rules to write by

From Janet Fitch, author of "White Oleander" via the Los Angeles Times: 10 Rules for Writers. She's talking about fiction, but most of the rules apply to journalism, too, such as using dependent clauses, ditching cliches, writing in scenes, and finding replacements for over-used, anemic verbs.

Here you go. bk

writing for free. or close to it...

Go here for an inside look at life on the "content farm". It's a look at the uber-creepy underbelly of digital journalism. If only all the underemployed journalists would just say NO...

The MediaShift piece, by Corbin Hier, starts thus:

"We are going to be the largest net hirer of journalists in the world next year," AOL's media and studios division president David Eun said last month in an interview with Michael Learmonth of Ad Age. Eun suggested that AOL could double its existing stable of 500 full-time editorial staffers in addition to expanding its network of 40,000 freelance contributors. Many of the jobs will be added to its hyper-local venture, Patch, while the majority of AOL's freelancers will work for the company's content farms -- Seed and the recently acquired video production operation, StudioNow.

These two areas into which AOL is ambitiously expanding are the fastest growing sectors of the journalism market. Hyper-local networks like Outside.in and content farms such as Demand Media are flourishing. As Eun's bold prediction indicates, more and more journalists will end up working for new online content producers. What will these new gigs be like? To better understand, I reached out to people who have already worked with some of the big players.

And then gathered stories like this one about the worst -- and the biggest money maker -- of the bunch, Demand Media:

"A lot of my friends did it and we had a lot of fun with it," said one graduate of a top journalism graduate program when asked about her work for Demand Media. "We just made fun of whatever we wrote."

The former "content creator" -- that's what Demand CEO Richard Rosenblatt calls his freelance contributors -- asked to be identified only as a working journalist for fear of "embarrassing" her current employer with her content farm-hand past. She began working for Demand in 2008, a year after graduating with honors from a prestigious journalism program. It was simply a way for her to make some easy money. In addition to working as a barista and freelance journalist, she wrote two or three posts a week for Demand on "anything that I could remotely punch out quickly."

The articles she wrote -- all of which were selected from an algorithmically generated list -- included How to Wear a Sweater Vest" and How to Massage a Dog That Is Emotionally Stressed," even though she would never willingly don a sweater vest and has never owned a dog.

As if that weren't demoralizing enough, Demand pays the grand sum of about 15 bucks per piece in order to take advantage of struggling journalists. One free-lancer, who wrote for Demand to supplement his salary as an adjunct professor, only made it worthwhile by writing three pieces an hour for four hours a day. You can imagine the quality of the reporting. Oh, wait.

When the industry appears to be crumbling around us, you do what you gotta do. I'm sure that there are a good number of folks who swallow their pride just because they want to write. But please, let's don't call it journalism. Or kid ourselves that digital outfits like Demand are going to fill the void. bk

Jay Rosen on objectivity

From Pressthink, NYU prof. Jay Rosen's take on what "objectivity" is all about. What it isn't about is lack of opinion and the I-word. Journalism, after all, is the process of editting and choosing. What you leave in, what you leave out, what questions you ask, what you cover, what you don't.

Objective journalism is a form of persuasion, he writes, and what it is really about is damn good reporting -- and a lot of disclosure:

1. “Grounded in reporting” is far more important than “cured of opinion.” What editors and news executives should worry about is whether the news accounts delivered to users are well grounded in reporting. That’s the value added. That’s the sign of seriousness. That’s the journalism part. Original reporting and the discipline of verification—meaning, the account holds up under scrutiny—should be strict priorities. Whether the composer of the account has a view, comes to a conclusion, speaks with attitude (or declines these things) is far less important. Here, looser rules are better.

2. If objectivity is persuasion, it’s possible that its power to persuade can fade. This is particularly so because of what I said earlier: every act of journalism is saturated with judgment. By not disclosing such acts, “just the facts” sows the seeds of mistrust. All it takes is an accumulation of users who want to know where these judgments arise from. Ostensibly “objective” accounts will fail that test. Mistrust will rise. As the clamor grows, journalists may misidentify it as a demand for even more objectivity. Now you have something that looks a lot like a death spiral, at least for those users who are no longer persuaded. (In part because audience atomization has been overcome by the Internet.)

