JSchool::Faculty Blogs

Props from Pittsburgh Magazine (JSchool Director)

Wed, 28 Jul 2010 20:04:21 +0200

The JSchool received some good publicity from the current issue of Pittsburgh Magazine (pittsburghmagazine.com).

The article reviews well known majors at lots of colleges and universities in the region. For Ohio University, Pittsburgh Magazine suggests that "Right" brainers consider, you guessed it, journalism.

"As journalism moves online, the news is that Ohio University's E.W. Scripps School of Journalism continues to rank among the top journalism schools in the United States. Majors can choose nontraditional undergrad course sequences such as advertising, online journalism and public relations."

Unfortunately, the article also contains a common factual error in implying that "famous alumni include TODAY's Matt Lauer." In fact, Matt graduated with a degree from the School of Telecommunications*, not Journalism. But hey, it certainly is the case -- as was also pointed out -- that "that's why a Scripps undergrad usually lands an internship on that NBC-TV show each year."

I should point out that sometimes we are lucky enough to have TWO interns at a time at the TODAY show. That would not happen without Matt Lauer's loyalty to Ohio University.

*Now called the School of Media Arts and Studies.

Good advice from an organizer (JSchool Director)

Sat, 24 Jul 2010 20:02:30 +0200

Samantha Bartlett, who is heading up the JSchool's social media account next year, posted valuable advice about how to stay organized.

Small Papers, Big Courage (Community Journalism)

Sat, 24 Jul 2010 20:02:29 +0200

I recently attended the annual conference of the International Society of Weekly Newspaper Editors, which this year was held in and around Richmond, Ky., and Eastern Kentucky University. ISWNE is a small but active group of mostly independent weekly newspaper editors from the U.S., Canada, Britain, Australia, and some other nations.

Part of the conference is an awards banquet, and this year's Eugene Cervi Award for outstanding service went to the Gish family of Whitesburg, Ky., and their weekly newspaper, The Mountain Eagle.

In community-journalism circles, The Mountain Eagle is a bit of a legend. Tom and Pat Gish bought the paper in 1956, and over several decades they took on local corruption and crusaded for their community, all the while facing death threats, harassment, thefts, even arson. They took on big issues, too, such as the powerful strip-mining industry in their part of the Appalachians.

When they took over the Mountain Eagle, they changed the newspaper's motto to "It Screams!" When the newspaper office was firebombed in 1974, the Gishes published from their home under a new motto. "It Still Screams!" The newspaper still publishes its blend of solid local coverage with principled crusading, under the management of the Gishes' son, Ben.

The Gishes are not alone in being modern-day examples of courageous community journalists, but with that comes consequences that Pulitzer-seeking major dailies don't experience. Al Cross of the University of Kentucky, who directs the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues, put it this way: "It is more difficult to practice ethical, hard-nosed journalism in smaller communities than it is in big cities. We all know the reasons: personal connections, organizational obligations, business pressures and so on. But if community journalism is to be more than the red-headed stepchild of our craft, if it is to fulfill the promise of the First Amendment for its readers, viewers and listeners, courage is essential."

Journalism professor Judy Muller of the Annenberg School at USC recently told the Texas Panhandle Press Association, "“You live next to the people you write about, and that takes tremendous courage, to report the truth."

Many times, journalism students are put off by the idea of "community journalism" because they believe it to be "boring" and of little consequence. When I tell students about 'the little papers that could,' most of them become inspired. But the discussion of the basic courage it takes to do basic journalism at the community level often is harder to explain.

One poignant example, however, comes from Mary Lou Montgomery, editor of the Courier-Post in Hannibal, Missouri, who visited the School of Journalism. One account she told was of a fatal vehicle crash involving a car and a school bus; the driver of the car died. He also happened to be the son of a local dentist--Montgomery's dentist. Mary Lou's account of the anguish she felt for the man "who gave my little girls their smiles," but her professional obligation to cover the event because it was, indeed, serious local news.

The personal connections journalists have with their communities are real and often powerful, and are tested on a regular basis simply because much of what is "news" is not at all happy. It is easy for a correspondent from a major news worker to drop into a small town to cover a mine collapse or a flood, but when she reports her story and flies off to the next assignment, that relationship essentially ends. The journalists who live in the community must face the people they write about.

Not Insignificant (Community Journalism)

Sat, 24 Jul 2010 20:02:29 +0200

Several years ago, when the venerable Wall Street Journal was up for sale by Dow Jones and being aggressively pursued by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., we witnessed on a grand scale how the "community journalism" issue too often flies under the radar.

In nearly all of he media coverage of the run-up to Murdoch's eventual purchase of the WSJ and its subsidiaries, the emphasis from media watchers, media scholars, and industry leaders was "what will happen to the Wall Street Journal"? Of almost no interest was "What will happen to the Ottaway Newspapers," about two dozen community newspapers that were owned by Dow Jones and also up for sale. One of the few articles about the Ottaway papers, in the Boston Globe, quoted Murdoch as dismissing them as "those silly little Ottaway papers."

The truth was, those "silly little papers" were immensely profitable for Dow Jones. The year before the sale, they collectively made $48.2 million from $252.2 million in revenue, a profit of nearly 20 percent. That same year, the WSJ group (including the WSJ and Barron's magazine) made just $33.9 million on more than $1 billion in revenue, barely 3 percent in profits.

Those "silly little papers" also tended to do pretty good journalism. Many of them were regular recipients of awards from their state press associations, but also provide the only source of dependable local news for their communities.

From a purely economic standpoint, community media (especially community newspapers) are a very large and significant part of the journalism industry. At the local level, they provide effective and affordable venues for local advertisers (who also happen to be members of the community).

They also dominate in terms of total eyeballs. For example, in the U.S. newspaper industry, the most recent comparison (from 2004) showed that 97 percent of all newspapers listed the Editor & Publisher yearbook were "small" (circulations below 50,000). The 9,100 "small" newspapers had a combined circulation of 108.9 million; the 217 major metro dailies had combined circulations of 38.2 million. There is crossover, of course -- many people read a major daily in their region (or one of the "national" papers, such as the WSJ or USAToday) as well as their community papers.

From a journalism education standpoint, we journalism professors also know full well that most of our students rely on community media for their first jobs out of college, and that most of our alumni work at community media. Community media vastly outnumber the "marquee" media with national reputations, and a look at the job listings shows that while those marquee media outlets are laying off veterans in droves, community media are still hiring.

And, finally, as journalists and journalism scholars, we have to remember that what we consider "significant" is so much ivory tower hubris. It's what the public considers significant that matters. And in the Boston Globe's lone article about the Ottaway papers being sold, this comment from a small-town business owner pretty much represents what the public wants:

"'Certainly we're all talking about it, and we're all concerned about it,' said Peter T. Kavanaugh, the president of La-Z-Boy Furniture Galleries of Dartmouth, a longtime advertiser in the Standard-Times. 'The Ottaway papers tend to be local papers. They're not centralized. If any of these papers were to lose that local flavor, the readership would plunge. And that would create a void for the local advertisers.'

Two journalism students receive Gilman Scholarships for study abroad (JSchool Director)

Thu, 22 Jul 2010 08:01:28 +0200

Just saw in OU's Compass online news service that two of our students received significant scholarships to study abroad. Congrats to Alexandra Motz and Crystalyn Thomas-Davis, who will use the Gilman Scholarships for specialized language study, according to the article.

"Motz, a senior journalism major from Cincinnati, hopes that studying abroad will give her the opportunity to enter into travel reporting. She will study documentary production and photography in addition to Spanish in Costa Rica and is currently sending samples of her work to travel websites."

Alexandra Motz

"Thomas-Davis, a senior broadcast journalism major and African-American studies minor from Cincinnati, plans to become a journalist who specializes in issues regarding children and education. She would also like to publish books on that topic."

Crystalyn Thomas-Davis

Coolest summer class? Documentary storytelling (in The ’Zig) (JSchool Director)

Thu, 22 Jul 2010 08:01:28 +0200

This summer students from the Scripps College have been producing documentaries in Germany, mostly in and around the former East German city of Leipzig (aka "The 'Zig," according to one student).

The course is being taught by Professors Frederick Lewis (Media Arts and Studies) and Sam Girton (School of Visual Communication). The topics students are covering in their documentaries run the gamut, but trust me, not one of them is a fluff piece.

Truth is, I haven't even seen any of them yet, but based on what the producers are writing in their blogs, I can tell that these productions will have serious content. And I also can tell just by reading many of the blog entries that the experience has been profoundly important. What won't necessarily be obvious is that most of the students on this program are only part way through their education at Ohio University.

I expect that the work they are producing (even as I write this blog post) will be the envy of all OU summer study abroad programs. I also wouldn't be surprised if some of the pieces end up winning awards, not to mention getting the participants jobs when they graduate.

Here's a brief preview:

Read more blog posts about the Conne Island project.

Unemployed Remain Out of Work Despite Job Training (Tatge: Business Reporting)

Tue, 20 Jul 2010 19:00:40 +0200

NYT – Hundreds of thousands of Americans have enrolled in federally financed training programs in recent years, only to remain out of work. That has intensified skepticism about training as a cure for unemployment. Even before the recession created the bleakest job market in more than a quarter-century, job training was already producing disappointing results. A [...]

Israel Valle at a city work force center in Brooklyn.

Even before the recession created the bleakest job market in more than a quarter-century, job training was already producing disappointing results. A study conducted for the Labor Department tracking the experience of 160,000 laid-off workers in 12 states from mid-2003 to mid-2005 — a time of economic expansion — found that those who went through training wound up earning little more than those who did not, even three and four years later. “Over all, it appears possible that ultimate gains from participation are small or nonexistent,” the study concluded.

In the last 18 months, the Obama administration has embraced more promising approaches to training focused on faster-growing areas like renewable energy and health care. But most money has been directed at the same sorts of programs that in past years have largely failed to steer laid-off workers toward new careers, say experts, and now the number of job openings is vastly outnumbered by people out of work.

Most job training is financed through the federal Workforce Investment Act, which was written in 1998 — a time when hiring was extraordinarily robust. Then, simply teaching jobless people how to use computers and write résumés put them on a path to paychecks. Today, even highly skilled people with job experience of two decades or more languish among the unemployed. Whole industries are being scaled down by automation, the shifting of work overseas and the recession.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/19/business/19training.html

Steve Jobs Attacks Media Over iPhone Problem (Tatge: Media Literacy)

Tue, 20 Jul 2010 18:48:10 +0200

NYT – By now, most people know what happens when your fingers come in contact with the lower left-hand corner of the iPhone 4 — are you there? — but it took the touch of an old-line, nontech tester of technology to get Apple to admit as much. When Steve Jobs took the stage on Friday to defend [...]

When Steve Jobs took the stage on Friday to defend the iPhone 4 against criticism that it had reception problems, he made his feelings about the press abundantly, peevishly clear.

“This has been blown so out of proportion that it’s incredible. It’s fun to have a story, but it’s not fun to be on the other side,” he told reporters.

Even as he apologized and acknowledged that there was indeed a problem, he was joined by Scott Forstall, a senior vice president at Apple, who attacked an article in The New York Times that blamed an interaction with the phone’s software as “patently false,” and then Mr. Jobs went on to call a Bloomberg article that suggested the company knew about the problem last year a “total crock.”

In general, he suggested that media organizations were just making blood sport of a company that had sold three million handsets in just three weeks: “I guess it’s just human nature, when you see someone get successful you just want to tear it down.”

The iPhone’s antenna problems might have remained a dust-up between Apple fanboys and skeptical bloggers except that Consumer Reports — that stolid, old-media tester of everything from flooring to steam mops for the last 74 years — came out with a report detailing the issue and concluding that “due to this problem, we can’t recommend the iPhone 4.”

How did Consumer Reports make Apple blink? In large measure, the article in Consumer Reports was devastating precisely because the magazine (and its Web site) are not part of the hotheaded digital press. Although Gizmodo and other techie blogs had reached the same conclusions earlier, Consumer Reports made a noise that was heard beyond the Valley because it has a widely respected protocol of testing and old-world credibility. Mr. Jobs acknowledged as much, saying, “We were stunned and upset and embarrassed by the Consumer Reports stuff, and the reason we didn’t say more is because we didn’t know enough.”

The organization — Consumer Reports is owned by the nonprofit Consumers Union — sells its subscribers dutiful research rather than pithy discourse, and it often goes unnoticed unless you are in the market for a new car or toaster. This time, its tests became an inflection point. (One that many tech reporters say Consumer Reports promoted endlessly, but who can blame them?)

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/19/business/media/19carr.html

http://online.wsj.com/video/apple-ceo-steve-jobs-give-everybody-a-free-case/09768FB0-8327-4DA6-941F-FFB3E5D327BB.html

Come to OU and create media (JSchool Director)

Tue, 20 Jul 2010 16:00:45 +0200

In this blog post I want to call attention to how incoming students can get hands-on experience from the "get go."

In case you haven't noticed, the very top line of the JSchool website is a list of links to student-produced media. This past year I got to add several new publications to the list, requiring me to shrink the font size down to an almost unreadable size. Here's an easy-to-read version of the list, with a brief description of each outlet:

ACRN stands for All Campus Radio Network. Better known around here as The Rock Lobster. The website's about section describes ACRN as "an all student run college radio station broadcasting ... on high bandwidth, playing a 'college rock' format (with specialty shows as well!)." While a relatively small number of journalism students want to become DJs, a good number do want to write about music -- concert previews, interviews, reviews, etc. ACRN's website is a great outlet for such writing.

ATHENSi.com is a comprehensive portal site run by the JSchool. The site functions entirely by RSS, so it updates 24/7 with news from many of the mainstream news organizations in Athens (e.g., The Post, the Athens News, WOUB), community news, blogs, podcasts, entertainment news, etc., etc. If you live in Athens, Ohio and have a blog, the JSchool probably will want to include it.

Backdrop is a student-created glossy magazine covering entertainment, health (including a humorous and often frank look at the college sex scene), and other sundry topics -- mostly on the lighter side.

