Citizen Journalism—Not

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Who wrote that?

“The Deseret News isn’t the only newsroom to embark on a citizen-journalism model to make up for smaller reporting staffs. The benefits are obvious: The content is cheap. But the costs can be enormous.

“Giving people a pipeline to your news pages and your website — labeling it as ‘news’ and treating it just like the stories produced by your reporters — is an invitation for abuse. People have vested interests in getting information out. Usually it is not evil; it’s human nature. You want to give a plug to your brother-in-law’s new business, to your child’s school, to your own enterprise.” . . .

“If Mike Winder wants to become a reporter, he should go back to college and take journalism classes. In Journalism 101, he will learn that what he did was a disservice to newspaper readers and the citizens of his city.”

—Terry Orme, managing editor, The Salt Lake Tribune,
“Editor column: West Valley City mayor harmed his city, Deseret News readers,” Nov. 12, 2011
Image: Salt Lake Tribune

Background: West Valley City Mayor Mike Winder, frustrated by thin news coverage of his city, started submitting news stories to area newspapers under a pseudonym, “Richard Burwash.” Since the story broke, The Deseret News and other media are reexamining policies on “citizen journalism.” Winder resigned yesterday from his job as a PR executive, but continues as mayor. In August, The Deseret News laid off 43% of its newsroom staff.

• Resource: Code of Ethics, Public Relations Society of America.

• Editorial Comment: Mike: We’re registering students for next semester now.

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They Said, We Said

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Truthtelling

“We must remember that in time of war what is said on the enemy’s side of the front is always propaganda, and what is said on our side of the front is truth and righteousness, the cause of humanity and a crusade for peace.”

—Walter Lippmann (1889-1974), journalist, political commentator and author of the term “Cold War.”
Image: Wisconsin public employee union protestors. Ann Hermes/The Christian Science Monitor

• Editorial Comment: Our truth is truer than your truth.

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Woof!

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Watchdogs of the Press

“The truth is that most American newspaper people are really more interested in dramatic spot news, the splashy story, than in anything else. They want to be in on the big blowout, no matter how silly, and would rather write about what happened than whether it made any sense. . . .

“We are fascinated by events, but not by the things that cause events. We will send 500 correspondents to Vietnam after the war breaks out and fill the front pages with their reports, meanwhile ignoring the rest of the world, but we will not send one or two reporters there when the danger of war is developing.”

—James B. Reston (1909-1995), Pulitzer Prize-winning author,
New York Times editor and columnist, from The Artillery of the Press, 1966

• Editorial Comment: Woof! Woof! Woofwoofwoof!

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War, hunh! What is it good for?

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The Veterans Day Edition: Shared Responsibility

“How is the world ruled and led to war? Diplomats lie to journalism and believe those lies when they see them in print.”

—Karl Klaus (1874-1936), Austrian journalist, critic and writer

“Naturally the common people don’t want war: Neither in Russia, nor in England, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. . . . Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.”

—Gen. Hermann Goering (1893-1946), Nazi commander, 1946

“[The typical] ‘justification’ tactics by proponents of military intervention . . . brought us the entirely false reports, in 1990, that Iraqi soldiers were killing babies in Kuwait City by switching off hospital incubators—brought to us by Washington PR firm Hill and Knowlton. [British journalist] Maggie O’Kane recounted her meeting with nurses at the hospital who were utterly mystified by these stories. The source turned out to be the fifteen-year-old daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to Washington, who was presented to the U.S. Congress as a nurse but, in fact, had not been to Kuwait in years. As O’Kane says: ‘There's always a dead babies story.’ The effect is to demonise the enemy and create a sense of urgency which admits no time for diplomacy.’

—The Peace Journalist Option, findings of the Conflict and Peace Journalism summer school,
Taplow Court, Buckinghamshire, UK, August 1997

“Media coverage is integral to shaping the course of events in war & peace. With technology bringing more rapid and intense coverage, the connection becomes increasingly clear.”

—The Peace Journalist Option, findings of the Conflict and Peace Journalism summer school,
Taplow Court, Buckinghamshire, UK, August 1997

“[W]e have found a number of instances of coverage that was not as rigorous as it should have been. In some cases, information that was controversial then, and seems questionable now, was insufficiently qualified or allowed to stand unchallenged. Looking back, we wish we had been more aggressive in re-examining the claims as new evidence emerged—or failed to emerge. . . Editors at several levels who should have been challenging reporters and pressing for more skepticism were perhaps too intent on rushing scoops into the paper.”

—New York Times editorial acknowledging
newspaper’s role in supporting Iraq war, May 26, 2004

Image: Famed WWII front-line reporter Ernie Pyle shares a smoke with a U.S. Marine. (U.S. Defense Department)

• Editorial Comment: Like it or not, remember that we’re all in this together.

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Essential Equipment

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Good Advice Too Seldom Followed

“The wastebasket is a writer’s best friend.”

—Isaac Bashevis Singer (1902-1991),
Novel Prize-winning author

• Editorial Comment: Most writers need more wastebaskets.


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Journalism of Yesteryear

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“[T]here’s a real thrill in seeing your own byline over a story when it’s in print, and there’s always the feeling that you’ll try to make the next story just a little better.”

“The editorial writer must be able to write on many subjects. But instead of merely reporting news, he analyzes it and explains its meaning, often expressing his personal opinions. He must reason accurately and fairly, and write in an interesting manner. To understand and interpret problems of the day, he must read and study continually, in addition to having a great amount of knowledge and experience.”

—Encyclopedia Britannica Films,

“Your Life Work” series, 1940s

See Maria Popova post here, and on YouTube, Journalism (1940). (Thanks to alert WORDster Barry Kort)

• Editorial Comment: Isn’t that adorable?