3. Disclosure sets the fairness bar higher. James Poniewozik of Time magazine was seeking an escape from that spiral when he said that reporters should disclose their political preferences:

Modern political journalism is based on the bogus concept of neutrality (that people can be steeped in campaigns yet not care who wins) and the legitimate ideal of fairness (that people can place intellectual integrity and rigor over their rooting interests). Voting and disclosing would expose the sham of neutrality—which few believe anyway—and compel opinion and news writers alike to prove, story by story, that fairness is possible anyway. Partisans, bloggers and media critics are toxically obsessed with ferreting out reporters’ preferences; treating them as shameful secrets only makes matters worse.

In this sense neutrality can hamper credibility because it masks the hard work of proving you can be fair despite the fact that you have your views.

4. The View from Nowhere may be harder to trust than “here’s where I’m coming from.” Objectivity is often seen as safer by self-styled traditionalists in the mainstream press. But I like to put the accent on what’s tendentious about it. So I make use of my own term, the View from Nowhere, to describe the ritualized uses of objectivity and suggest that there is something strained about them. Easing that strain is not impossible. It means shifting to a different rhetoric: “Here’s where I’m coming from,” sometimes called transparency. This is a different bid for trust. Instead of viewlessness, “You know where I stand; judge accordingly.”

5. In deciding what the rules should be, the wise newsroom will trade polarity for plurality. Lose the binary! Instead of two rigid poles—neutrality or ideology, news or opinion, reporter or blogger, adults or kids—I recommend a range of approaches that permit journalists to report what they know, say what they think, develop a point of view in interaction with events, and bid for the trust of users who have many more sources available to them. A plurality of permissible styles recognizes that trust is a puzzle unsolvable by a single system of signs.

and more:

Go here for a free guide to paying markets for essayists. Download at no charge for the next 30 days. Last updated, Dec. 2009. Author: Erika Dreifus. bk

looking for freelance love at 35,000 feet?

Go here for a listing of in flight magazines, organized by region. Great gig for freelance travel writers or wannabe freelance travle writers.. Rumor has it, airline magazines still pay. As in livable wages.
Once you get the actual listings (free on the website), you can probably find the contact info via the goog-lay. bk

the power of words: who controls the agenda?

Fierce media critic Glenn Greenwald excoriates the New York Times and other members of the mainstream media for backing down from using the word "torture" to describe water-boarding at the behest of the Bush administration.

This, according to a study by Harvard's Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy. The Bush administration-dictated euphemism of choice? "harsh interrogation techniques."

What's in a word? Lots. It's a pernicious case of letting the folks with the most vested interest in the outcome control the agenda: the press abdicating its role of watchdog.

There could be any number of reasons why the NYT played the toad in this case. I suspect a lot had to do with access to a very closed an secretive White House. Piss off your limited sources, and what access you had tends to dry up. All of which, it seems to me, seems to me to turn the First Amendment, and all its intent, on its head.

Back to Greenwald:

In response to the Harvard study documenting how newspapers labeled waterboarding as "torture" for almost 100 years until the Bush administration told them not to, The New York Times issued a statement justifying this behavior on the ground that it did not want to take sides in the debate. Andrew Sullivan, Greg Sargent and Adam Serwer all pointed out that "taking a side" is precisely what the NYT did: by dutifully complying with the Bush script and ceasing to use the term (replacing it with cleansing euphemisms), it endorsed the demonstrably false proposition that waterboarding was something other than torture. Yesterday, the NYT's own Brian Stelter examined this controversy and included a justifying quote from the paper's Executive Editor, Bill Keller, that is one of the more demented and reprehensible statements I've seen from a high-level media executive in some time (h/t Jay Rosen):

• Continue reading

Bill Keller, the executive editor of The Times, said the newspaper has written so much about the issue of water-boarding that "I think this Kennedy School study -- by focusing on whether we have embraced the politically correct term of art in our news stories -- is somewhat misleading and tendentious."

You can find the above links, a pdf of the Harvard story, and more thru Greenwald's piece. bk

geek-speak

In which the Onion reports on technology the way we wish, you know, tech beat reporters reported on technology. In this case, it's a new social network called Foursquare. From the infamous Onion:

NEW YORK—While millions of young, tech-savvy professionals already use services like Facebook and Twitter to keep in constant touch with friends, a new social networking platform called Foursquare has recently taken the oh, fucking hell, can't some other desperate news outlet cover this crap instead?

Launched last year, Foursquare is unique in that it not only allows users to broadcast their whereabouts, but also offers a number of built-in incentives, including some innovative new crap The New York Times surely has a throbbing hard-on for.