College Green is a great outlet for journalists and other writers interested in ecology and the environment. The site includes videos as well as text/photo stories, so it's a good opportunity to get some multimedia skills while staying green.

The Essay Magazine is a collaboration of students across Scripps College. The web publication includes strong photography, video and writing. Another terrific outlet for multimedia and thoughtful writing. And another example of student-created media.

INC will look familiar to readers who frequent the JSchool website. We host it, but it is produced entirely by students in the Society of Professional Journalists chapter here at OU. According to the website, "regular features include Scripps news, Q&As with Scripps alumni, internship listings and columns by the Scripps community."

InterActivist is a print/web publication that focuses on progressive issues in Athens and the region. The online version includes multimedia, which allows students who write about activism and social justice to develop their new media skills.

MidDay, short for "Athens MidDay," is a live television newscast produced by students in the broadcast journalism sequence in the JSchool as well as students in the School of Media Arts and Studies. The TV program is shown on cable channel 25 in Athens, available on campus and throughout the community on Time Warner. The website includes extended stories and interviews, as well as reporter blogs.

OJ, short for Ohio Journalist, is a web-only magazine published by journalism students in the newsletter journalism course (JOUR 437). Stories focus on the JSchool's alumni, students, and faculty.

SEO, or Southeast Ohio Magazine, is a print/web magazine that focuses on the region surrounding Athens, Ohio. According to SEO's new website, "Southeast Ohio is the only magazine specifically for residents in the 20-county region of Ohio, Kentucky and West Virginia. The magazine aims to engage the reader with personal, lively profiles of one of the nation's most under-appreciated areas. Being America's only student-run regional magazine, Southeast Ohio generates a fresh look at the region with every issue. It is the staff's goal to provide our readers with unique news, issues, entertainment, history and trends pertinent and special to Southeast Ohio and its readers." The magazine is produced by students enrolled in JOUR 431.

Speakeasy was one of the earliest student produced web publications to appear on the scene in Athens. According to the website, "Speakeasy is a student-run, alternative Web magazine serving the Ohio University campus in Athens, Ohio. We have a staff of 50+ ... [S]taff members are writers, editors, copy editors, photographers, multimedia producers, graphic designers and bloggers." Stories include text/photos & video.

The Post, the granddaddy of student media at Ohio University, is an independent daily print/web newspaper. One of three newspapers published in Athens, Ohio (see below for the other two), The Post is a journalistic force much admired or criticized, depending on the day of the week. The fact is, what The Post writes in its pages matters. To students, to faculty, and to the administration.

Thread Magazine, another of the new web-only publications to hit the scene in 2009-2010, calls itself "the guidebook for encouraging the creation of a personal style through confident self-expression while showcasing Athens fashion culture. Also, we hope to highlight a fashion identity through activism and cultural influence." Besides the stories there are the excellent fashion pix. To look good, check it out.

WOUB News is radio. It's TV. And it's online. The public broadcast station (NPR/PBS affiliation) has been around a long, long time. Want to get on-air experience? You can start working your way up the food chain your first year at Ohio University. Stay with it and you can get some serious broadcast experience before you graduate.

Janet Jackson – Super Bowl halftime 2004 (Tatge: Digital Journalism)

Wed, 14 Jul 2010 23:28:22 +0200

Janet Jackson – Super Bowl halftime 2004Follow my videos on vodpod

Janet Jackson – Super Bowl halftime 2004
Follow my videos on vodpod

F.C.C. Indecency Policy Rejected on Appeal (Tatge: Media Law)

Wed, 14 Jul 2010 23:16:25 +0200

A federal appeals court struck down a Federal Communications Commission policy on indecency Tuesday, saying that regulations barring the use of “fleeting expletives” on radio and television violated the First Amendment because they were vague and could inhibit free speech. The decision, which many constitutional scholars expect to be appealed to the Supreme Court, stems from a [...]

The decision, which many constitutional scholars expect to be appealed to the Supreme Court, stems from a challenge by Fox, CBS and other broadcasters to the F.C.C.’s decision in 2004 to begin enforcing a stricter standard of what kind of language is allowed on free, over-the-air television.

The stricter policy followed several incidents that drew widespread public complaint, including Janet Jackson’s breast-baring episode at the 2004 Super Bowl and repeated instances of profanity by celebrities, including Cher, Paris Hilton and Bono, during the live broadcasts of awards programs. The Janet Jackson incident did not involve speech but it drew wide public outrage that spurred a crackdown by the F.C.C.

In a unanimous three-judge decision, the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in New York said that the F.C.C.’s current policy created “a chilling effect that goes far beyond the fleeting expletives at issue here” because it left broadcasters without a reliable guide to what the commission would find offensive.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/14/business/media/14indecent.html

Why Journalism Needs Government Help (Tatge: Media Literacy)

Wed, 14 Jul 2010 23:11:34 +0200

We have entered a momentous period in the history of the American press. The invention of new communications technologies—especially the Internet—is transforming the human capacity to speak, perhaps as monumentally as the invention of the printing press in the 15th century. This is facilitating the largest and fastest expansion of global economic growth in human [...]

At the same time, however, the financial viability of the U.S. press has been shaken to its core. The proliferation of communications outlets has fractured the base of advertising and readers. Newsrooms have shrunk dramatically and foreign bureaus have been decimated. My best estimate is that there are presently only a few dozen full-time foreign correspondents from the U.S. covering all of China, despite the critical importance of that nation to our future.

Both the Federal Communications Commission and the Federal Trade Commission are undertaking studies of ways to ensure the steep economic decline faced by newspapers and broadcast news does not deprive Americans of the essential information they need as citizens. One idea under consideration is enhanced public funding for journalism.

The idea of public funding for the press stirs deep unease in American culture. To many it seems inconsistent with our strong commitment, embodied in the First Amendment, to having a free press capable of speaking truth to power and to all of us. This press is a kind of public trust, a fourth branch of government. Can it be trusted when the state helps pay for it?

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704629804575324782605510168.html?KEYWORDS=Journalism+needs+government

iTunes hacks, OU experiment, MU Direct summer class (Give the 'Net credit)

Wed, 14 Jul 2010 18:15:06 +0200

I'm glad I got it resolved, and I'm not too worried about getting my money back from the credit card company. I'm just disappointed with Apple on this process. It's got to be pretty obvious to them that these applications aren't on any of the devices associated with my account. You'd think they'd just be able to credit and refund them. However, their solution is to let the credit card companies deal with it. Related posts:

iTunes shuffle is NOT random (and I’m OK with that) After about an hour, I came to my senses. Using...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.I'm glad I got it resolved, and I'm not too worried about getting my money back from the credit card company. I'm just disappointed with Apple on this process. It's got to be pretty obvious to them that these applications aren't on any of the devices associated with my account. You'd think they'd just be able to credit and refund them. However, their solution is to let the credit card companies deal with it. Related posts:

iTunes shuffle is NOT random (and I’m OK with that) After about an hour, I came to my senses. Using...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Small Investors Shed Stocks, Run For Safety After Suffering Losses (Tatge: Business Reporting)

Mon, 12 Jul 2010 14:17:31 +0200

WSJ – Many individual investors are running for cover. Small investors’ faith in stocks, which surged in the 1990s, has collapsed since the technology-stock debacle and the Enron and WorldCom scandals of 2000-2002. The 2007-2009 financial crisis only made things worse. Now, the pullback among ordinary investors means they are a declining force in a [...]

WSJ – Many individual investors are running for cover.

Small investors’ faith in stocks, which surged in the 1990s, has collapsed since the technology-stock debacle and the Enron and WorldCom scandals of 2000-2002. The 2007-2009 financial crisis only made things worse. Now, the pullback among ordinary investors means they are a declining force in a market that is increasingly dominated by professionals.

Some were tantalized by equities during the 70% rally that began in March 2009 and ran through April. But mutual-fund data and other clues suggest that that brief infatuation has ended.

Individual investors were important market pillars in the 1990s, but their flight from stocks is changing the market dynamic. By adding money to mutual funds, individuals helped push stocks higher in the 1990s and to a lesser extent from 2003 through 2006. Now they are moving money out again on balance, making them a drag on the market.

Ordinary investors are returning to the cautious mentality they developed during the 1970s. That was the last extended period of stock weakness, after which it took many people a decade or more to get comfortable with stocks again.

History suggests that individuals eventually will return to stocks, as they did in the 1980s and, even more strongly, in the 1990s. But rebuilding their confidence could take time, says Brian Reid, chief economist of the Investment Company Institute. Historically, it has taken an extended period of stock success to lure individuals back after long periods of disaffection.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704545004575353102793970916.html?mod=ITP_pageone_0

Having Conquered Business News, Bloomberg Looks to Law (Tatge: Business Reporting)

Mon, 12 Jul 2010 02:50:40 +0200

WSJ – Michael Bloomberg built a $6 billion-a-year business by taking a mystifying bundle of financial data and making it indispensable to Wall Street professionals. Now his company is wagering it can do the same for lawyers. With Bloomberg Law, the company’s entry into the market for electronic legal research, it moves into direct competition [...]

WSJ – Michael Bloomberg built a $6 billion-a-year business by taking a mystifying bundle of financial data and making it indispensable to Wall Street professionals. Now his company is wagering it can do the same for lawyers.

With Bloomberg Law, the company’s entry into the market for electronic legal research, it moves into direct competition with Westlaw and LexisNexis, two services that dominate a business that generates $8 billion a year in revenue.

Westlaw and LexisNexis are as deeply woven into the lives of lawyers as Bloomberg terminals are for traders. Westlaw, which is owned by Thomson Reuters Corp., and LexisNexis, a unit ofReed Elsevier, employ more than a thousand lawyers apiece who organize, summarize and analyze the hundreds of thousands of cases and laws added to their databases every year. Both services have undergone, or are undergoing, overhauls designed in part to make searching for documents easier for new generations of lawyers who grew up on Google.

To get its foot in the door, Bloomberg offered some prominent law firms free access to the service, touting that it not only helps lawyers find and interpret opinions and statutes, as other services do, but allows them to tap Bloomberg’s reservoir of company data to land new clients. Many of those free trials expire this summer and Bloomberg is busy trying to convert users into paying clients. Bloomberg Law is priced at a flat fee of $450 per attorney per month, in contrast to rivals, which charge by use and type of content.

Bloomberg Law says its selling point is the news and company information and financial data it has pulled from the core terminal product and woven into the legal-research materials. For example, if company X sues company Y for copyright infringement, lawyers representing company X can get more than a copy of the complaint and relevant legal history. They get stock charts, patent histories and corporate filings. In addition, the name of every judge and attorney links to a database that pulls up that person’s school, his or her holdings and boards they served onpotential conflicts and case histories.

“We think we can help both the rainmaker and the junior associate with one, eat-all-you-can, elegant, easy-to-use platform,” said Constantin Cotzias, a 42-year-old former mergers-and-acquisitions attorney from the U.K. tapped by Bloomberg five years ago to build Bloomberg Law.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704545004575353143750422612.html?KEYWORDS=Bloomberg

The Varnished Truth (Becoming a Painter)

Sun, 11 Jul 2010 16:29:00 +0200

Varnishing is the only painting task I hate. Cleaning brushes, sharpening pencils, preparing canvases, all boring but pleasantly so. I don’t mind those tasks. But varnishing is unpleasant. Varnish is smelly, sticky, finicky stuff. I can be very creative at finding ways to put it off.

The paintings have to be thoroughly dry so no moisture gets trapped under the varnish. I use acrylics so my canvases would be cured enough after four days. This time I waited about three months. Best to be safe, right?

The house has to be very clean to minimize any dust landing on a wet canvas. It would probably be enough to dust and vacuum the studio, but this time I cleaned the whole house: inside cupboards, drawers and closets, the tops of cabinets, behind paintings, the undersides of chairs. I washed all blankets and afghans. Aired area rugs and cushions. Sorted the junk drawer. Cleaned the refrigerator. It took six weeks. I had to clean the house again after cleaning the house because by the time I finished the odd places, the ordinary places needed vacuuming and dusting again. But it delayed the varnishing quite effectively.

The varnish must be mixed in a precise ratio of gloss to matte and I needed a glass container with an airtight lid to mix and store it. I’d tried plastic containers before but the harsh varnish chemicals softens them. So I was determined to find suitable glass. That took four weeks, most of which was spent forgetting that I was looking. Found the perfect jar at Big Lots where it had probably sat waiting for me for months.

The day has to be perfect. Not rainy or cold, so windows can be open. Not windy, so little dust comes in the open windows. Not humid, so the varnish will dry. Not too hot, so the varnish won’t dry too fast.

Yesterday was perfect. I had the glass container. And the house was clean. I could think of no other reason to delay. Plus a client was waiting for one of the paintings. I mixed the chemicals, brushed them on, smoothed and blotted drips. And waited. Five minutes, four minutes, three minutes, yes, there it was, right on cue. A dog hair.

As usual, one had stuck to the surface and, as usual, to remove it would ruin the careful brushing of the varnish. This is why I hate varnishing. No matter how hard I try, it’s never perfect.

Varnishing is necessary partly to boost the colors. The mixture gives a snap, a glow to the colors without making them shiny. But the real purpose is to preserve the painting for posterity, for centuries. This may be the true reason I’m uncomfortable with varnishing. Everything else about painting is enjoying the now. I freeze a moment of beauty and keep it safe. It is a moment of my life now. But varnishing requires that I believe the moment will outlive me. That means assuming others will cherish the moment too. I have trouble believing this. Varnishing is facing the immortal. I’m not yet brave enough to enjoy that much truth.

As usual, one had stuck to the surface and, as usual, to remove it would ruin the careful brushing of the varnish. This is why I hate varnishing. No matter how hard I try, it’s never perfect.

Journalism educators from around the world gather in Athens (JSchool Director)

Fri, 09 Jul 2010 19:51:04 +0200

This summer we are excited to be hosting more than a dozen journalism educators from around the world.

