Not-so-Superman

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More Homework Needed

WORDmeister sez: Waiting for Superman, the new movie about public education by David Guggenheim (An Inconvenient Truth), has many people wailing over the "school crisis." But how much substance behind the breast-beating?

“[Waiting for Superman] has captured the credulous attention of veteran broadcast anchors and national columnists. These are not pundits often found wandering among the tangled weeds of education policy. Some appear to be using Superman as their crash course in the subject, emerging from the theatre with a story line in hand and a fire in their belly—no questions asked. . . .

“[T]he media’s coverage of education issues remains less than inspiring. In a Wall Street Journal article, Rupert Murdoch actually suggested that we might turn to American Idol for inspiration. It has higher performance standards for pop stars, he said, than educators do for public-school children.

“To be honest, nobody has zeroed in more sharply on the emptiness of such coverage than comedian Lewis Black on The Daily Show. ‘Ah, fall,’ he intoned in a recent segment. ‘That magical time when we spend one or two weeks pretending we’re actually going to do something about the condition of our schools.’ He then cut to a clip of David Gregory, host of NBC’s Meet the Press, providing his own DIY recipe for school reform: ‘If you drive by a public school, even if your kids don't go there, walk in, and ask what you can do to help.’

“It’s enough to make me cry.”

—LynNell Hancock, journalist, author and professor, “Waiting for Substance: A high-profile documentary shortchanges the education debate,” Columbia Journalism Review, Oct. 27, 2010.

Editorial Comment: Too much dodge-ball at recess?

Today’s Extra: Follow-up: See The Logan Herald Journal for a debriefing on last week's screening of 8: The Mormon Proposition by filmmaker Reed Cowan .

PeezPix: Dog Beach—Sadie says, Wish we were here. Woof.

JCOM News Note: NPR foreign correspondent ANNE GARRELS comes to Utah State next week for class meetings and to deliver a Morris Media & Society Lecture: “Bearing Witness—One journalist’s take on covering the world.” Garrels comes to USU fresh from several weeks in Russia. When the U.S. “shock and awe” bombing started in Baghdad, Garrels was one of 16 U.S. journalists who stayed to cover the invasion to topple Saddam Hussein. Her 2003 book, Naked in Baghdad, tells that story. Over three decades, Garrels has been in Russia, China, the Middle East and elsewhere in war and peace to bear witness and tell the rest of us what she has seen. JCOM student session Wednesday 11/3, 2:30 p.m. AnSc 303. Public speech Thursday, 11/4, 2-3:15 p.m., USU Performance Hall. Free & open to everyone.

WRITING PROF WANTED! JCOM @ USU is hiring. A search for a new tenure-track faculty member to focus on the teaching of writing. Revolutionary! See job posting at Utah State University HR or email ted.pease@usu.edu.

NOTE: Today’s WORD on Journalism is now on Facebook! Join up and rant daily! And join USU JCOM Alumni & Friends on FB.

• • •

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‘Restoring History’

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Professor Beck

“A few months ago, the cable-television and radio host Glenn Beck began his Fox News show with one of his favorite props: a pipe clenched between his teeth. ‘I’ve got my pipe,’ he told his audience, his speech slightly muddled by the stem, ‘because we’re going to speak about schoolish kind of things.’ The theme of the day was “Restoring History,’ and Beck, looking professorial in a neat dark blazer and a pink button-down shirt, began the lesson by peering at a stack of history textbooks and pronouncing them full of falsehoods, produced by ‘malicious progressive intent.’ ... For the next hour, Beck earnestly explained some of the history that ‘is being stolen from us’ ... For the fractious Tea Party movement, Beck—a former drive-time radio jockey, a recovering alcoholic, and a Mormon convert—has emerged as both a unifying figure and an intellectual guide. One opinion poll, released in July by Democracy Corps, showed that he is ‘the most highly regarded individual among Tea Party supporters,’ seen not merely as an entertainer, like Rush Limbaugh, but as an “educator.’”

—Sean Wilentz, writer, “Confounding Fathers: The Tea Party’s Cold War Roots,”
The New Yorker, Oct. 18, 2010.

Editorial Comment: Professor Beck, the dog wouldn’t eat my homework.





Today’s Extra: Miniature Earth (video)

PeezPix: Burnished Fall Field

JCOM News Note: NPR foreign correspondent ANNE GARRELS comes to Utah State next week for class meetings and to deliver a Morris Media & Society Lecture: “Bearing Witness—One journalist’s take on covering the world.” Garrels comes to USU fresh from several weeks in Russia. When the U.S. “shock and awe” bombing started in Baghdad, Garrels was one of 16 U.S. journalists who stayed to cover the invasion to topple Saddam Hussein. Her 2003 book, Naked in Baghdad, tells that story. Over three decades, Garrels has been in Russia, China, the Middle East and elsewhere in war and peace to bear witness and tell the rest of us what she has seen. JCOM student session Wednesday 11/3, 2:30 p.m. AnSc 303. Public speech Thursday, 11/4, 2-3:15 p.m., USU Performance Hall. Free & open to everyone.

WRITING PROF WANTED! JCOM @ USU is hiring. A search for a new tenure-track faculty member to focus on the teaching of writing. Revolutionary! See job posting at Utah State University HR or email ted.pease@usu.edu.

NOTE: Today’s WORD on Journalism is now on Facebook! Join up and rant daily! And join USU JCOM Alumni & Friends on FB.

• • •
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Kennedy-Nixon 1960

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TV Nation

“When that debate was over, I realized that we didn’t have to wait for an election day. We just elected a president. It all happened on television.”