In fact, why don't we just let them report on this garbage and call it a day?

Compare, if you dare, to the New York Times piece on same. Meanwhile, back to The Onion, which also skewers that handy formula for writing a trend piece in which the expert quote follows close behind the nutgraf:

As you've no doubt guessed from reading a dozen similar articles in The Washington Post, now's the part of our "trend piece" where we quote an industry expert like Leonard Steinberg, a Boston University communications professor and specialist in his field who remarks in a rather defeated tone that Foursquare represents a revolutionary new way for businesses and customers to interact.

"Through its competitive elements like badges and points, Foursquare helps generate brand loyalty," said the Ph.D.-holding individual, whose decades in higher education were basically shit upon by our inane questions about various bits of Foursquare ephemera. "It's a unique and transformative social networking tool."

"Can I go now?" he added.

Love it. In every possible way. bk

... and we're back.

Well, sort of. With a backlog of interesting bits and pieces about the state of journalism these days. First up, a piece from the London Times by Ed Ceasar about the soaring interest in j. schools these days -- despite the dismal state of the industry itself:

A good job in journalism is a licence for nosiness, a soapbox on which to perorate and a backstage pass to the live performance of history. It can make the blood boil and the mind race and the days pass in an arrhythmic heartbeat. A bad job in journalism is like a bad job anywhere. Still, we must look like we’re having fun — almost every week I receive an email from some poor sap wanting to know how to break into the business. I tell them: starting a career in journalism has always been a crap shoot, and becoming successful is like finding Wonka’s golden ticket. There are, however, ways to up your chances.

Nicholas Tomalin — the wonderful, bombastic Sunday Times writer who died in 1973 reporting from the Golan Heights — thought he knew the answer. In 1969, a happier time for the industry, he began a piece in this magazine by asserting: “The only qualities essential for real success in journalism are rat-like cunning, a plausible manner and a little literary ability.” But if Tomalin were commissioned now, he would strike out that famous gambit and start again.

Today, you’ll need luck, flair, an alternative source of income, endless patience, an optimistic disposition, sharp elbows and a place to stay in London. But the essential quality for success now is surely tenacity. Look around the thinning newsrooms of the national titles. Look at the number of applicants for journalism courses, at the queue of graduates — qualified in everything except the only thing that matters, experience — who are desperate for unpaid work on newspapers and magazines. Look at the 1,200 people who applied in September for one reporter’s position on the new Sunday Times website. You’d shoot a horse with those odds.

And yet, in the UK as well here in the U.S., more folks appear to have caught the bug. They want in. What do you think is the draw? And why now? The Times' Ceasar gives a hint:

There will be those who could think of nothing worse than meeting poor Afghanis, or hoodwinking politicians, or testing the patience of Scotsmen. Fair enough — sell cars. But there will also be those for whom the idea of such encounters is intoxicating, and the prospect of reporting such experiences more thrilling still. These people, if they are lucky and tenacious enough, become journalists.

Let's hear your take. bk

Bloomberg on journalism

Apparently, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg is an iPad fiend. So says the New York Observer. Ironically, he's also a fan of paper, and reminds us what will save the publishing industry: Quality, not gadgetry:

"There is something to the content that we’ve forgotten about, and we’ve gotten so carried away with the technology.”

coming to a screen near you

Go here to read about Sports Illustrated's prototype magazine for the web, accessible via Google, and, at least as far as the prototype is concerned, combining pretty much the best of both print and digital journalism. the plan is that both the web version of the magazine and the Google app store from which you can buy it will be ready in the fall. From the story on "All Things Digital":

Sports Illustrated hasn’t come to Apple’s iPad yet, but the magazine is already showing off a new version of its future: A digital version designed with Google in mind.

This one, which Editor Terry McDonell showed off at Google’s I/O developer conference today, looks a whole lot like the one the publisher says it is bringing to Apple’s gadget soon. The real difference here is the way readers/buyers get their hands on the thing: Rather than buying it from Apple’s App Store and downloading it to your iPad, you would access it via your Web browser, after purchasing it from an app store Google manages.

And here's the prototype, which is pretty similar to the prototype SI developed for the iPad:

more on mags

The WSJ reports on a brand new crowd-sourced magazine, appropriated called "48 Hours Magazine" that was put together on the web over the course of one weekend.