They (and we) are taking part in the 2010 Study of the United States Institute (SUSI) for Journalism and Media scholars, sponsored by the U.S. State Department. You can read more about it on the jschool's "SUSI2010" website, as well as watch a "welcome" video by Prof. Yusuf Kalyango, head of our Institute for International Journalism.

Professors Kalyango and Mary Rogus are two of the principal organizers of SUSI2010, and we're very proud of the work they are doing this summer. We're also excited to get to know as colleagues the remarkable participants in this program. You, too, can get to know more about them through the IIJ's blog, which is being used as an outlet for participant reflection on the program.

Chicago Police Torture Squad Trial Highlights Decline in Investigative Reporting (Tatge: Media Literacy)

Fri, 09 Jul 2010 04:59:39 +0200

NYT – Readers who came across a public radio blog documenting the five-week trial of a former Chicago police commander on charges of perjury and obstruction about cases involving torture under his command had to wonder where in the world WBEZ Chicago found so much expertise. The blogger, John Conroy, went deep on the history of [...]

John Conroy, a longtime reporter in Chicago, covered the trial of a former police commander for a radio station's blog.

The blogger, John Conroy, went deep on the history of the case, often filling in context that testimony only hinted at, and seemed to know at least as much as the lawyers prosecuting the case.

As the trial was concluding, he wrote an item headlined “What the Jurors Don’t Know.”

What many readers did not know was that Mr. Conroy had been there since the beginning. Over two decades ago, Mr. Conroy, a longtime reporter for The Chicago Reader, an alternative weekly, began investigating a case involving reports that Lt. Jon Burge and men under his command in the Chicago Police Department — they were called “The Midnight Crew” — used an array of torture techniques, including electroshocks, to extract confessions.

Last Monday, a federal jury found former Lieutenant Burge guilty of perjury and obstruction of justice. That means Mr. Conroy, who was laid off from The Reader in 2007, is once again without a job, at least in journalism.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/05/business/media/05conroy.html

Of crimes and ’alleged’ victims (wink wink) (Sweeney's Editing Page)

Fri, 09 Jul 2010 04:51:22 +0200

Lately I have been troubled by headlines and leads in the Post and the Athens News about rape trials.

The heads and stories referred to the person whose complaint led to criminal charges as an "alleged victim." I've seen this on local stories and on national ones.

I know what's going on here. If there is a burglary, you can see there's been a break-in and something is missing. If there is a killing, you have a body. If there is an assault, somebody has a fat lip. The evidence is obvious that there has been a crime, and the only big question is about the identity of the wrongdoer.

With rape, the evidence may be open to interpretation. Defendants often say that they engaged in sex, but that the act was consensual. Or physical evidence of rape may be lacking, for whatever reason. The point is, when the issue at hand is rape, it may not be as easy to say that a crime occurred, and ergo there was a victim.

So, some journalist, trying to be objective and not take sides, sticks that word "alleged" in front of another word, such as "victim," "rape," and "sexual assault." The journalist thinks that such a cumbersome construction is being fair to the defendant.

Egad. Am I the only one who sees that this is wrong? Calling someone an "alleged victim" metacommunicates the element of doubt. It's as if the writer is winking at the reader -- "She says she's a victim, but we know better." I mean, after all, would you get bypass surgery from an alleged doctor? Trust your financial future to an alleged financial adviser? I think not.

Fortunately, there is a better way. I suggest a new phrase or two to use in criminal cases where there is doubt about whether a crime has occurred. Let's refer to the "accuser" in a rape trial. That word is not open to debate. Or, use the longer phrase, "the person who filed the complaint," or "the woman who called police," or some such. That does not cast the same shadow of doubt.

Conversely, I don't believe that journalists should automatically refer to people who raise rape accusations as victims. True, rape is such a terrible crime, with terrible psychic consequences, that people seldom lie when they have been raped. It takes a great deal of intestinal fortitude to come forward, make the complaint, talk to detectives and prosecutors, testify, and see the rapist go to jail. People just don't put themselves through that ordeal on a whim. . . .

. . . Except for those rare occasions when they do. The FBI says that in the late 1990s, about 8 percent of rape allegations were "unfounded," a term that embraces not only false reports, but also instances in which elements of the crime were not met. (In other words, that 8 percent includes some rapes that could not be proved to have been rapes, leaving the number of false reports even smaller.)

I can think of a famous example. Dallas Cowboys players Michael Irvin and Erik Williams were victimized by a woman who cried rape in 1996 and then admitted she had lied.

Still to be adjudicated is the case of Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger. A woman filed a civil suit in summer 2009 that said Roethlisberger had raped her a year before in a Reno hotel. Officials in Reno declined to pursue a criminal case. After the woman sued the quarterback, he sued her back, saying she made false accusations. It's a mess that the courts will sort out.

Meanwhile, let's have our news pages refer to both the woman and the quarterback as "accusers," or something else that doesn't wink at the reader.

Breeding Headlines in Real Time (Sweeney's Editing Page)

Fri, 09 Jul 2010 04:51:22 +0200

From the The Huffington Post comes word that editors are using instant feedback from Web readers to write better headlines.

The story says writers post two versions of headlines on the same story. Some readers get one; some get the other. Within five minutes -- an eternity in Web journalism -- each headline gets enough hits to see which one triggers the most hits.

After five minutes, "the version with the most clicks becomes the wood that everyone sees," the Huffington Post says.

This is an important breakthrough in connecting editors with their audiences. Every journalist's first question when writing or editing a story should be, "Who is my audience?" Right after that, the journalist should ask, "What does my audience need to know, and want to know?" When the journalist gets the right answers, the paper draws plenty of readers.

Traditional newspapers could meausure their resonance with audiences through daily newsrack sales. When one edition sold a huge amount, the editors could ask what it was about the paper's top-of-the-fold display that caused passers-by to drop a quarter in the slot. This was a klunky, slow form of feedback that took days to analyze and adjust, but it sort of worked.

With the Web version of what social scientsts call "A/B testing" using random groups of readers, the Huffington Post gets the kind of instant feedback that allows editors to improve stories. In other words, each story changes in response to readers' reactions to it -- and those changes are implemented quickly enough to significantly expand the number of readers before the news gets stale.

The method seems to be a form of Darwin's survival of the fittest. Headlines compete in a hostile environment, and the ones best adapted to their surroundings -- their audience -- survive. They educate editors about the kinds of headlines that attract future audiences, and the editors get better and better over time at learning from their weaknesses.

I am all for this with one important caveat.

Journalism is more than mere marketing (although marketing is important). Editors who buy into the Huffington Post's methods must remember that they must not sacrifice a single particle of accuracy in response to popularity. There may be pressure to "tart up" a headline in order to draw readers. However, if such window dressing goes too far -- if it stretches the truth, unfairly slants the news, or otherwised distorts information for the sake of readership -- the editors should back away. Truth and accuracy trump whatever sex and sizzle draws eyeballs.

With that in mind, I salute the Post for its ingenuity and recommend its methods to other Web journalists.

Dealing With Words That Hurt (Sweeney's Editing Page)

Fri, 09 Jul 2010 04:51:22 +0200

Is it just me, or are Americans becoming more accustomed, at an earlier age, to hearing, reading, and saying words that used to be taboo?

For a quarter-opening exercise in my JOUR 441 class, I asked each student to bring two short magazine clippings to share with the rest of class. One was to be an example of an engaging, non-inverted pyramid lead. The other was to be a bit of concrete (as opposed to abstract), "show, don't tell," detail.

Some of the clips shared with the class contained words that I, being an old fart (I'm 50), don't feel comfortable saying in a classroom. For the sake of enlightment without creating discomfort, I will refer to them as the "N-word," and the "F-word." Nobody squirmed, even when one student read the latter of the two words aloud. Granted, the words seemed appropriate in context, given the subject matter, the identity of who was being quoted in print, and the target audience of the magazines. I recognize that in certain circumstances, writers and editors may feel there are valid journalistic reasons for using such words.

A third student shared a clip about an ancient Anglo-Saxon term, which the headline refered to as the "C-word," which is now appearing to bridge the moat that has kept it out of the news media forever. The student clipped an article from Newsweek that said the Guardian newspaper, a liberal journal in England, reported that the host of the BBC show "Top Gear" used the "c-word" in a non-broadcast yet widely heard comment about the prime minister, Gordon Brown. The Guardian spelled out the word, which the Newsweek writer cleverly suggested rhymed with "punt." Surprisingly, at least to me, only 17 of the paper's hundreds of thousands of readers complained.

I began thinking about this in detail this week because of the rash of stories in the news media about the rise of incivility. These stories referenced Joe Wilson's "You lie!" insult to President Obama, Serena Williams' profanity-laced outburst over being called for a foot-fault during a crucial point, and Kanye West's boorish behavior to Taylor Swift.

One of my conclusions is that people who grew up with the Web, a virtually uncensorable medium, have greater exposure to these words and, over time, less aversion to using them among their peers. Another is that one would naturally expect a sort of evolutionary expansion of freedoms of speech and action over time, regardless of media. In other words, each generation says and does things that expand the envelope, and irritate the generation that came before.

Nevertheless, I believe that journalists must ask themselves some rather traditional questions before deciding whether to publish or broadcast words that are intended to emotionally harm or shock individuals or groups. I see these questions as the following:

1. Who is the audience? Are such words appropriate for virtually everyone who would see or hear them? Journalists should be aware of the sensitivities of their readers because failure to take them into account can result in conflicts, hurt feelings, and ultimately lost revenue. For example, I consider an audience that is likely to include young children an inappropriate place to use slurs, vulgarities and so on. Kids will find these terms soon enough, and parents should be the ones to handle the consequences when they do. (And because of the possibility that children much younger than college students may read this blog, I have chosen not to spell out the words in question, above.)

2. What is the context of the communication? Audiences differ from place to place and situation to situation. I say things while watching football, playing poker, and picking up after a doggie accident that I would not say in a classroom.

3. What is the real news value of the person in question saying the word? If a high-ranking elected official, such as the president or vice president, or a widely respected figure of authority, such as the pope, uses a slur, epithet or vulgarity in public comments, I would have no hesitation in publishing it. The journalist who does so is merely making convenient information that audiences could find on their own on Google with a few key strokes.

4. If, however, the comments were not meant for public consumption and were uttered under the assumption of privacy, I would not publish them unless there were an overriding public interest in the news. I'm not particularly bothered by President Obama calling Kanye West a "jackass" in overheard, off-the-record comments that later were republished. It's pretty obvious to me that West WAS a jackass, which is a relatively mild term compared to some of the other things one could have said. However, I would hesitate to republish much stronger words in a similar situation.

What would be the real news of a president swearing? If you took away all of the swear words Harry Truman used while in the White House, there wouldn't be much left.

The Rules (and the Mysteries) of Threes (Sweeney's Editing Page)

Fri, 09 Jul 2010 04:51:22 +0200

For anyone trying to improve narrative structure through parallel syntax, three is the magic number. You could say it is a virtuous triumvirate.

When you want to make a point by providing evidence, three examples are best. Two examples don't seem satisfying, and four seem like overkill. So, if I were describing the values held dear by the tribe of my Dinka friend, John Dau, as I did when writing at home last night, I might say the Dinka believe in hard work, strong faith, and early education.

Note: those are indeed three qualities, although the Dinka have many more, and they are presented through paralellism. Hard work (adjective, noun), strong faith (adjective, noun), and early education (adjective noun).

If I were to violate parallel syntax, I might stupidly change one of the three to some other construction, perhaps involving a gerund: the Dinka believe in hard work, strong faith, and wrestling. By making the last of the series, wrestling, a different form of noun than those that preceded it, I have broken the natural rhythm that builds throughout the sentence. Readers might feel as if the sentence doesn't sound right, but not know exactly why.

Today, in my magazine features writing class, after we talked about parallelism and the rule of threes, two students presented clippings that serendipitously illustrated that point. One clipping, about a man imagining his life in an imploded economy, had him trying to envision himself "without a dime, without a home, without a bookmark in society." A second student shared a clip from a magazine description of the first Mickey Mouse cartoon: "Pegleg charging, music pounding, Minnie squealing -- and Mickey rushing madly to the rescue."

After that, I started seeing narrative elements in threes everywhere. The father, son, and holy ghost. Tinker to Evers to Chance. Peter, Paul, and Mary. Winkin, Blinkin, and Nod. The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. Man, Woman, and Child. The Scarecrow, the Tin Man, and the Cowardly Lion. The priest, the minister, and the rabbi who go into the bar.

Not to mention Larry, Curly, and Moe.

I could go on (and on, and on).

This got me thinking. Why is it that we seem to be hard wired to cluster things in threes?

I like to think that three adds an engaging level of complexity to any communication. One is single. Two is dual. Three is, quite satisfyingly, the beginning of something much richer.

Three is a beginning, a middle, and an end. Mother and father plus child is family.

In physics, the "three-body problem" means that it very quickly becomes impossible to chart the orbits of three heavenly bodies that interact with one another. Three adds a level of complexity and chaos to our understanding of the complex and chaotic world.

Are these reasons why good writers so often deal with three elements? Who knows. All I can say for sure is that groups of three seem to squeeze, tease, and please the mind. And writers should pay attention to their power.

The New Art (sigh) of Headline Writing (Sweeney's Editing Page)

Fri, 09 Jul 2010 04:51:22 +0200

The Web is erasing a fine, old, delicate art: The crafting of a good headline.

Headlines that appear in print publications are incredibly hard to write well. They must say something engaging, yet fit the allotted space. It’s no good to have a clever headline that won’t fit the six inches or so of white space above a three-column story on the front page.

It's different on the Web. Space is theoretically infinite, and nobody cares about fine-tuning the words in rectangles of white space on the screen because browser settings often alter how the type appears on individual computers. True, it's nice to have a headline that doesn't wrap onto a second line. But nobody "counts" headlines on the Web to make sure they occupy just the right amount of space.

Headline writers on the Web say what they need to say, and space be damned.

More about that later. First, let me tell you how it was in the old days (when I was paid to write headlines).

I love a cartoon that used to hang in a newsroom artist's office.