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Scribbler

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Early Bloomer

“I was always going to be a writer. I’ve known this for as long as I’ve known anything. It was an accepted fact in my family by the time I had entered the first grade, which makes no sense, as I was late to either read or write. In fact, I was a terrible student when I was young. I’ve always believed the reason I was passed from grade to grade was that I could put together some raw version of a story or a poem, even if all the words were misspelled and half of them were written backwards. Like a cave child scratching pictures on the wall of bison and fire and dancing, I showed an early knack for content. Only writing kept me from being swept into the dust heap of third grade, and for this reason I not only loved writing but felt a strong sense of loyalty to it. I may have been shaky about tying my shoes and telling time, but I was sure about my career, and I consider this certainty the greatest gift of my life.”

—Ann Patchett, writer and author
of a new online memoir, The Getaway Car, 2011

• Editorial Comment: Ooog to wife: “Bad baby drawing on living room again. Feed to mastodon!”

• ‘Mingi’ Babies: Friend and colleague Matthew LaPlante, with amazing photos by Rick Egan, tells the heart-wrenching story of tribal infanticide in Ethiopia, in Is the tide turning against the killing of 'cursed' infants in Ethiopia? on CNN.com. Amazing stuff.


• Reading List: Columbia Journalism Review has published reading suggestions from selected journalists/Jprofs. Can’t say as I agree (or even have heard of!) all of these, but interesting. Better get caught up.

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In a Com(m)a

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Punctuation: Take a Breath, Already!

“I have always liked commas, but I seem to be in a shrinking minority. The comma is in retreat, though it is not yet extinct. . . .

“If all this involved only grammar, I might let it lie. But the comma’s sad fate is, I think, a metaphor for something larger: how we deal with the frantic, can’t-wait-a-minute nature of modern life. The comma is, after all, a small sign that flashes PAUSE. It tells the reader to slow down, think a bit, and then move on. We don’t have time for that. No pauses allowed. In this sense, the comma’s fading popularity is also social commentary.”

—Robert J. Samuelson, columnist,
“Farewell, Comma, He Said,”
The Washington Post, 2007.

• Editorial Comment: Let’s not even talk about my colons.

• Related Favorite: The Oxford comma.

• Reading List: Columbia Journalism Review has published reading suggestions from selected journalists/Jprofs. Can’t say as I agree (or even have heard of!) all of these, but interesting. Better get caught up.

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Odious Speech

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Drawing the Line

“Speech is powerful. It can stir people to action, move them to tears of both joy and sorrow, and—as it did here—inflict great pain. On the facts before us, we cannot react to that pain by punishing the speaker. As a Nation we have chosen a different course—to protect even hurtful speech on public issues to ensure that we do not stifle public debate.”

—Chief Justice John G. Roberts, U.S. Supreme Court, Snyder v. Phelps (2011), a case involving the reprehensible speech of the Westboro Baptist Church, a group that pickets near the funerals of slain soldiers.

(See David L. Hudson, “Chief Justice Roberts and the First Amendment,” The Freedom Forum, April 22, 2011)

• Editorial Comment: It’s a tricky line between protected odious hate speech and crying fire in a crowded theater. (But, of course, there’s always this, attributed to Voltaire: “I disagree with your words, but I will defend to the death your right to say them.”)

• Reading List: Columbia Journalism Review has published reading suggestions from selected journalists/Jprofs. Can’t say as I agree (or even have heard of!) all of these, but interesting. Better get caught up.

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Body Slam

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Posturing Pundits

“I’ve grown out of the habit of following ‘professional entertainers’ in the form of professional wrestling —there are more important things like politics and foreign policy and fiscal responsibility to fill my evenings.

“Now when I want to see something overtly biased, I turn on Bill O’Reilly and watch him pile-drive his guests and their views about government spending. When I’m sufficiently conservative, I’ll switch to Rachel Maddow and work out my liberal angst. . . .”

“Pundits reinforce all of the negative aspects of human interaction within a developed society: ignorance, argumentation, miscommunication, tenacious idiocy.”

—Max Parker Dahl, Utah State journalism student,
in McCarthey Family Foundation essay competition
on whether pundits arethe ultimate independent journalists.
“Opinion: Pundits are like TV wrestling—entertainment, not reality,”
(11/1/11)

• Editorial Comment: Body-slam Stephen Colbert.


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Arianna Bag Lady?

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Recycling

“All these bloggers and all these online institutions that live off the resource of the major newspapers and networks are basically taking [their] profitability away from them.

“I once saw a guy in upper Georgetown walking round collecting bottles and I said, ‘Well that’s what they do on the Huffington Post. They basically collect something that somebody already made, and they sell it.’

“But they didn’t make it. They didn’t make that bottle. Somebody paid for it.”

—Chris Matthews, host of MSNBC’s “Hardball,”
was in Salt Lake City over the weekend (10/29/11).
Hear interview on KCPW
• See story on Matthews’ Utah appearance, and student discussion of punditry.

• Editorial Comment: Recycled news: 2¢ at the Redemption Center.

• Feeling Old? Blast from the Past: John Lennon released “Imagine” on this day in 1971.


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All Together Now

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Sing Along

“Writing and reading decrease our sense of isolation. They deepen and widen and expand our sense of life; they feed the soul. When writers make us shake our heads with the exactness of their prose and their truths, and even make us laugh about ourselves or life, our buoyancy is restored. We are given a shot at dancing with, or at least clapping along with, the absurdity of life, instead of being squashed by it over and over again.

“It’s like singing on a boat during a terrible storm at sea. You can’t stop the raging storm, but singing can change the hearts and spirits of the people who are together on that ship.”

—Anne Lamott, writer

• Editorial Comment: When I sing at the storm, the other guys on the boat pelt me with fish-heads and try to throw me overboard.

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