It was all an experiment to use the internet to shake up the old way of producing a magazine. According to Mathew Honan, editor at Wired Magazine and one of the founders of the project, they put out a call to about 5000 likely suspects, asking for submissions, expecting maybe 500 and instead received 1500. From the article:

The magazine was sent to the printers on Sunday. Proofs of the 60-page edition will be back to the editors in about a week, Mr. Honan said, and the magazine will be shipped after that. A Web version is set to go up sometime in the next few days, he added.

There aren’t any subscribers because the magazine will be sold through a print-on-demand service called MagCloud, in another break from the traditional magazine model. So it’s still not clear just how many magazines will be shipped, or even what the exact price will be, although Mr. Honan guessed that it would be about $10 or $11. The magazine has four full-page ads, and with advertising and purchases expects to make enough to pay some of the staff and have money to invest in the next issue.

Mr. Honan said the editors plan to produce another edition of 48 Hours and that he thought the project showed that old media could move more quickly and could take advantage of the crowd-sourcing concept. “If you give people an outlet to do something interesting and cool they’ll kind of flock to it,” he said.

A great experiment and maybe a way to combine digital and print magazine journalism in a way that works. But what I couldn't help wondering when I saw the number of submissions: that's a lot of folks willing to do a lot of work on spec and/or for free. Just one more indication that journalists need day jobs? bk

news vs public relations

Just one example. Easy comparison.

News:

Two weeks ago, the government put out a round estimate of the size of the oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico: 5,000 barrels a day. Repeated endlessly in news reports, it has become conventional wisdom.

But scientists and environmental groups are raising sharp questions about that estimate, declaring that the leak must be far larger. They also criticize BP for refusing to use well-known scientific techniques that would give a more precise figure.

The criticism escalated on Thursday, a day after the release of a video that showed a huge black plume of oil gushing from the broken well at a seemingly high rate. BP has repeatedly claimed that measuring the plume would be impossible.

PR:

Subsea efforts continue to focus on, firstly, progressing options to stop the flow of oil from the well through interventions via the blow out preventer (BOP) and, secondly, attempts to contain the flow of oil at source to reduce the amount spreading on the surface. These efforts are being carried out in conjunction with governmental authorities and other industry experts.

Further investigation of the failed BOP, using remotely-operated vehicles and a variety of diagnostic techniques, has increased our understanding of the condition of the BOP and allowed planning to continue for a number of potential interventions, including for a so-called “top kill” of the well.

This would involve first injecting material of varying densities and sizes (also known as “junk shot”) into the internal spaces of the BOP to provide a seal, before pumping specialised heavy fluids into the well to prevent further flow up the well. Plans for this option are being developed in preparation for potential application next week.

Work continues to collect and disperse oil that has reached the surface of the sea. Over 530 vessels are involved in the response effort, including skimmers, tugs, barges and recovery vessels.

Over 120 flights have been made to apply dispersant to the spill since the response effort began.

it's the pix, stupid

A new MediaWeek survey shows that magazine readers overwhelmingly (92 percent) prefer print to online versions of their favorite mags. And hooray for those of us who read them -- and write for them.

Could it be the fact that most mags provide something lasting in the way of good photography, not to mention stories that have staying power -- and extend for more than a screen-and-a-half? Not for nothin' are magazines sometimes referred to as "books". From the story:

Amid print media's many struggles, polling by the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) Council finds people who subscribe to magazines are loyal to the medium, and in no hurry to ditch print magazines in favor of online versions.

And these people are scarcely technophobes, though, as many of them say magazine ads lead them to advertisers' Web sites.

Conducted in March and April among adults who subscribe to at least one magazine, the poll found 92 percent of respondents saying they receive print editions of magazines to which they subscribe. Nearly as many, 90 percent, said print is the format they prefer. Just 24 percent said they expect eventually to switch to an e-reader for their magazine consumption.

Indicating the role print publications now play in steering people to the Internet, though, 48 percent of respondents answered affirmatively when asked whether they "go online to find more information about the advertisements in your printed magazines." A somewhat larger number of them, 63 percent, said they'd do so "if the advertising in your printed subscription magazines was customized."

bias by photo editor..

... and headline.

Check this story from CJR that questions the WSJ's choice of a photo of Elena Kagan playing softball. Clearly, it was an odd picture to slap on the front page. Was the editor making a point, playing to the conservative audience? Has the paper changed under Rupert Murdoch? Writer Ryan Chittum, who once worked for the WSJ, says yes.