It appears to be vintage 1969, from the summer that gave us the lunar landing. That was the biggest news of the space program and the story with the easiest headline to write.

The drawing shows a man reading an open paper. The headline type on the front page is as big as his head.

"MAN ON" it screams. Then, smaller, "See moon on Page 2."

I call this it journalistic eclipse.

It is a paradox of headlines that the biggest news forces the headline writer to use the smallest number of words.

This challenge makes traditional headline writing an underappreciated art.

You can tell a lot about a publication by its headlines. They can be outrageous or boring, stick to the facts or stretch them.

A British tabloid, for example, once ran a story about Queen Elizabeth dining in Belize, an English-speaking country in Central America.

Apparently one of the dishes was a native rodent.

The tab's head? "Queen eats a rat."

The great, gray East Coast papers, given the same story today, probably would come up with something like "Queen has unusual dinner, is surprised at what it is."

Maybe not that, exactly, but you get the idea.

These examples reflect two philosophies about what headlines should do. I call them "circus barkers" and "window shoppers."

In the former, headlines are intended to tease or draw the reader into the story, much like a barker who says you've just got to see the dancing girls inside the tent. These headlines don't say as much, but they say it with style.

In the latter, headlines are a way for readers skimming through a publication to find out in a hurry what's going on, much as pedestrians on downtown streets can look at the window displays to see what's for sale. They don't have to dig through what's inside to know what's there.

Most traditional papers will mix these kinds of headlines to match the tone of their stories. Serious stories require serious headlines, and any miscasting of the tone of the head tends to jar. Headlines fall flat when they try to be cute on stories that aren't.

Besides the tone, headlines must navigate through a lot of potential problems. Errors in spelling, fact and grammar cast doubt on a publication's intelligence.

Headlines that say more than stories, such as heads reporting a fact that can't be confirmed, mislead the reader. And headlines that can be read two ways sometimes are unintentionally funny. I tell beginners that they shouldn't write headlines with the idea of being understood; they should write to avoid being misunderstood.

This brings me back to Web headlines. Many online readers get directed to news stories on the Web by search engines such as Google and Yahoo. Typically, the search algorithms in these engines seek key words in the lead paragraph, headline, and meta-tags. Thus, headline writers for online stories are well-served by loading their headlines and lead paragraphs with as many keyword-searchable terms as possible. Full names work best in headlines because people search for "Michael Jackson" instead of Michael, or Jackson, independently. They don't search for clever, circus-barker words, such as the kind that work well with photos, deck heads, and the context provided by a full, printed newspaper page. The headline "Bastards!" on the front page of the San Francisco Examiner on the day after the 9-11 attacks would rank pretty low on the "search engine optimization" scales that promote readership online. But remember, that kind of headline is something of an anomaly on the Web.

Is the change from traditional headlines to Web headlines a good thing or a bad thing? I suppose the answer is in the eye of the beholder. As an old green eyeshade who used to sweat making headlines fit on deadline at 12:55 a.m. in the backshop, all I can say is, it's easier to write headlines today that it used to be. I feel a twinge of nostalgia, and a bit of regret, at the loss of an art form.

A plea for care in crime stories (Sweeney's Editing Page)

Fri, 09 Jul 2010 04:51:22 +0200

The first homicide was pretty clear-cut. So was the news account of it.

Journalism, out of necessity, has grown muddier since the days of Adam and Eve's children. Newspapers and other media must exercise caution when reporting about one person killing another.

Innocent until proved guilty makes good law, but bad syntax.

More about that later. Here's what the Book of Genesis has to say about the slaying that started it all:

"And Cain talked with Abel his brother; and it came to pass, when they were in the field, that Cain rose up against Abel his brother, and slew him.

"And the Lord said unto Cain, 'Where is Abel, thy brother?'

"And he said, 'I know not: Am I my brother's keeper?'

"And the Lord said, 'What hast thou done? The voice of thy brother's blood crieth unto me from the ground.

"And now art thou cursed from the earth, which hath opened her mouth to receive thy brother's blood from thy hand."

Aside from the redundancies -- no good journalist would say so many times that Abel and Cain were brothers -- the biblical scribe has set out the facts clearly and cleanly. The writer says right off who the killer was and how the crime was committed. There's no doubt about it.

But that first journalist had some advantages that we do not.

First of all, the Lord makes a pretty reliable source. In this story, he acts as witness, prosecutor, judge and jury. Of course, there weren't a lot of people around to help him try that first case.

Secondly, the Bible says Cain, Abel and the first family farmed and raised livestock. Not one of them was a libel lawyer. We are to assume that such folk came to pass judgment in later generations.

Concern about civil law and reporting the truth is reflected in modern journalism.

Professional journalists base their reports on what can be proved. It is obvious, for example, that a slaying has occurred when a body is found with a bullet wound in the back. The identity of the killer is another matter.

The police might arrest the wrong person, the police might have the right person but the wrong name, the slaying might be a justifiable homicide instead of a murder, etc.

News stories therefore separate facts about the victim and the death from the facts about a person being accused of the crime. Being wrong not only is unfair to the suspect -- and the reader -- but also invites a lawsuit.

Only after a jury has decided that someone is a killer does a reputable journalist identify a person as such. One exception occurs when there is strong evidence of guilt and the person accused of the crime is dead. The dead cannot sue for libel.

Given these rules, here's how a modern professional journalist would report the first slaying:

"EAST OF EDEN -- A farmer known only as Cain has been cursed after his brother, a rancher known only as Abel, was slain, the Lord said today.

"Abel's body was found in a field where he and Cain were reported to have gone a few moments before. The Lord said the blood of the dead man, still fresh on the ground, bore testimony to the crime.

"The Lord accused Cain of the killing, saying the earth 'hath opened her mouth to receive thy brother's blood from thy hand.'

"The Lord is said to have deported Cain from his homeland. Cain could not be reached for comment."

Now, please don’t go saying that someone like Cain is an “alleged killer.” That awkward piece of syntax surely suggests to most folks who are paying attention that the accused is as good as convicted. (The noun is killer; the adjective is alleged. This construction says so-and-so is a killer, and then describes what kind he or she is. Just like “purple killer.”) Call someone a murder suspect, a slaying suspect, a homicide suspect, etc.

Why be so careful? Sometimes the police get it wrong. I know. I was once accused of stealing a car. I had not done so, but I did look like the guy who did. So, for the sake of my mom, and mothers everywhere, be careful when you write a news story about a crime suspect.

My Guide to AP Style (Sweeney's Editing Page)

Fri, 09 Jul 2010 04:51:22 +0200

(Note: Versions of this page have been linked to editing sites at dozens of American universities. The author is a writer for the National Geographic Press and a former copy desk chief at the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.)

As you read the AP Stylebook, pay extra attention to these entries:

• a, an -- You use the article "an" in front of words that sound as if they begin with a vowel, regardless of how they are spelled. So, you would say it is an honor to be here today. (Hear the flat-a sound that begins the word? It sounds as if it should be spelled AWN-or.) Or, if you already know this rule, you could say this is a useless exercise. (Hear the "y" sound in "useless?")

• academic degrees -- Put an apostrophe in bachelor's degree and master's degree. This is to show possession. The degree belongs to the bachelor or master (that's you). Even when shortened to bachelor's and master's (no "degree" afterward), you keep the apostrophe.

• addresses -- Abbreviate the words street, avenue and boulevard (think S-A-B), but only if they appear after a numbered address. Also abbreviate compass directions, but only if they appear with a numbered address. So, you'd write 50 S. Court St., but if you leave off the house number, you'd write South Court Street. Got it? Never abbreviate drive, highway, place, or any of the other words that might follow an actual street name such as Court, Union, Ventura, Lombard, Pennsylvania or whatever.

• affect, effect -- Ninety-nine times out of 100, if the word you use is a verb, spell it with an "a," and if it is a noun, spell it with an "e." In these two usages, affect means to influence and effect means the result of an action -- and those are by far the most common uses. Examples? Student: How will this affect (try substituting the word "influence") my grade? Teacher: I don't know what the effect (try substituting the word "result") will be.

• a.m., p.m. -- Recognize that 8 p.m. tonight is redundant. So, write 8 tonight, or 8 p.m. today.

• Anglican Communion -- This is the first church in the AP Stylebook. Read every church entry carefully. Each religion has its own lexicon, and if you screw it up you make enemies.

• Bible -- Capitalize when you mean the black book in American hotel rooms everywhere. Lowercase when you use the term as slang for an authoritative source. Example: Elements of Style is my bible.

• burglary, larceny, robbery, theft -- Ooooo, tricky. There is a difference between a burglar and a robber, and you have to know it. Your stylebook gives you a definition of these terms, so let me give you examples of how to use them, all taken from the same scenario. 1. Larceny: If I leave my B-52 CD's on the floor outside my office door and you take them -- without breaking into my office and without threatening me, then you have committed larceny, also known as simple theft, and you are a thief. 2. Burglary: If you break into my office (or even pass through the unlocked door without my permission) and take the B-52 CD's off my desk, but did not threaten me, you are a burglar. 3. Robbery: If you see me carrying my B-52 CD's and are overcome by an uncontrollable urge to possess them (hey, I wouldn't blame you), and you demand them from me and make a real or implied threat, you are a robber. 4. Sometimes you see the phrase "aggravated robbery" in newspapers. The term means that the robber not only made a threat but also displayed a weapon, such as a gun or knife. This person is still called a robber.

• Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints -- There are two "t's" in Latter. Note the hyphen and the lower-case "d."

• City Council -- Capitalize when referring to a specific City Council, even if the name of the town is not given. Mayor Doug Thompson will ask the City Council to spend more on patrolling near campus.

• co- -- Sometimes it's followed by a hyphen, and sometimes it's not. When the prefix is part of a word indicating occupation, hyphenate, as in co-worker, co-owner. There are no hyphens when the letter "o" is doubled, as is cooperate and coordinate.

• collective nouns -- In the United States, nouns such as team, Congress, committee and group take singular verbs, such as "is." These collective nouns also take the pronoun "it" instead of "they." So, if you're confused about whether a word such as "team" is an "it" or a "they," try making up a sentence using the word followed by "is" or "are." You wouldn't say "The team are playing well." Try this, instead: "The team is playing well. It may win this game." That's correct.

• composition titles -- I don't care whether you italicize or put quotation marks around composition titles. What I want you to notice is which words in the titles of books, plays, movies and TV programs are capitalized, and which are not. AP's rule is this: Capitalize the first word of any title. Capitalize all words that are four letters are longer. Do not capitalize the articles "a," "an" and "the." Do not capitalize conjunctions or prepositions, unless they are four letters or longer. Examples: The Elements of Style; Gone With the Wind ("with" is a preposition, but it is capitalized because of the four-letter rule). So, what do you capitalize? The first word, any word four letters or longer, and all nouns, verbs, adverbs, adjectives and pronouns.

• days or dates? -- Not apparent in the AP stylebook, but it ought to be. The common rule for publications is to use the days of the week -- Monday, Tuesday, etc. -- when referring to events within seven days, before or after the publication date. When writing about events more distant, use months and dates, such as "April 30" and "June 5." Do not use both. Do not use yesterday, today and tomorrow -- if a story were delayed before publication, the time elements would be wrong.

• dimensions -- Use figures for all numbers that indicate height, weight, width, etc., even for numbers less than 10. Example: The book weighs 2 pounds.

• directions and regions -- Capitalize words such as North and South if they refer to places you can stand and say, "I am standing in the -------." That means they are nouns referring to regions, and AP says capitalize them as such. When referring to compass directions, such as "I am walking north," then lower case them.

• essential clauses, essential phrases -- If you use the word "which" to introduce a phrase or clause, precede it with a comma. Do not precede the word "that" by a comma. Use "which" to introduce non-essential phrases and clauses, which can be eliminated from a sentence without changing its essential meaning (such as in this sentence). See? If you drop the clause "which can be eliminated, etc.," then the remaining sentence still has the same meaning -- Use "which" to introduce non-essential phrases and clauses. Use "that" when you want to use a phrase or clause that cannot be removed from a sentence without changing its meaning (such as in this sentence). If you eliminate the essential clause from that sentence, you are left with "Use 'that' when you want to use a phrase a clause." That gives a clearly different meaning than the original sentence, because you know by now that you want to start some phrases and clauses with "which," and thus the sentence is illogical. If this causes you problems, let's talk.

• fewer, less -- Use fewer for things that you can count. Example: I have fewer quarters than you do. (You can count, "One quarter, two quarters, three quarters.") Use less for things you cannot count. Example: I have less cash than you do. (You don't say, "One cash, two cash, three cash.")

• governmental bodies -- Read this entry carefully to determine when to capitalize names of agencies and departments.

• highway designations -- These bedevil many journalists, but they're easy. Capitalize U.S. Highway 89, or even U.S. 89. Capitalize Utah Highway 33, but notice that you lowercase the "s" in state Highway 33.

• Inc. -- Do not precede it with a comma

• Islam -- Read not only every entry for Christian churches, but also the entries for other religions. That way, you'll avoid a mistake made by an Ohio paper when it ran a column referring to Muslims worshiping "their God." Muslims, Jews and Christians worship the same God.

• it's, its -- "It's" is a contraction that means it is, or it has. "Its" means "belonging to it." Whenever you must choose one or another in a sentence, try inserting the phrase "it is" or "it has." If one of those pairs makes sense, then use it's. I use funny word associations to remember things like this. Technically, they are called mnemonic devices (as in the movie, Johnny Mnemonic). When I see the word "it's," I tell myself "the apostrophe means 'to be.'")

• Jewish congregations -- Jews have temples and synagogues, not churches. Jewish rabbi is redundant. Jewish synagogue is redundant.

• lay, lie -- Not as tricky as it might seem. The way I remember the difference is that "lay," in the present tense, requires an object; in other words (pardon me) you can only "lay" something. The word "lie" in the present tense means recline on a horizontal plane. Examples in the present tense: I lay the book on the table. Now it lies there. In the past tense, lay becomes laid, and lie becomes lay. Examples: I laid the book on the table yesterday. It lay there for several hours before my brother picked it up.

