off the stage and making the meat comments. (There are also press reports covering the Coachella show). Kristeen Young, who was performing at DNA, has commented publicly on Morrissey's presence. And there are photos of Morrissey at DNA from the various Susie's. Now who knows exactly why he canceled the show. It was officially because of "illness."

I thought this was very interesting for the very reason you stated. By journalism standards, this is all strangely sourced. Can you trust a youtube video that says it's of Morrissey at Coachella? On the other hand, can you trust a reporter for the NY Times using unnamed sources, especially if it's Judy Miller? I'm not endorsing either/or, but it is fascinating to see what a confusing time this is for journalists and the concept of the verifiable truth. And a blogger alerting fans via twitter and someone actually responding and going to DNA and confronting Morrissey is very weird.

I also think it would be interesting to speculate on how easy it would be to fake elements of this story. Then again, when newspapers dutifully reprint official statements from presidents that they know aren't true...well...that's fake news as well, right?

Again, not taking sides, but very interesting and confusing issues. Too bad this wasn't about a story that really mattered.

tweet, tweet

Go here for a spot-on spoof of the twitter nation in the Guardian.

The Head:

Twitter switch for Guardian, after 188 years of ink

The Deck:

• Newspaper to be available only on messaging service
• Experts say any story can be told in 140 characters

My favorite graf:

A mammoth project is also under way to rewrite the whole of the newspaper's archive, stretching back to 1821, in the form of tweets. Major stories already completed include "1832 Reform Act gives voting rights to one in five adult males yay!!!"; "OMG Hitler invades Poland, allies declare war see tinyurl.com/b5x6e for more"; and "JFK assassin8d @ Dallas, def. heard second gunshot from grassy knoll WTF?"

And second best:

At a time of unprecedented challenge for all print media, many publications have rushed to embrace social networking technologies. Most now offer Twitter feeds of major breaking news headlines, while the Daily Mail recently pioneered an iPhone application providing users with a one-click facility for reporting suspicious behaviour by migrants or gays. "In the new media environment, readers want short and punchy coverage, while the interactive possibilities of Twitter promise to transform th," the online media guru Jeff Jarvis said in a tweet yesterday, before reaching his 140-character limit, which includes spaces. According to subsequent reports, he is thinking about going to the theatre tonight, but it is raining :(.

Happy April Fools Day! bk

bloggers anonymous

Editorial Comment: Filling those empty retirement hours, when you don't have a 'real' community anymore...

courtesy Ted Pease, journalism prof, Utah State University.

journalism deathwatch

What will become of journalism if smart and talented young people can no longer afford to enter the profession? Go here to read an insightful blogpost written by Alice Joy, one of my former students, who makes several excellent points about what it means to be a young "working journalist" in New York these days.

Scary and sad.

On it goes. I had another email from a former student with excellent full-time cred in both daily journalism and alt-weekly investigative reporting. Now on staff at another paper, what he does, he says, is twitter to promote the paper's articles. What a waste of talent and drive.

And Shannon forwards this piece from LA Observed, that reports that the LA Times will kill the California section, folding local news inside the front section of the paper, "... which will be reconfigured to downplay national and foreign news — despite what an official of the paper confirmed for me was the unanimous and vocal objections of senior editors."

Who cares whether print stays or goes. Who cares whether we add Suzy from Ohio to our blog/follow list. Who cares if you have become the Pied Piper to a cast of thousands who follow your every move on Twitter. To paraphrase that old Clinton-era campaign slogan, "It's the content, stupid." And we need professionals to find it, contextualize it, and to be paid a living wage to report it.

I am reminded of an old quote from a NYTimes piece written by Walter Cronkite (okay, that dates me) that I saved when i first started teaching: "It is the content that is important and the Republic, indeed no society, cannot live without that which only the newspaper provides -- the daily recording of our history and the presentation to the people of the facts on which they can meaningfully participate in this democracy."

Substitute “journalism" for "newspaper". Doesn't anybody get that anymore? bk

P.S. By the way, if you are in the market for a talented, energetic reporter and elegant writer, and can actually offer a paycheck -- go ask Alice.

happy new year....

I originally thought I'd commemorate the new year by reflecting on all I've learned about blogging since i started, well, blogging.

One thing I've learned is that what a blog turns out to be has very little resemblance to what it started to be, at least in the case of jlinx.

But I digress. The second thing I learned about blogging is that when you're linking your way around cyberspace, you run into a lot of random stuff, purely by accident. Such as this post, entitled "1000 things I've learned about blogging."

Apparently, my work is done.

The entire blog, written primarily by a journalism prof from the UK, is pretty cool. Be sure to check out the posts on the future of journalism, as well as the continuing list of "things I've learned..." by clicking on the twitter link.

cheers. bk