The post offers good examples of the ways in which the news can be biased in subtle ways: photos, headlines and subtle selections. Read it all here.

quick hits: then again not.

In case you missed these:

Newsweek is on the sale rack. Makes me sad, then again not. Since it changed its format this year, the name of the magazine has been a misnomer. Read more here and here.

Reporting via social media can be efficient and economical, then again.... Go here for an ooops story on how HuffPo came up with the WRONG Facebook page for the Times Square bomber.

On the other hand, here's how wired.com found the guy who found the prototype for the iPhone. Yep, it started with Facebook.

Finally, journalism is reportedly dying, but then again not. Go here for a story on the growth of sports journalism classes in university journalism programs. From the story, by award-winning sportswriter Dave Kindred:

Of the many reasons a man would want to be 21 again, number four or five on my list would be today’s full palate of journalistic choices. When I was 21, a reporter/writer interested in sports could work for a newspaper or magazine – end of story. Today’s students have newspapers and magazines (for a while, anyway) along with hundreds of outlets from the big boys at ESPN.com, AOL’s Fanhouse, Yahoo! Sports, and CBSSports.com to newspaper websites, blogs, and niche blogs reporting on every aspect of SportsWorld. Today’s 20somethings see sports journalists on television, hear them on radio, read their blogs, follow them on Twitter, friend them on Facebook.

"Sports journalism isn’t dying, it’s transforming," said Tim Franklin, once the editor of The Baltimore Sun and now director of the NSJC. "When I meet with students, they’re excited about the future. They will have a different career path than we had. But when they look around, they don’t see the abyss. They see a changing, but dynamic, landscape. . .

print stinks.

Love this quote from Anna Quindlen (thanks to Utah State journalism professor, Ted Pease):

The Book

"There's no question that reading off-paper, as I think of it, will increase in years to come.... And there's no question that once again we will be treated to lamentations suggesting that true literacy has become a lost art. The difference this time is that we will confront elitism from both sides. Not only do literary purists now complain about the evanescent nature of letters onscreen, the tech aficionados have become equally disdainful fo the old form. 'This book stinks,' read an online review of the bestseller Game Change before the release of the digital version. 'The thing reeks of paper and ink.'"

--Anna Quindlen, columnist and book reader, Newsweek, April 5, 2010 (http://www.newsweek.com/id/235551)

Gets your fingers dirty, too. On the other hand, rarely leaves you cursing the spinning beachball of death. bk

on the art of the obit: esp for comm 40

The best obituaries illuminate the real drama that is ordinary life. They can be at once touching and insightful, providing the reader with a look at a life well-lived as well as giving readers a hint at what the community values.

Here are two recent ones from the San Francisco Chronicle, celebrating the lives of two former staffers. The first, on retired reporter Malcolm Glover, not only sheds light on the life of an old-school reporter whose first martini was expertly mixed by Cary Grant, but also opens a window on police beat reporting:

"He was the original cop reporter," said a longtime colleague, retired Chronicle and Examiner reporter Larry Hatfield. "If it was a story in any way involving cops he was wonderful, because he could get the cops anywhere to talk. He was a good reporter."

The key was that Mr. Glover had worked so long in the police beat that he knew everyone, from the police chief on down, from way back. But as much as that, it was his smooth style on the phone and in person that turned stories.

"Malcolm never let me down," said John Koopman, who edited him as morning metro editor at the Examiner. "When you needed something, he'd get that sly grin, that twinkle in his eye and say, 'Gimme five minutes.'

"Then he'd go away and five minutes later he's got the chief on the line."

The second, on 28-year-old Alicia Parlette, connects you with a woman you never knew, but may wish that you did. It starts like this:

Alicia Parlette, who turned her incurable cancer diagnosis at age 23 into a Chronicle series about her experience, died just before noon Thursday at UCSF Medical Center.

She was 28.

Ms. Parlette's 17-part series, "Alicia's Story," drew tens of thousands of followers, who read about her trips to the doctor's office, the therapist's couch, her relationships with family and friends, and her faith in God.

DIY magazines

But is it journalism? Does it have to be?

Go here for the latest in self-publishing via MagCloud. Interesting questions arise as to the nature -- and future -- of magazine journalism. Your turn. bk

hello sweetheart, get me rewrite

Two reminders of what we've lost and maybe what we won't miss when it comes to the glory days of the newspaper.