• local -- A word you almost never need. "He was taken to a local hospital" is silly. Just say "He was taken to a hospital." Better yet, name the hospital. Similarly, change local schools to Cache Valley schools, or schools in Cache County, or some other phrase that is specific. Remember, specific is better than vague.

• majority, plurality -- As you know, a majority is at least a tiny bit more than 50 percent. A plurality is the largest percentage of something that is divided at least three ways, and yet is below 50 percent. Example: If Ronald Reagan wins 48 percent of the vote, Jimmy Carter wins 44 percent of the vote, and John Anderson wins 6 percent of the vote, then Reagan has a plurality, not a majority.

• marshal and Marshall -- Commonly confused. Double the "L" in a proper name.

• Mass -- Capitalize when referring to the celebration of worship in the Roman Catholic Church. This is a common error.

• military titles -- Glance at this entry. Realize that most military titles that appear immediately before a person's name are abbreviated, and all are capitalized. Realize that it will speed your search for the proper abbreviation if you know which branch of the service to look up.

• millions, billions -- Try to avoid long numbers with lots of zeroes, as in 7,000,000,000. Instead, say 7 billion. Also remember how to tell the difference between 1 million and 1 billion when you're looking at such a number. 1 million has seven digits, just as the word "million" has seven letters. 1 billion has 10 digits, which I remember by comparing it to a 10-dollar "bill." (Hey, it's a mnenomic device that works for me, OK?)

• months -- Never abbreviate months when they do not immediately precede a date. Example: We got married in September last year. However, when the name of a month immediately precedes a date, abbreviate it -- but only if the month's name is six letters or longer. Example: We got married on Aug. 6 last year. But, we were divorced on March 5.

• numerals -- This entry, on Page 144, is a common source of confusion. Remember the rule of thumb, "Other Uses," on Page 146, which says, "For uses not covered by these listings: Spell out whole numbers below 10, use figures for 10 and above. Typical examples: They had three sons and two daughters. They had a fleet of 10 station wagons and two buses." Now, having mastered the rule of thumb, read the exceptions to the rule on Pages 144-46. And remember, ages and dimensions, already covered in these handouts, are exceptions.

• plurals -- Note the unusual rule on Page 164 that when you form the plural of a proper noun that ends in a "y," you usually add an "s," as in Kennedys, Grammys, Emmys.

• possessives -- The main AP exception to Strunk and White's Elements of Style involves forming the possessive of a singular proper noun that ends in "s." AP says merely add an apostrophe. Examples: Otis' cookies, Amos' ice cream, Charles' chips. And here's a reminder of something I'm sure most of you already know: To make something that is singular into a possessive, add 's; to make something plural into a possessive, first make sure it is plural, usually by verifying that it ends in an "s," and then add an apostrophe. Here's a nonsense sentence that illustrates the idea: One dog's bone is worth two dogs' ears.

• quotations in the news -- Do not change words in quotation marks. Those quote marks tell the reader, "This is exactly what was said." Quote marks always appear outside a period, comma, semicolon and colon. When a full-sentence quotation is introduced or followed by attribution, place a comma between them. Examples: I said, "What the heck is going on?" . . . "It's the state fair," he said. One exception to the rule is that quotations that are in the form of a question do not need a question mark and a comma -- merely a question mark. Example: "What's going on?" he asked. [Note the lower case "h" in he.] When using a sentence fragment as a quotation, do not set it off with a comma unless the sentence requires one for proper grammar. Example: He said he felt "sicker than a dead frog[no comma here]" after he drank too much tequila. [Note that the only words he actually said were "sicker than a dead frog." The rest of the sentence is a paraphrase, not a quotation, and thus does not have quote marks.]

• Satan -- He's uppercase, but devil is not. Neither is satanic. (Ozzy fans, take note.)

• savings and loan association-- It is not a bank. You cannot call it a bank.

• Scot, Scots --People from Scotland are NOT "Scotch." That's a drink, when lower case.

• second reference -- Well-known abbreviations are acceptable on second reference. Thus, Internal Revenue Service can become "the IRS" the second time you refer to it. Avoid using unfamiliar abbreviations. If you are writing about the Left-Handed Dogcatchers Association, do NOT refer to it as LHDA on second reference. Instead, call it "the association" or "the group." And don't think that putting parentheses around an odd abbreviation makes it OK to use repeatedly. It still looks funny. Here's an example of what to avoid: the Left-Handed Dogcatchers Association (LHDA) met last night. The LHDA decided to catch some left-handed dogs.

• state names -- Spell out all names of states in sentences unless they are preceded by a city, county or military base name. Then, according to the chart on Page 195, you abbreviate all state names EXCEPT the two states outside the Lower 48 and all continental states that have five or fewer letters in their names. Examples: I lived in Oklahoma. I lived in Tulsa, Okla. I lived in Iowa. I lived in Council Bluffs, Iowa.

• temperature -- Use figures unless the temperature is zero. Examples: It's minus 5 degrees. I hope it warms to 9 or 10.

• titles --Capitalize formal titles immediately before a name, and do not separate the title from the name by a comma. Examples: I saw President Obama. I got to meet Prime Minister Brown. Titles that appear after a name or standing alone are ALMOST NEVER capitalized. If you're wondering about those exceptions, see AP, "nobility." Also note that sometimes, a person's title is set off by commas. In those cases, it is lower case. If you're wondering when to use a comma between title and name, read the handout on "appositives," or just listen for the natural pause when you say the sentence aloud. If you pause, use a comma. Examples: The president, (PAUSE) Barack Obama, (PAUSE) ate a burger. President (NO PAUSE) Obama got indigestion.

• United States -- AP says it's now OK to use U.S. in all references.

• vice president -- No hyphen.

• weapons --Unfortunately, copy editors need to know something about weapons because they are mentioned in many stories. Know the difference between a revolver and an automatic. Know correct style for a .45-caliber pistol.

• weather term -- Recognize that blizzard, cyclone, gale and hurricane have specific meanings.

• years -- To indicate a decade, add an "s." to the first year in the decade. Example: In the 1960s, I did a lot of things I don't remember. If you abbreviate this, do it this way: In the '60s, I did a lot of . . . Remember that years are never spelled out. Even at the beginning of a sentence, use a figure: 1968 was a good year.

Under A Guide to Punctuation

comma -- Place a comma before and after the following when they appear in the middle of a sentence:

1. A year, if it follows a month and date. Example: I was born on Nov. 6, 1958, in Madison, Wis.

2. A state, if it follows a city or county name. Example, I was born in Madison, Wis., on Nov. 6, 1958.

3. An appositive, which means a word or phrase that says the same thing as a word or phrase next to it. Example: I saw my boss, John McFeely, in the hall. (My boss and John McFeely are identical.) However do not place a comma after a title that precedes a name. Example: Executive Editor John McFeely died today.

Spelling:

1. accommodate (two c's, two m's)

2. adviser (AP likes an "e" in it)

3. afterward (no "s" at the end)

4. all ready (everyone is prepared; all are ready) and already (completed action)

5. altar (table in church) and alter (modify)

6. amid (has no "st" at the end)

7. among (has no "st" at the end)

8. busing (transporting by bus) and bussing (osculating, i.e, kissing)

9. calendar

10. canceled, cancellation (these are AP's preferences)

11. Caribbean

12. cemetery (the vowels are "e's")

13. embarrass (two "r's" and two "s's")

14. harass (only one "r." My old boss told me to remember it this way: her ass.)

15. homicide (not homocide)

16. indiscreet (meaning imprudent)

17. indiscrete (meaning separated into parts)

18. judgment (there is no "judge" in judgment)

19. Kmart

20. knowledge

21. livable

22. Marshall, marshal, martial (a person's name, a military rank, and an adjective meaning military)

23. National Organization for Women (not "of" women)

24. nuclear

25. officeholder (one word)

26. percent

27. principal (meaning primary or major, as in the title of the high-ranking school official)

28. principle (a fundamental law or doctrine)

29. privilege (no "d")

30. sheriff

31. subpoena (pronounced "suh-PEEN-a")

32. Vietnam (one word)

Test Yourself on AP Style (Sweeney's Editing Page)

Fri, 09 Jul 2010 04:51:22 +0200

If you'd like to see how well you know Associated Press style, try taking this test without looking in the stylebook.

INSTRUCTIONS: Find the errors. Each sentence contains zero, one or two errors addressed by the AP Stylebook. If the sentence is correct as written and this were an actual test, you would not change it. (Leaving it correct as written would give you full credit for that sentence.) Do not delete information unless it is redundant.

1. He ate 15 doughnuts at the fair.

2. Rev. Frank Robbins, 55, served as a chaplain in the U.S. army.

3. The living room is nine feet wide and seventeen feet long.

4. She met the pope on a sunny day in Rome.

5. Lieutenant Colonel Frank Burns told the general that nothing was wrong at the hospital.

6. Robert J. Carey Jr. is Mayor of College Park, Md.

7. Members of the Missouri legislature refused to stand for Governor Kit Bond.

8. You can write to me at 400 W. 7th St.

9. I grew up in the North, and I like cold weather.

10. Her favorite song is "Rock Me On The Water."

11. At 10 A.M. this morning, Vice President Joe Biden canceled the meeting.

12. "A bottle of Dr. Pepper, two coca-colas and a beer to go," he said.

13. Our home was totally destroyed by Hurricane Andrew.

14. Dec. 25th, 1941, was a day he remembered vividly.

15. My son likes Dr. Seuss's books.

16. The Gospel of St. Luke is my favorite part of the bible.

17. The seven-year-old victim had gone camping with her family in Utah.

18. Attorney General Janet Reno said the suspects have been charged.

19. The Scotch are great people, and I like to drink their Scotch.

20. After he made a xerox of the test, he put a copy in the mailbox.

21. Cody, Wyo., is named for William (Buffalo Bill) Cody.

22. Episcopalians in Flatbush will question their rector this weekend.

23. I have a 4th-grader and a 6th-grader at East Elementary School.

24. Capital Hill is east of the Lincoln Memorial.

25. The killer used a forty-five caliber handgun.

26. "Let's walk further into the woods," the hunter told his companion.

27. I plan to visit the Prince of Wales on July 3.

28. Much of the fleet sank near the Marshal Islands.

29. The Dallas and Fort Worth City Councils passed resolutions to expand the airport.

30. The co-owner of the lounge asked the unruly patrons to cooperate.

Answers to AP self-test (Sweeney's Editing Page)

Fri, 09 Jul 2010 04:51:22 +0200

Answers to the AP practice exercise.

1. He ate 15 doughnuts at the fair. (OK as written)

2. The Rev. Frank Robbins, 55, served as a chaplain in the U.S. Army. (See and "Rev." and "army")

3. The living room is 9 feet wide and 17 feet long. (See "dimensions")

4. She met the pope on a sunny day in Rome. (OK as written)

5. Lt. Col. Frank Burns told the general that nothing was wrong at the hospital. (See "military titles")

6. Robert J. Carey Jr. is mayor of College Park, Md. (See "titles")

7. Members of the Missouri Legislature refused to stand for Gov. Kit Bond. (See "legislature" and "governor")

8. You can write to me at 400 W. Seventh St. (See "addresses")

9. I grew up in the North, and I like cold weather. (OK as written)

10. Her favorite song is "Rock Me on the Water." (See "composition titles")

11. At 10 this morning (or, "At 10 a.m. today,), Vice President Joe Biden canceled the meeting. (See "a.m.")

12. "A bottle of Dr Pepper, two Coca-Colas and a beer to go," he said. (See "Dr Pepper" and "Coca-Cola")

13. Our home was destroyed by Hurricane Andrew. (See "demolish, destroy")

14. Dec. 25, 1941, was a day he remembered vividly. (See "dates" or "months")

15. My son likes Dr. Seuss' books. (See "possessives" -- subheading "singular proper names ending in S")

16. The Gospel of St. Luke is my favorite part of the Bible. (See "Bible")

17. The 7-year-old victim had gone camping with her family in Utah. (See "ages")

18. Attorney General Janet Reno said the suspects have been charged. (OK as written)

19. The Scots are great people, and I like to drink their scotch. (See "Scot" and "Scotch whisky")

20. After he made a photocopy (or "a Xerox") of the test, he put a copy in the mailbox. (See "Xerox")

21. Cody, Wyo., is named for William "Buffalo Bill" Cody. (See "nicknames")

22. Episcopalians in Flatbush will question their rector this weekend. (OK as written)

23. I have a fourth-grader and a sixth-grader at East Elementary School. (See "grade, grader")

24. Capitol Hill is east of the Lincoln Memorial. (See "capitol")

25. The killer used a .45-caliber handgun. (See "weapons," subheading "caliber")

26. "Let's walk farther into the woods," the hunter told his companion. (See "farther, further")

27. I plan to visit the Prince of Wales on July 3. (OK as written)

28. Much of the fleet sank near the Marshall Islands. (See "marshal . . . Marshall")

29. The Dallas and Fort Worth city councils passed resolutions to expand the airport. (See "city council")

30. The co-owner of the lounge asked the unruly patrons to cooperate. (OK as written)

How Long, O (Land)Lord? (Grad School News)

Fri, 09 Jul 2010 04:49:27 +0200

A grad-student-to-be phoned this week to ask how long a lease she should sign.

She begins master's classes in fall 2010, and the question is a pressing one. Rental properties go quickly in Athens.

The answer depends on what a student has planned for the summer of 2011.

Here's the formula:

A master's student needs to earn 49 quarter credit hours. Six of those will be in the form of a thesis or professional project, neither of which involves attending classes. So that leaves 43 classroom credit hours.

If a master's student takes an average of 15 credits per quarter, he or she will meet the minimum of 43 at the end of the spring quarter. (That's 15 in fall quarter, 15 in winter, and 15 in spring.)

If the student has no plans for summer 2011, I would recommend that he or she stay in Athens during the summer after completing classroom work and use that time to complete and defend the thesis. Thus, the student starting in fall 2010 should lease through the end of August 2011.

If the student expects to be on the road doing research in the summer, or needs to go home, or start a job, then I would recommend getting a lease that extends only through the end of finals week in mid-June. Such a student would be expected to complete the thesis or project in his or her own time, and return to Athens to defend it sometime during the next six years. (Students have seven years to complete the master's degree.)

The Dog That Didn’t Bark (Grad School News)

Fri, 09 Jul 2010 04:49:27 +0200

Let's listen in as Inspector Gregory of Scotland Yard picks Sherlock Holmes' brain in the short story "Silver Blaze" by A. Conan Doyle. The inspector speaks first:

"Is there any point to which you would wish to draw my attention?"

"To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time."

"The dog did nothing in the night-time."

"That was the curious incident."

Sometimes it's the dog that doesn't bark, the thing that's supposed to happen but doesn't, that merits scrutiny.

As a serious dog lover and the proud owner of a black Lab and a basenji, I know that pets can sometimes be unpredictable. But they also move in their circles with as much regularity as the planets in their orbits. If Hailey and Chance don't ask for a walk shortly after dawn, I know something must be seriously wrong.

So imagine my reaction over the last year as potential students flooded the Scripps School of Journalism with inquiries about the master of science and doctoral programs. Scores of applications arrived before the Feb. 1, 2010, deadline for those seeking financial aid for the following fall. Dozens more trickled in over the next few months, including some who eventually received financial aid as a handful of offers unexpectedly became available.

Out of this process, the Scripps School will welcome 16 new master's students and four new PhD students in fall 2010.

The field is very strong. Among the graduate students who begin arriving over the summer are a newspaper journalist with 17 years at the Dayton Daily News, USA Today’s Tennessee correspondent, an international coordinator for the Korean Defense Industry Association, an Indian journalist who speaks six languages, and an in-depth reporter for the English-language China News magazine. About half of the incoming grad students have backgrounds in journalism; the other half come from such fields as music, English, political science, and theater.

The reason this merits attention is that given the national eulogizing over the "death" of the news media, it may strike some observers as surprising that interest in journalism graduate studies is stronger than ever. And it's not just at Scripps. According to The Chronicle of Higher Education, Columbia University, the University of North Carolina, and the University of Maryland also reported heightened interest in their journalism graduate programs for the year just concluded.

At the Scripps School, students in both the undergraduate and graduate programs know they will get a solid grounding in the skills of the news media and the new media. They learn to communicate in new ways, using new platforms. And at the graduate level, they gain the added benefit of doing cutting-edge research about the science of mass communication and how the field is changing. This gives them the knowledge and flexibility to change with the industry while others lag behind.

As the media continue to evolve, our grad students remain grounded in the rich tradition of media theories and practice, but gain the cognitive skills to assess and shape the future.

Let the pundits howl and bark about the future of the news media. Scripps continues to quietly run with the big dogs.

...Mike Sweeney, Scripps graduate director

Long Recession Ignites Debate on Jobless Benefits (Tatge: Business Reporting)

Fri, 09 Jul 2010 04:14:50 +0200

Great article that does a nice job of laying out the subject and framing the debate. – MT WSJ – In the long recession and the lackluster recovery, the government expanded unemployment payments more than at any time since the benefits were rolled out in the 1930s. And workers have gone jobless for longer than [...]

Paul A. Johnson prepares for a yard sale at his mother's home in East Hampton, N.Y. Mr. Johnson says that he held back on job offers while receiving unemployment benefits of $475 a week.

Great article that does a nice job of laying out the subject and framing the debate. – MT

WSJ – In the long recession and the lackluster recovery, the government expanded unemployment payments more than at any time since the benefits were rolled out in the 1930s. And workers have gone jobless for longer than any time since official tallies began in 1967. Politicians and economists are now in a fierce debate that could have big consequences for the jobless: Did more-generous unemployment benefits prompt jobless workers to be pickier in their searches? Or was the program a prudent response to the worst recession in generations?

The debate remains pressing as Congress wrestles with whether to extend the expired benefit program. The House passed an extension renewal backed by President Barack Obama as part of a broader bill that died in the Senate, after skirmishes about the wisdom of enlarging the deficit. The House passed a scaled-down version last week, but the Senate won’t revisit this issue until after its week-long recess. Economists have argued for years about the extent to which government benefits prolong unemployment—and possibly augment the overall jobless rate. Most believe that expanding benefits does discourage some unemployed people from looking for work or taking available jobs. But they disagree on how acute that effect is, particularly at a time when jobs are scarce. Economists on the right see a danger to prolonging benefits.

“I don’t think anybody’s getting rich off of unemployment, and I’m not saying people are lazy,” says Michael Tanner of the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank in Washington, D.C. “

The fact is, when you have a check coming in, even if it’s a fairly low check, you’re less motivated to either look for work or accept less optimal jobs.”

The recent recession was unusual in almost every respect. Compared to other post-World War II recessions, it was deeper, longer and put more people out of work. A year after the economy began growing, unemployment is still a very high 9.5%. Nearly half the jobless—6.8 million total—have been out of work for more than six months, and 4.3 million of those have been without work for more than a year. The typical unemployed person has been out of the job market for a median of 25.5 weeks.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704334604575338691913994892.html?mod=ITP_pageone_0#printMode

Email update from Chelsea Toy (BSJ ’10) (JSchool Director)

Thu, 08 Jul 2010 19:50:40 +0200

I just received the following "report" from our top graduating senior, Chelsea Toy. She gave me permission to share it with you.

Life is great at Horse & Rider, and I’ve just finished my first big feature for our September issue.

In the month that I’ve been here, I’ve been given three departments to manage and at least one feature a month, plus I’m responsible for updating our Facebook with engaging posts 3-4 times every day. One of those departments is Western fashion, which is probably my favorite thing in the world next to barrel horses, so I couldn’t be more thrilled about that. On top of that, the managing editor and I get to go to horse shows and rodeos throughout the week if we see fit and shoot video and photos. We’ve never had staff videos before, so when I posted our first last week, it was a point of celebration for our staff. There will be many more to come, that’s for sure.

Just as I arrived last month, our company (Active Interest Media) launched a contest to see which group (the equine group, the healthy-living group, the outdoors group, etc.) could develop the most innovative iPad application. The group publisher selected one magazine within the equine group to write, design, and launch the prototype. Horse&Rider was picked, and so our three-person editorial staff is coming up with an iPad app for this contest. It’s a HUGE learning curve, but it’s really going to be something to put on the resume, and something that’s probably going to make the way we do web even better, too.

With our company also owning lots of related publications, our group publisher asked me this week to help him expand the barrel racing coverage on one of our sister magazines, Spin To Win Rodeo. This is going to be great, as Spin To Win is pretty much the top roping/rodeo magazine in the industry, and I used this magazine for part of my market review in my HTC scholarly essay that accompanied my professional project. (And that was just one year ago that Cary Frith and I were putting that analysis together... Funny how things change in a year.)

I found out I got the assistant editor job with Horse & Rider on Wednesday, April 21. To say I was thrilled would be an understatement. Phone call #1 went to Mom and Dad, of course, who were thrilled that I wouldn’t be living in their garage attic. Phone call #2, though, went to my horse trainer, Ginny. She’s been my mentor, my best friend, and my biggest (and sometimes, most critical) fan since I was 9-years-old with my terrible bucking little pony named Boogie. She couldn’t get over the fact that I’d be living our dream of going to out West (Boulder, Colo.) and taking my horses with me, not to mention I’d have access to industry professionals that we’d only dreamed of talking to just a day earlier.

The first week in May, I went home to say my “see-ya-laters” (goodbyes are way too permanent sounding) to my family and friends in Apollo and Vandergrift, Pa. Ginny’s was my first stop after saying ‘hi’ to Mom and Dad. Proudly, she brought out my graduation present from her bedroom (a silver bracelet with “Live the Life You Love” carved into it). She went back into her bedroom, though, just a moment later, and brought out a tattered magazine covered in dust. It’s cover read Horse&Rider, and it was dated April 1971. Slowly, she opened the delicate pages to a section titled Miss Western Life, and there, on a two-page spread, was an 18-year-old Ginny, in her Appaloosa National Horsemanship Queen crown, aboard her old show horse. Somehow she had been chosen by Horse&Rider as Miss Western Life some 39 years ago.

When I left home, Ginny and I both shed some tears, but I just kept thinking about how she’s taken me full circle, honing my riding and horsemanship skills to such a fine point that I could get a job with the same magazine that recognized her decades ago for the exact same thing.

Vote for Ryan Lytle! (JSchool Director)

Mon, 05 Jul 2010 23:49:31 +0200

Recent graduate Ryan Lytle is up for the new "TJ" position at MTV. Here's Ryan's recent blog post about the experience, as well as a video from his Today Show appearance:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

http://www.ryanlytle.com/new-york-city-living-today-show-maroon-5-and-more/

Top jschool graduates for 2010 (JSchool Director)

Mon, 05 Jul 2010 23:49:31 +0200

Selecting top graduates has never been an easy job, yet every year since I've been on the faculty we've collectively rolled up our sleeves to select students from each of our sequences, a top "overall" senior, as well as top masters and doctoral graduates.

I've sometimes wondered over the years if this was such a good idea, given how many outstanding graduating seniors and grad students we have each year. Sure, there's always a "top" GPA, but rarely does that translate into who wins top graduate awards. After all, a journalism education is more than just about grades.

On the other hand, our winners invariably are in the top 5-10% grade point averages. They also have had the kind of impact outside the classroom that means they will be remembered for years to come. So, once again, we used the occasion of our annual awards banquet to recognize top graduating seniors. The text below borrows heavily from the script that Tom Hodson read from at the banquet.

This year we salute the following top graduates:

Advertising: Lauren Miller

From day one, Lauren Miller hit the ground running in the Scripps School of Journalism. Lauren graduated with 40 hours more than the minimum of 192. That says much about her intelligence, motivation and focus.

Lauren has been active in the American Advertising Federation National Student Competition every year, including presenting for the Coca Cola team in her freshman year. She served as Ad Club's treasurer, was a member of the executive board of directors, marketing and research director and campaign director during her time at Scripps. It's no surprise that due to her commitment and hard work, Ohio University won the National Competition in 2008. And the 2009 Ad Club's campaign for the Century Council will launch this year.

During her time at OU, Lauren was also a sales representative for University Directories and was ranked number one on the team. According to her professors, no one has done so well in the advertising sequence and accomplished so much for the OU Advertising Association.

Broadcast: Drew Schaar

Drew walked into WOUB radio and TV his sophomore year and never looked back. He’s been extremely active with WOUB’s Newswatch program, radio newscasts and websites as an anchor, producer, and reporter. He recently finished producing an hour-long live program on the Diabetes Crisis in southeast Ohio.

Drew interned at WBNS-TV in Columbus and two television stations in Dayton. He’s also been a peer mentor the last three years for the Learning Community program and he has done an outstanding job. He’s active in the student chapter of the Radio Television Digital News Association, and recently attended the national convention in Las Vegas. Drew also is involved with Omicron Delta Kappa, a community service and leadership organization.

Carr Van Anda: Bethany Williams

This is the first year we've given an outstanding senior award in the Carr Van Anda sequence. We felt the need to do so because we now have quite a number of students electing this inter-disciplinary option.

Bethany Williams transferred into the Scripps Journalism School after her freshmen year. Using the Carr Van Anda option, she has pursued her interest in documentary journalism, blending courses in broadcast journalism, Media Arts & Studies as well as courses from the Film School. And she did all of that while maintaining a near perfect GPA.

Bethany interned with the NPR program "Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me" last summer and plans to pursue her career as a documentary film maker.

Bethany graduated in March and recently returned to the U.S. from a six-week writing trip to Europe.

Journalism HTC: Emily Grannis

Our outstanding HTC senior, Emily Grannis, was campus senior writer for The Post since March 2007, reporting on the OU administration and Faculty Senate as well as student affairs and the Student Senate.

Emily has had a number of internship opportunities during her years at OU. During the summer of 2007, she worked at the Center for American Progress in Washington, D.C. Since Fall 2007, she has worked with me when I’m serve as a visiting trial judge, doing independent work in legal research and writing.

She’s contributed print and online content to the Legal Times, a weekly Washington, D.C. newspaper, and she’s worked in the Public Information Office (PIO) of the Supreme Court of the United States.

Her outstanding honors thesis on the development of the Paraguayan press is titled "Hard Pressed: The Paraguayan Media and Democratic Transition, 1980s-1990s."

Magazine: Sarah Binning

The Outstanding Magazine Senior, Sarah Binning, knew without doubt that she’d chosen the right career path after she served as editor in chief of Southeast Ohio magazine for the Spring 2010 issue ??" In case you haven’t purchased your copy yet, look for the issue with the cover featuring three child ballet dancers. She was also the magazine’s copy chief for the Winter issue, adeptly supervising a staff of eight copy editors.

Sarah has immersed herself in a variety of journalism experiences outside Scripps as well. She was an intern at Teen Voices Magazine in Boston, an alternative publication whose staff and college-age interns mentor some eighty Boston teen girls as editors each year. During winter breaks she interned at her hometown paper, The Bryan Times, reporting on farm and education news, creating online videos and designing the paper’s entertainment pages.

Sarah also minored in English, and earned a near perfect GPA.

News Editorial: Emily Mullin

Emily Mullin, just couldn’t wait to jump in to her chosen career.

In the summer before she started classes at OU, Emily worked as a freelancer for her hometown paper in Latrobe, Pennsylvania. That fall, she adopted a new hometown paper and started a four-year stint writing for The Athens News. During that time she’s been an opinion columnist, campus reporter and editorial assistant.

Emily didn’t limit her experience to newspapers, she also worked for The Government Channel in Athens and was a talk-show host for the All Campus Radio Network. And she served as one of our Student Ambassadors.

Emily has had internships with the Tribune-Review newspaper of Greensburg, Pennsylvania; the Scripps Howard Foundation Wire in Washington, D.C.; and Columbus Business First. Most recently, she has worked as a freelancer for the Cincinnati Business Courier.