First, from the New York Times, a piece by A. O. Scott on a film fest of 43 great newspaper pictures, starting soon in the Big Apple:

Remember newspapers? Neither do I, to tell you the truth, even though I’ve been working at this one for more than 10 years. But you have to go back a lot further— nearly half a century — to sample the sights, sounds and smells that still evoke the quintessence of print journalism in all its inky, hectic glory.

Or you could go to Film Forum, where a 43-movie monthlong series called The Newspaper Picture opens on Friday with Billy Wilder’s “Ace in the Hole.” The program is a crackerjack history lesson and also, perhaps, a valediction. Not a day goes by that we don’t read something — a tweet, a blog, maybe even a column — proclaiming the death of newspapers, either to mourn or to dance on the grave. And even if those old newsprint creatures survive, say by migrating to the magic land of the iPad, they sure ain’t what they used to be. Where are the crusty editors and fast-talking girl reporters of yesteryear? I’m peeking over the cubicle wall, and all I see are Web producers and videographers.

And then there's this, from The Pitch, categorized as "studies in crap". It's a slightly less elegaic look at newspapers as they were back in the mid-1960s via a thrift store book entitled "Your Career in Journalism" by M. L. Stein. Among the gems culled by blogger Alan Scherstuhl:

• 
  

"The journalist enjoys good standing in his community. He is even likely to be held in awe." (page 47).

"The day may not be far off when a city editor will say to a reporter, 'Check your space gear. You're going to the moon.'" (page 86).

"If you are a college graduate in journalism, you may land a job before you even leave the campus."

"The story that a reporter worried and sweated over will be read by thousands and perhaps millions of people who will be informed, enlightened or amused. ... He has prestige and influence that most persons can never hope to attain."

• And then there's this:
• 
  

  Sometimes, Stein seems admirably forward-thinking. He writes, "The door is no longer closed against you, girls, and you can often compete with men for the same positions at the same salary."
  
  But then he offers the girls this advice:

  "Let's assume the Indian ambassador to the United States and his wife visit your city. Someone from your paper will interview him on such weighty matters as East-West relations, India's neutrality policy, and so forth. But, as a reporter from the women's section, you will talk to Mrs. Ambassador about the problems and pleasures of being a diplomat's wife, her role in Washington, her views about American women, etc."

  Perhaps he would think more highly of women if the world's most famous girl reporter hadn't failed for decades to crack that Clark-is-Superman case.

• 
  

what's in a name?

To name or not to name, once again. Rather than going over old ground, go here from some previously charted territory on anonymity on the web, specifically as regards the odious juicy campus.

On a more releant note, the New York Times reports that several serious news sites are rethinking previous policies that let readers comment under the complete cloak of anonymity. Originally, reporter Richard Perez-Pena writes, opening up the web to any and all who wanted to join the conversation was looked upon, at least by some, as admirable:

From the start, Internet users have taken for granted that the territory was both a free-for-all and a digital disguise, allowing them to revel in their power to address the world while keeping their identities concealed.

A New Yorker cartoon from 1993, during the Web’s infancy, with one mutt saying to another, “On the Internet, nobody knows you’re a dog,” became an emblem of that freedom. For years, it was the magazine’s most reproduced cartoon.

When news sites, after years of hanging back, embraced the idea of allowing readers to post comments, the near-universal assumption was that anyone could weigh in and remain anonymous. But now, that idea is under attack from several directions, and journalists, more than ever, are questioning whether anonymity should be a given on news sites.

It's a good question, one that many big thinkers are rethinking. Back to Perez-Pena:

Some prominent journalists weighed in on the episode, calling it evidence that news sites should do away with anonymous comments. Leonard Pitts Jr., a Miami Herald columnist, wrote recently that anonymity has made comment streams “havens for a level of crudity, bigotry, meanness and plain nastiness that shocks the tattered remnants of our propriety.”

No one doubts that there is a legitimate value in letting people express opinions that may get them in trouble at work, or may even offend their neighbors, without having to give their names, said William Grueskin, dean of academic affairs at Columbia’s journalism school.

“But a lot of comment boards turn into the equivalent of a barroom brawl, with most of the participants having blood-alcohol levels of 0.10 or higher,” he said. “People who might have something useful to say are less willing to participate in boards where the tomatoes are being thrown.”