Along the way, she earned a First Place SPJ Mark of Excellence Award, and last fall she was one of only 40 college students nationwide chosen to attend the Business Journalism Consortium in New York City. Emily recently learned that she’s been named a Pulliam fellow, and will work on the business desk at the Indianapolis Star this summer.

Online Journalism: Ryan Lytle

Our top online journalism senior is Ryan Lytle. Ryan transferred into the Scripps Journalism School after his second year at OU.

In the past two years he completed three internships with the Cincinnati Enquirer's website, the washingtonpost.com, and most recently with the Today Show. Ryan was fortunate to be working at the Today Show when OU defeated Georgetown in the Big Dance. And of course Today Show co-host and alum Matt Lauer wanted to celebrate, so Ryan made his network debut, chest bumping, and nearly knocking out Matt on live TV!

When Ryan wasn’t off in New York or Washington, he worked at The Post, WOUB, and Speakeasy, all while maintaining a terrific GPA.

Public Relations: Adria Courtot

Our Outstanding PR Senior's accomplishments become even more impressive when you know she only transferred to Ohio University two years ago and then still had to transfer into our program.

From the moment she stepped foot on campus, Adria Courtot was determined to achieve her goal of transferring into Scripps. She joined PRSSA and ImPRessions right away and made a big impact with both. She served as PRSSA's Vice-President of Internal Relations and she previously edited PRSuccess, the chapter newsletter.

In ImPRessions she served as an Account Executive where she supervised ten other students on the Up 'Til Dawn account. Adria interned with the Athens Area Chamber of Commerce.

Adria was an excellent student who maintained a high GPA and was on the Dean's List and was the recipient of the Dean's Scholarship.

Overall Outstanding Senior: Chelsea Toy

Chelsea Toy exemplifies the entrepreneurial spirit necessary to succeed in the modern media business. She produces hard news, long-form features, press releases, and marketing plans. She blogs, tweets, and shoots video. She speaks Spanish and Swahili and has basic conversational skills in German and Malay.

She interned with a magazine and a PR firm in South Africa, and Amnesty Int’l in Washington, D.C. She worked as a senior campus reporter for the Athens News, covering OU politics and the ongoing budget crisis.

During the past four years, Chelsea won 10 journalism awards and scholarships, including the competitive Roy W. Howard National Collegiate Reporting Award and the David L. Shashower Visionary Scholarship in Communication from Liggett-Shashower in Cleveland.

In her free time, she competes in rodeos and has earned national and Canadian barrel-racing titles. For her senior honors project, she launched The Barrel Racing Blog, which receives 3,000 hits each month and she explored the ethical issues involved when journalists cover communities of interest in which they participate.

Not surprisingly, she already has a full-time job as an assistant editor for Horse & Rider where she will produce content for its four-color glossy consumer magazine and companion web products, as well as develop a social media strategy.

Chelsea also has excelled in the classroom, transferring into the Honors Tutorial College as a sophomore and earning a near-perfect GPA. She served our school as a Scripps Ambassador and helped recruit dozens of top ranking prospective students by leading tours and sharing her college experiences with them. We wish continued success as she moves into full-time professional life.

Masters student: Aisha Mohammed

Aisha Mohammed wrote what Pat Washburn considers to be one of the top five papers in his two and a half decades of teaching the historiorgraphy class. She wrote about magazines produced by sex workers for sex workers.

Doctoral student: Jen Lovejoy

Jennette Lovejoy has a history of publishing and presenting academic articles that would be impressive for a tenure-track assistant professor, and she has yet to defend her thesis. She already has a job with the University of Portland. And she throws a football with a nice, tight spiral.

U.S. Jobs Picture Darkens (Tatge: Business Reporting)

Sat, 03 Jul 2010 20:24:12 +0200

WSJ- Nonfarm payrolls fell 125,000, their first month of losses this year, as the government let 225,000 census workers go, the Labor Department said Friday. Private-sector employment grew by a slight 83,000 jobs on a seasonally adjusted basis, and seems to have downshifted from average gains of nearly 200,000 in March and April. The unemployment [...]

Job seekers lined up June 28 for an employment fair in San Francisco.

The unemployment rate declined to 9.5% from 9.7% in May, but not because more jobs were available. Instead, 652,000 workers dropped out of the labor force, meaning they weren’t counted as unemployed and looking for work.

“The biggest problem is, we’re getting economic growth but it’s less than people had expected,” said John Silvia, a Wells Fargo Securities economist.

Weak growth could become a big problem for U.S. officials, who have few obvious solutions for nagging unemployment. The Federal Reserve has already pushed interest rates—its main policy tool—to near zero. In 2009 and early this year, Fed officials augmented rate cuts with purchases of mortgage-backed securities to drive down long-term interest rates. But they are reluctant to repeat the act.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704898504575342593039984442.html?mod=WSJ_hps_LEFTWhatsNews

Even Reputable Media Hijacking Content (Tatge: Media Law)

Sat, 03 Jul 2010 03:56:29 +0200

Excellent column by David Carr of the New York Times about how no one seems to be respecting copyright rules – even members of the established media who have the most to lose. – MT Last Monday, the word got out that Rolling Stone had a stunning piece about General Stanley McChrystal, in which he [...]

Excellent column by David Carr of the New York Times about how no one seems to be respecting copyright rules – even members of the established media who have the most to lose. – MT

Last Monday, the word got out that Rolling Stone had a stunning piece about General Stanley McChrystal, in which he and his aides were critical of the White House. It’s the kind of scoop that thrills magazine editors, and no doubt they couldn’t wait to get their issue on the stands.

The problem was, nobody else could wait either. On Tuesday morning, a PDF of the piece the magazine had lovingly commissioned, edited, fact-checked, printed and distributed, was posted in its entirety on not one but two Web sites, for everyone to read without giving Rolling Stone a dime.

It was a clear violation of copyright and professional practice, and it amounted to taking money out of a competitor’s pocket. What crafty guerrilla site or bottom-feeder would do such a thing?

Turns out it was Time.com and Politico, both well-financed, reputable news media organizations, that blithely stepped over the line and took what was not theirs.

Both companies said that a frenzy involving a significant national issue was under way and that because Rolling Stone itself did not post the article on its site, they took matters into their own hands. Each said that when Rolling Stone protested, it was taken down, and that when the magazine put up the piece at 11 a.m. on Tuesday, their sites linked to that instead.

Content-makers had a rough week across the board. A federal judge granted summary judgment to Google, whose subsidiary, YouTube, had been sued by Viacom for $1 billion for copyright infringement. Judge Louis Stanton of United States District Court for the Southern District of New York ruled that even though thousands of clips of Viacom shows had been uploaded to the site, YouTube was shielded from damage claims because of “safe harbor” provisions in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

Google was busy elsewhere, filing an amicus brief in a New York case against an aggregator called Theflyonthewall.com, for its appropriation of proprietary bank research. Lawyers for Google, along with Twitter, asked a federal appeals court to reverse a decision upholding the so-called hot news doctrine, which gives the publishers of up-to-the-minute news the sole rights to that content. They called that doctrine obsolete.

News organizations, including The New York Times, The Associated Press, Gannett and others, filed a brief of their own in the case, suggesting that, “unless generalized free-riding on news originators’ efforts is restrained, originators will be unable to recover their costs of news gathering and publication, the incentive to engage in the news business will be threatened and the public will ultimately have fewer sources of original news.”

Publishing a PDF of somebody else’s work is the exact opposite of fair use: these sites engaged in a replication of a static electronic document with no links to the publication that took the risk, commissioned the work and came up with a story that tilted the national conversation. The technical, legal term for what they did is, um, stealing.

Media organizations can file all the briefs they want about protecting their work product from free-riders and insurgent hordes of digital pilot fish, but once they break their own rules and start feeding on one another, the game is sort of over.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/28/business/media/28carr.html

A future of news ‘kickers’? It’s likely Fwix CEO says (Give the 'Net credit)

Fri, 02 Jul 2010 19:34:17 +0200

No matter how busy I get (and I’ve been pretty swamped lately), I always try to find time to read mindless fiction. My wife recommended the book I just finished, Extras by Scott Westerfeld, because she said it’s basically about journalists. After reading it and hearing an online news wunkerkind speak to one of my [...] Related posts:

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Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.No matter how busy I get (and I’ve been pretty swamped lately), I always try to find time to read mindless fiction. My wife recommended the book I just finished, Extras by Scott Westerfeld, because she said it’s basically about journalists. After reading it and hearing an online news wunkerkind speak to one of my [...] Related posts:

News can learn from WoW, but not TMZ News organizations should have learned long ago that people will...
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The next three years... (JSchool Director)

Wed, 30 Jun 2010 23:47:36 +0200

Today is the first day of my three-year term as director of the JSchool.

I want to start my first "director" post by stating that I'm humbled to have been asked by the faculty to serve in this role during such a crucial time in the life of our program. During the three years ahead we will transition to semesters, move into a new building, and face the next accreditation cycle. Any one of these "tasks" is a full plate of demands.

Don't think for a minute that I'm complaining, however. On the contrary, I see these next three years as an exciting period of time not only for the school, but for me as well. This coming year will be my 24th on the faculty of one of the best journalism programs in the country. I will do everything in my power to make our program even more relevant to the needs of future journalists.

I plan to post messages here on a regular basis, which means I'll keep them fairly short. Let me close this message by thanking Tom Hodson* for his leadership during the past seven years. He's been a wonderful director, and a great mentor to me during the past three years when I served as associate director. He will continue to serve the school and our students as a full-time faculty member, and for that we are blessed.

*Read Tom's "swan song" post.

Director Hodson Stepping Down (Prof. Tom Hodson)

Wed, 30 Jun 2010 23:29:16 +0200

Every day for the past seven years, I have walked into my Scripps Hall office and felt a special sense of pride.

It truly has been an honor and a thrill to have been director of the school that gave me my undergraduate degree. Besides a top-flight education, it has given me life-long friendships among our alumni and some of the country’s media elite.

I have had a continual love affair with this school for over four decades and those powerful feelings have only grown with each new class of students and each new innovation in journalism education that we have implemented.

In every career, there is a time to begin -- a time to meet new challenges -- and a time to say goodbye. It is now time for me to do the latter…to step down as director and take my place among the faculty of this fine school. Although in a new capacity, I will continue to serve students -- in a different yet just as important way -- as a teacher and mentor.

Over the past seven years, we made great strides in bringing new faculty to the school, upgrading our curriculum, and raising substantial outside money to support our students and their dreams. We have pumped up enrollment and kept the quality of our student body high. We are one of the top journalism schools in the country and that is something in which I take great pride.

I want to thank my colleagues on the faculty and our dedicated staff for all of their substantial contributions.

It is time, however, to turn the reins over to new leadership -- a new generation. It’s time for even newer ideas, newer approaches to journalism education, and new energy. I have every confidence that the new director, Dr. Robert Stewart, and his team will take the school to even greater heights. He will bring his steady hand and innovative mind to the directorship and motivate his colleagues to bring new vitality to the school.

We are poised on the precipice of being an even greater school than we are today. We must ever press forward and push ourselves to more substantial accomplishments and even higher standards. The media world is changing and we are at the center of that revolution.

I leave the directorship with a sense of pride in what we accomplished but with an even greater hope and dream of what tomorrow can bring.

Twitter Settles F.T.C. Charges Over Privacy (Tatge: Media Law)

Thu, 24 Jun 2010 19:38:36 +0200

NYT – SAN FRANCISCO — Twitter, the rapidly growing Internet messaging service, has settled a Federal Trade Commission investigation into the security and privacy protections it offers its users. For the last 11 months, the F.T.C. has been looking into two security breaches at Twitter in 2009 in which a hacker accessed the accounts of several [...]

NYT – SAN FRANCISCO — Twitter, the rapidly growing Internet messaging service, has settled a Federal Trade Commission investigation into the security and privacy protections it offers its users.

For the last 11 months, the F.T.C. has been looking into two security breaches at Twitter in 2009 in which a hacker accessed the accounts of several high-profile members, including then President-elect Barack Obama, and was able to read their private Twitter messages and send out fake messages from their accounts.

As part of the settlement, Twitter, based in San Francisco, agreed to set up a security program that will be audited by an outside company, and, according to the F.T.C.’s press release on the case, “will be barred for 20 years from misleading consumers about the extent to which it maintains and protects the security, privacy, and confidentiality of nonpublic consumer information.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/25/technology/25twitter.html

Judge Sides With Google in Viacom Video Suit, Viacom to Appeal (Tatge: Media Law)

Thu, 24 Jun 2010 19:13:09 +0200

NYT – SAN FRANCISCO — In a major victory for Google in its battle with media companies, a federal judge in New York on Wednesday threw out Viacom’s $1 billion copyright infringement lawsuit against Google’s YouTube, the No. 1 Internet video-sharing site. The ruling in the closely watched case could have major implications for the scores of Internet [...]

The ruling in the closely watched case could have major implications for the scores of Internet sites, like YouTube and Facebook, that are largely built with content uploaded by their users.

The judge granted Google’s motion for summary judgment, saying the company was shielded from Viacom’s copyright claims by “safe harbor” provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

Those provisions generally protect a Web site from liability for copyrighted material uploaded by its users as long as the operator of the site takes down the material when notified by its rightful owner that it was uploaded without permission.

Viacom, which sued Google in 2007 and accused it of copyright infringement after tens of thousands of Viacom videos were uploaded to the site, had argued that Google was not entitled to those protections because it had deliberately turned a blind eye and profited from rampant piracy on YouTube.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/24/technology/24google.html

Laws Schools Inflate Grades To Help Graduates Get Jobs (Tatge: Media Law)

Thu, 24 Jun 2010 19:06:17 +0200

NYT – In the last two years, at least 10 law schools have deliberately changed their grading systems to make them more lenient. These include law schools like New York University andGeorgetown, as well as Golden Gate University and Tulane University, which just announced the change this month. Some recruiters at law firms keep track of these changes and [...]

Samuel Liu, right, of Loyola Law School Los Angeles, which is adding 0.333 to every grade.