All of which is another reminder that one of the issues in all things digital is the fact that the technology often outpaces our ability to think about it. bk

on the job training?

... or slave labor. Is an internship by any other name, well, still an internship? You choose.

Is the experience worth the (lack of) paycheck? Or are eager college kids -- in a down economy -- being taken advantage of by everyone on the j-side from Huffington Post (which once auctioned off an internship to the highest bidder at a charity auction) to Rolling Stone.

Go here to read a New York Times piece questioning the legality of unpaid internships. The piece also points out that many unpaid internships often have little experiential value as well as also pondering whether kids from wealthy families end up getting an unfair leg up the career ladder. From the story:

One Ivy League student said she spent an unpaid three-month internship at a magazine packaging and shipping 20 or 40 apparel samples a day back to fashion houses that had provided them for photo shoots.

At Little Airplane, a Manhattan children’s film company, an N.Y.U. student who hoped to work in animation during her unpaid internship said she was instead assigned to the facilities department and ordered to wipe the door handles each day to minimize the spread of swine flu.

Tone Thyne, a senior producer at Little Airplane, said its internships were usually highly educational and often led to good jobs.

Concerned about the effect on their future job prospects, some unpaid interns declined to give their names or to name their employers when they described their experiences in interviews.

While many colleges are accepting more moderate- and low-income students to increase economic mobility, many students and administrators complain that the growth in unpaid internships undercuts that effort by favoring well-to-do and well-connected students, speeding their climb up the career ladder.

Sticking with the publishing side, Daily Finance blogger Jeff Bercovici notes that The Atlantic, possibly red-faced after the Times' piece, has announced that it will start paying its interns. But he also includes some horror stories about pubs that don't -- despite the fact that the law says employers must provide either cash or college credit along with meaningful work:

But many other companies employ interns who receive neither cash nor credit -- even though such an arrangement falls into exactly the legal "grey zone" Atlantic Media is exiting. A search of online job listings in magazine publishing turns up plenty of unpaid internships for non-students, although in most cases credit can be had for those who want it. A listing for a fashion internship at Interview magazine specifically states, "College credit is not required," while one at Us Weekly merely says credit is "available." It's not much different in online media: A spokesman for the Huffington Post says the site " has both paid and unpaid interns, who work at the site for the training, experience, and exposure." Adds the spokesman, "We're careful to follow all employment guidelines."

Those guidelines, however, are fairly subjective and, taken literally, rather unfavorable to employers. They require, among other things, that any company employing unpaid interns derive "no immediate advantage" from the work they do to ensure that the emphasis is on job training, not exploitation. That rule seems to be honored mostly in the breach at places like Rolling Stone, which is owned by the same company as Us Weekly, Wenner Media. A former intern there says her job was mostly transcribing interview tapes and fetching coffee for editors.

the war in Iraq, via social media

SF Chronicle Executive VP Phil Bronstein talks up the value of social media when it comes to war coverage, vis-a-vis WikiLeaks' recent leaks of encrypted government footage that tracks what transpired when an Apache helicopter crew opened fire on a dozen people -- including two Reuters photographers -- on the streets of Baghdad back in 2007.

He contrasts war coverage via social media versus his own reporting in the Phillipines over 20 years ago, when his notebook and his photog's camera were the only instruments of recorded fact.

From his piece in today's Huffpo:

I've seen a fair number of people killed in countries at war, including combatants, journalists and civilians. Even at ground level, though, in the midst of bone and blood spray, sorting things out is near impossible.

I am sure of one thing: tragedy aside, this is all good for us in the bigger sense, starting with the video release. Transparency is the victor here. More information and even more yelling back and forth gives everyone more data and opportunity to make up their own minds. And it keeps life-and-death topics like war fully in the bull's-eye heat of aggressive social interaction.

That's what's really changed since my war correspondent days. No one today has to be a passive non-combatant in the important moments of our culture.

jack on the radio: SCU journalist makes good... again!

Here's Jack! Listen to his interview on wjox.fm in Birmingham, via this podcast, as he discusses the latest installment of his USA Today series on the $$$$$$$$$$$ of collegiate sports. Listen for the number of documents he and his partners went through -- and his dismissal of a million bucks or so as "chump change."

Meanwhile, here's a taste of the latest story in the series:

Michigan State outspent the upstart [Northern Iowa] Panthers by $9.4 million to $1.5 million in men's hoops last year. Spartans coach Tom Izzo, who will be participating in his sixth Final Four this weekend, makes more than $3 million a year — more than 10 times what Northern Iowa's Ben Jacobson had been making.

Yet their athletic departments have one thing in common: Without millions in help from their universities, neither could pay its bills. Michigan State's $81 million budget last year included $3.7 million in university subsidies. Half of Northern Iowa's $17 million budget came from subsidies and student fees.

http://podcasting.fia.net/5018/4250705.mp3

whither the white house press corps?

Will twitter, facebook and whatever new big thing is just waiting around the corner mean the death of the (relevance) of the White House press corps?

And does it matter that power can take its message directly to the people?

We've noted here that news orgs, in an attempt to conserve resources, have been folding their Washington bureaus, thus diminishing the number of journalistic filters nosing around the heart of our nation's government. On the other hand, do reporters who are invited into the inner sanctum of the Washington press corps always get the job done? (Note: the run-up to the war in Iraq)

The Daily Beast's Lloyd Grove tackles the question of whether news that's direct-from-white house-to-your house is not only going to clear out the chairs in the briefing room, but also undermine the public's right to know:

For as long as there has been a White House, a healthy tension has existed between the president, who seeks to convince the citizenry with calibrated messages and images, and the middlemen of the Fourth Estate, who traditionally convey, interpret, rebut, deride, and otherwise filter those messages and images. Every so often, the president takes his revenge, as Obama did on Friday, mocking skeptical reporters who have been questioning the positive impact of health-care reform. "Can you imagine if some of these reporters were working on a farm and you planted some seeds and they came out next day and they looked—Nothing’s happened! There’s no crop! We’re gonna starve! Oh, no! It’s a disaster!" Obama told a town meeting in Maine. “It’s been a week, folks. So before we find out if people like health-care reform, we should wait to see what happens when we actually put it into place. Just a thought.”

Until relatively recently, middlemen like [CBS senior White House correspondent Bill] Plante had the upper hand, and the media filter was robust—notwithstanding persistent and clever attempts by various White House communications gurus to bypass the journalistic kibitzing. But these days, as Plante acknowledges, the filter is fraying.

And the MSM’s relevance is up for grabs.

At the very moment that social media and enhanced technology are proliferating and gaining audience share by the tens of millions, giving President Obama powerful interactive tools to communicate directly with the public, the old media are in a world of hurt.

With their audiences eroding along with advertising revenue, long-established television and print outlets are painfully cinching their belts. They are shutting down Washington bureaus, firing hundreds of experienced journalists and—as with a planned presidential trip this Wednesday to Prague, where Obama will sign an arms-control deal and meet with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev—not even anteing up for the usual White House press charter. Members of the press corps who wish to cover the visit will have to make their own way to Prague by flying commercial.

Two screens (I mean pages) later, the last word goes to veteran White House correspondent, 89-year-old Helen Thomas:

Thomas, at 89, might have slowed down a bit since her wire-service days, but she’s still combat-ready with a sharply honed question. “The difference between a news conference and interviews is that the questions from the ‘rabble’ will come from left field,” she said, “and they will ask something that will really startle him” and push the president off his talking points.

Thomas is naturally skeptical of the new media and all the Facebooking and tweeting. “I think we’re all suffering from the real lack of true communication,” she said. “We can be ignored totally—almost. The White House feels they have other ways.” She also lamented the proliferation of bloggers, some of whom are formally accredited to the White House.

“There’s no accountability for a blogger,” she scoffed. “They can ruin lives, reputations, and once you send something into the air, it’s going to land, and there’s nothing that can curb them from saying anything they want. Everybody with a laptop thinks they’re a journalist, and everybody with a cellphone thinks they’re a photographer.”

journalism's top ten

NYU came up with a list of the top ten works of journalism over the past decade. Note No. 2. A note of validation for all those who fell in love with Adrian Nicole LeBlanc's work in either Advanced J. or Mag. J. -- or who have come to appreciate the importance of immersion journalism.

2 Adrian Nicole LeBlanc
Random Family: Love, Drugs, Trouble, and Coming of Age in the Bronx, 2003

A model of immersion reporting and narrative storytelling, this deeply empathic, deeply disturbing portrait of life among the underclass challenges the received notions of poverty theorists and ordinary readers on the left and the right alike.

Go here for a review of the book. bk