Law schools seem to view higher grades as one way to rescue their students from the tough economic climate — and perhaps more to the point, to protect their own reputations and rankings. Once able to practically guarantee gainful employment to thousands of students every year, the schools are now fielding complaints from more and more unemployed graduates, frequently drowning in student debt.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/22/business/22law.html

Lytle to appear on the Today Show (JSchool Director)

Wed, 23 Jun 2010 23:43:40 +0200

In his quest to be MTV's first "Twitter Jockey," Ryan Lytle just got a huge boost: an invitation to sell his brand on the Today Show! You can read more about it on Ryan's blog.

If you haven't been following the Ryan Lytle adventure, you may not know about his famous chest-bump with Today Show host and fellow Bobcat Matt Lauer. The "incident," seen far and wide on youtube and other online video services, took place at the tail end of Ryan's internship.

If you want to help Ryan achieve "TJ" status for MTV, follow him on Twitter, at twitter.com/rlytle. Good luck Ryan!

Shaming Shoplifters – Is This Defamation or Free Speech ? (Tatge: Media Law)

Tue, 22 Jun 2010 16:08:19 +0200

NYT – The A & N Food Market on Main Street in Flushing, Queens, has an almost entirely Chinese clientele. The inventory includes live eels, turtles and frogs, frozen duck tongue and canned congee. These goods, like products sold in every neighborhood of the city, attract their share of shoplifters. But A & N Food [...]

At the Chung Fat supermarket in Flushing, Queens, security camera monitors at the store's entrance watch shoppers' every move.

First, suspected shoplifters caught by the store’s security guards or staff members have their identification seized. Then, they are photographed holding up the items they are accused of trying to steal. Finally, workers at the store threaten to display the photographs to embarrass them, and to call the police — unless the accused thieves hand over money.

“We usually fine them $400,” said Tem Shieh, 60, the manager, who keeps track of customers on 30 video monitors in the store’s surveillance system. “If they don’t have the money, then we usually hold their identification and give them a chance to go get it.”

The practice of catching suspected shoplifters and demanding payment is an import from China, several experts in retail loss prevention said, where there is a traditional slogan that some storekeepers post: “Steal one, fine 10.” Whether this practice is legal in the United States is open to interpretation.

New York State law allows “shopkeepers’ privileges” that fall somewhere between the prerogatives of the police and a citizen’s arrest. The law also details “civil recovery statutes,” by which retailers may use the threat of a civil lawsuit to recover substantial settlements for even minor thievery. But threatening to report that someone has committed a crime can be considered a form of extortion.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/22/nyregion/22shoplift.html

Web Site that Behaves Like a Print Magazine (Tatge: Media Literacy)

Tue, 22 Jun 2010 15:58:40 +0200

NYT – NEW YORK — Die-hard do-it-yourself interior designers spend hours flipping through glossy magazines, carefully tearing out pages showing a pillow or paint color they like and filing them away for future inspiration. What do they do if their favorite print magazine folds? Michelle Adams, 27, a former market assistant at Domino, and Patrick [...]

Images in Lonny are zoomable and clickable, and provide links for buying the items.

Michelle Adams, 27, a former market assistant at Domino, and Patrick Cline, 34, a photographer and photo retoucher, were talking about that in May 2009 after Condé Nast closed Domino, its sprightly home magazine. Over dinner at Chili’s, they mourned the loss of the magazine and other design magazines, like Blueprint and House & Garden, and joked that they should start their own.

“People were missing all the magazines that had folded, and it was really disappointing that no one came along” with replacements, said Ms. Adams, who is also a textile designer.

They created Lonny, an online shelter magazine, which put its first issue up in October and immediately caught the attention of design circles as well as advertisers and print publishers.

Lonny looks and acts like a print magazine, not a Web site or a blog. It has pages to turn, a table of contents and full-page ads. But it offers Web-only benefits like zoomable, clickable images, so readers can inspect a lamp displayed in a photograph of someone’s living room and then click to buy it.

Many readers still like to lounge on the couch and flip through glossy pages with big stylish photos, but as mainstays like Domino and Gourmet disappear, readers are forced to look elsewhere. The Web sites of magazines like Lucky, Bon Appétit and Architectural Digest, however, are either underdeveloped or visually different from their print counterparts.

Lonny is published every other month using Issuu, a Web platform where, for $19 a month, anyone can upload a PDF and instantly create an online magazine that looks like a print one.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/21/technology/21lonny.html

Multinationals May Gain From China’s Move On Yuan (Tatge: Business Reporting)

Tue, 22 Jun 2010 15:38:04 +0200

WSJ – BEIJING—China’s currency move could affect the fortunes of a range of corporations over the longer run, helping those that target China’s consumers while complicating life for those that rely on low-cost exports from the world’s factory floor. Beijing’s announcement Saturday that it will make the yuan’s exchange rate more flexible, and the expected [...]

Beijing’s announcement Saturday that it will make the yuan’s exchange rate more flexible, and the expected appreciation of the Chinese currency against the dollar, won’t have a big immediate impact on the bottom lines of most companies. China’s central bank made clear that any movement in the yuan will be gradual, and economists think it will be especially cautious while the status of the global economy remains uncertain. Analysts generally expect a rise of 2% to 5% against the dollar over the next year.

But over time, a stronger yuan will effectively increase the purchasing power of Chinese buyers, helping consumer-focused companies such as beverage giant Coca-Cola Co., car maker General Motors Co., and cellphone seller Motorola Inc. It could also be a boon to companies that feed China’s industrial demand, such as construction-equipment makersCaterpillar Inc. and Komatsu Ltd., and mining companies BHP Billiton and Rio Tinto.

China’s government has kept the yuan pegged against the dollar since July 2008, when the global economic slump was intensifying, largely because of its fear of the potential impact on exporters—especially the smaller, privately owned companies that account for a significant share of job growth in China. A rise in the yuan “by a very small magnitude might cause fundamental changes” to exporters, Chinese Vice Commerce Minister Zhong Shan told The Wall Street Journal in a March interview.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704638504575318740664651482.html?KEYWORDS=Yuan

The 2010 High School Journalism Workshop (JSchool Director)

Tue, 22 Jun 2010 03:42:42 +0200

This past Saturday I had the privilege of meeting with the participants in the 2010 edition of our High School Journalism Workshop. In the 9:45 a.m. session, independent TV producer Peter Shaplen spoke with the students via Skype about lessons he learned while working as Walter Cronkite's desk assistant.

Peter challenged the students to think beyond the important tools they had learned during the workshop, to consider what kind of editors they want to be when they return to their high schools in the fall. An edited version of Peter's talk is available below:

Following Peter's talk I got to see examples of the students' work. Here are the videos:

The stories themselves, along with the videos and photos, are available at scrippshsw2010.blogspot.com. Enjoy!

Hope (Becoming a Painter)

Sun, 20 Jun 2010 17:49:00 +0200

I’m feeling an emotion I haven’t felt in almost a year. Hope. I’d forgotten what it feels like. A soaring sense of possibility begins to color reality, distorting it perhaps, but so pleasant, so very pleasant. Wisdom counsels that hope is illusion, but wisdom has no chance against the shoutings of hope.

On the surface not much has happened. I have made three trips to the Cleveland Clinic, two in May and one last week. Prognosis: unchanged. That’s good actually, but the reality is still my liver is failing and my days or years—who can say—are numbered.

There’s nothing they can do.

However, the doctor was concerned about my shortness of breath and ordered some heart tests. That was the second trip. The third trip was to see a cardiologist about those tests. The cardiologist thought my tiredness and shortness of breath might not be due to the liver, but perhaps to a sleeping disorder. In other words my grogginess may be unrelated to the liver disease.

There may be something they can do.

I have to go through tests and the end result may be some nasty facts that dash my hopes, but at the moment I’m hoping they can treat the grogginess and I will feel better. It wouldn’t change my fate; it will not change the path of my disease. But we’re fated from the day we’re born for only one end. I can handle that destiny. It’s feeling bad all the time that weakens the spirit. To have no hope of feeling better has been hard work this year. When the body is grumpy, living with joy is not easy. Living with joy seems to me the point of life, but this past year has put the philosophy to the test.

Now a dash of hope has been added to the mental stew that is my reality and everything has changed even though I do not (yet?) feel better. No wonder people invest in false hopes. Rushing into doomed marriages, taking debilitating jobs, ignoring chest pains, I think I understand why people do foolish things to keep hope alive even when reality is dreadful. Hope feels good.

I have been without hope for so many months. This small burst of hope is pure delight. It’s like a returning summer; the window opens to a pale sweet green. It is morning. And there’s much to do.

There’s nothing they can do.

There may be something they can do.

I have been without hope for so many months. This small burst of hope is pure delight. It’s like a returning summer; the window opens to a pale sweet green. It is morning. And there’s much to do.

Learning business beat basics with Mark Tatge’s new book (Tatge: Business Reporting)

Sun, 20 Jun 2010 15:41:43 +0200

When Mark Tatge began teaching business journalism students three years ago at Ohio University, he realized that the book he wanted to teach from wasn’t exactly written yet. So the veteran business journalist set out to write his own. Tatge’s ” The New York Times Reader: Business & Economics,”published by CQ Press, highlights top business stories [...]

When Mark Tatge began teaching business journalism students three years ago at Ohio University, he realized that the book he wanted to teach from wasn’t exactly written yet.

So the veteran business journalist set out to write his own.

Tatge’s ” The New York Times Reader: Business & Economics,”published by CQ Press, highlights top business stories and offers methods for writing about business and the economy.

The book offers key stories from The New York Times, interviews with journalists and practical tips for reporters starting out on the business beat. At nearly 300 pages, the reader is packed with information on topics that range from inflation to jobs and unemployment.

http://businessjournalism.org/2010/06/17/learning-business-beat-basics-with-mark-tatges-new-book/

BP Tries to Choke Off Press Coverage of Spill (Tatge: Business Reporting)

Sat, 12 Jun 2010 16:19:53 +0200

NYT – When the operators of Southern Seaplane in Belle Chasse, La., called the local Coast Guard-Federal Aviation Administration command center for permission to fly over restricted airspace in Gulf of Mexico, they made what they thought was a simple and routine request. A pilot wanted to take a photographer from The Times-Picayune of New [...]

Sand formed a fountain Tuesday as it was pumped onto East Grand Terre Island, La., as a barrier against the spreading oil slick.

A pilot wanted to take a photographer from The Times-Picayune of New Orleans to snap photographs of the oil slicks blackening the water. The response from a BP contractor who answered the phone late last month at the command center was swift and absolute: Permission denied.

“We were questioned extensively. Who was on the aircraft? Who did they work for?” recalled Rhonda Panepinto, who owns Southern Seaplane with her husband, Lyle. “The minute we mentioned media, the answer was: ‘Not allowed.’ ”

Journalists struggling to document the impact of the oil rig explosion have repeatedly found themselves turned away from public areas affected by the spill, and not only by BP and its contractors, but by local law enforcement, the Coast Guard and government officials. To some critics of the response effort by BP and the government, instances of news media being kept at bay are just another example of a broader problem of officials’ filtering what images of the spill the public sees.

Scientists, too, have complained about the trickle of information that has emerged from BP and government sources.

Three weeks passed, for instance, from the time the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded on April 20 and the first images of oil gushing from an underwater pipe were released by BP. “I think they’ve been trying to limit access,” said Representative Edward J. Markey, a Democrat from Massachusetts who fought BP to release more video from the underwater rovers that have been filming the oil-spewing pipe. “It is a company that was not used to transparency. It was not used to having public scrutiny of what it did.”

Officials at BP and the government entities coordinating the response said instances of denying news media access have been anomalies, and they pointed out that the company and the government have gone to great lengths to accommodate the hundreds of journalists who have traveled to the gulf to cover the story. The F.A.A., responding to criticism following the incident with Southern Seaplane, has revised its flight restrictions over the gulf to allow for news media flights on a case-by-case basis.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/10/us/10access.html

Does Facebook Discourage Human Interaction? (Tatge: Digital Journalism)

Sat, 12 Jun 2010 15:41:42 +0200

NYT – Mister Rogers would be so disappointed in me. Aside from the people who live in my building, I know the name of only one person who lives on my block: Roger Cohen, a Times colleague. I want to blame it on the fact that I’m absolutely awful with names and can be quite [...]

NYT – Mister Rogers would be so disappointed in me.

Aside from the people who live in my building, I know the name of only one person who lives on my block: Roger Cohen, a Times colleague.

I want to blame it on the fact that I’m absolutely awful with names and can be quite socially awkward. But that has ever been thus. Then I thought that maybe it was a city thing, but that explanation goes but so far. I’m actually beginning to believe that it’s bigger than me, bigger than my block, bigger than this city. I increasingly believe that less neighborliness is becoming intrinsic to the modern American experience — a most unfortunate development.

A report issued Wednesday by the Pew Research Center found that only 43 percent of Americans know all or most of their neighbors by name. Twenty-nine percent know only some, and 28 percent know none. (Oh, my God! When Roger dashes off to Paris this summer, I’ll become a “none.”)

Yet I have thousands of “friends” and “followers” on the social-networking sites in which I vigorously participate. (In real life, I maintain a circle of friends so small that I could barely arrange a circle.) Something is wrong with this picture.

I am by no means a woe-is-us, sky-is-falling, evil-is-the-Internet type. In fact, I think that a free flow of information has led to greater civic engagement. Yippee! However, I am very much aware that social networks are rewiring our relationships and that our keyboard communities are affecting the attachments in our actual ones.

For instance, a Pew report issued in November 2009 and entitled “Social Isolation and New Technology” found that “users of social networking services are 26 percent less likely to use their neighbors as a source of companionship.”

And a May study by researchers at the University of Michigan found that “college kids today are about 40 percent lower in empathy than their counterparts of 20 or 30 years ago.” The reason? One factor could be social networking. As one researcher put it, “The ease of having ‘friends’ online might make people more likely to just tune out when they don’t feel like responding to others’ problems, a behavior that could carry over offline.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/12/opinion/12blow.html