—Don Hewitt, producer-director of the first Kennedy-Nixon debate, 1960

Editorial Comment: Quaint times of yesteryear....

Today’s Extra: Miniature Earth (video)

PeezPix: Crab Apples are done and gone, and the remnants are now snow-covered at the base of the Wellsvilles in Northern Utah.

WRITING PROF WANTED! JCOM @ USU is hiring. A search for a new tenure-track faculty member to focus on the teaching of writing. Revolutionary! See job posting at Utah State University HR or email ted.pease@usu.edu.

NOTE: Today’s WORD on Journalism is now on Facebook! Join up and rant daily! And join USU JCOM Alumni & Friends on FB.

• • •

Thomas Paine

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The Measure of a Nation

“Whoever has made observation on the characters of nations will find it generally true that the manners of a nation, or of a party, can be better ascertained from the character of its press than from any other public circumstance.”

—Thomas Paine (1737-1809), Founding Father, revolutionary writer & thinker,
“Liberty of the Press,” 1806.

Editor’s Note: Uh oh.

PeezPix: Three-Quarter Moon rising over Logan, Utah, and the Bear River Range.

WRITING PROF WANTED! JCOM @ USU is hiring. A search for a new tenure-track faculty member to focus on the teaching of writing. Revolutionary! See job posting at Utah State University HR or email ted.pease@usu.edu.



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• • •

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Ring’s Secrets

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Minimalism

“I asked Ring Lardner the other day how he writes his short stories, and he said he wrote a few widely separated words or phrases on a piece of paper and then went back and filled in the spaces.”

—Harold Ross (1892-1951), founding editor of The New Yorker.

Editor’s Note: Mad Libs?

PeezPix: Fall Walk—Over the shoulder of the Wellsville in the last of the autumn sun.

WRITING PROF WANTED! JCOM @ USU is hiring. A search for a new tenure-track faculty member to focus on the teaching of writing. Revolutionary! See job posting at Utah State University HR or email ted.pease@usu.edu.

NOTE: Today’s WORD on Journalism is now on Facebook! Join up and rant daily! And join USU JCOM Alumni & Friends on FB.

• • •
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Report from the Zoo

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Bad Monkey!

“The [more] you spend time with the political [world] and media, the less political you become and the more viscerally upset you become at corruption.... I’m less upset with politicians than [with] the media. I feel like politicians . . . the way I explain it is, when you go to a zoo and a monkey throws feces, it’s a monkey. But when the zookeeper is standing right there and he doesn’t say, ‘Bad monkey’—somebody's gotta be the zookeeper. I feel much more strongly about the abdication of responsibility by the media than by political advocates. They’re representing a constituency.... [W]hat has changed is the media's sense of their ability to be responsible arbiters. I think they feel fearful. I think there’s this whole idea now that there's a liberal media conspiracy, and I think they feel if they express any authority or judgment, which is what I imagine is editorial control, they will be vilified.”

—Jon Stewart, host, The Daily Show, and social commentator,
in interview w/ Terry Gross on “Fresh Air,” Oct. 4, 2010

Editor’s Note: Monkey poo as editorial comment?

PeezPix: Cutler Marsh—The Bear River wanders through Cache Valley, Northern Utah

WRITING PROF WANTED! JCOM @ USU is hiring. A search for a new tenure-track faculty member to focus on the teaching of writing. Revolutionary! See job posting at Utah State University HR or email ted.pease@usu.edu.

NEWS NOTE: Thanks to everyone who came out (!) to see filmmaker and USU alum Reed Cowan and his Sundance documentary, 8: The Mormon Proposition, at USU last night. It was standing-room-only—estimated 440 people—and Q&A with Cowan lasted until almost 11 p.m. We laughed. We cried. We yelled. We all learned something. URL See Utah Statesman story by Megan Allen

NOTE: Today’s WORD on Journalism is now on Facebook! Join up and rant daily! And join USU JCOM Alumni & Friends on FB.

Truth

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A Revolutionary Act

“In a time of deceit telling the truth is a revolutionary act.”

—George Orwell (1903-1950), author
(Thanks to alert WORDster Thomas E. Winski)

Editor’s Note: We know it when we hear it.

PeezPix: Our Back Yard—Fall below Mendon Peak, Cache Valley, Northern Utah

WRITING PROF WANTED! JCOM @ USU is hiring. A search for a new tenure-track faculty member to focus on the teaching of writing. Revolutionary! See job posting at Utah State University HR or email ted.pease@usu.edu.

NEWS NOTE: TODAY! 2010 Sundance film 8: The Mormon Proposition, comes to the USU campus TODAY with Q&A discussion with filmmaker Reed Cowan, a 1997 USU broadcast journalism alumnus. TODAY 7 p.m., Eccles Conference Center Auditorium. URL See Utah Statesman story by Megan Allen

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Bewitched

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‘You’re telling me that’s in the First Amendment?’

WORDmeister sez: This offered in its entirety. Talk about shock and awe...

O’Donnell questions separation of church, state
By BEN EVANS Associated Press Writer

“WASHINGTON (AP)—Republican Senate nominee Christine O’Donnell of Delaware is questioning whether the U.S. Constitution prohibits the government from establishing religion.

“In a debate at Widener University Law School, O’Donnell criticized Democratic nominee Chris Coons’ position that teaching creationism in public school would violate the First Amendment by promoting religious doctrine.

“O’Donnell asked where the Constitution calls for the separation of church and state. When Coons responded that the First Amendment bars Congress from making laws respecting the establishment of religion, O'Donnell asked: “You’re telling me that’s in the First Amendment?’

“The exchange Tuesday aired on radio station WDEL generated a buzz among law professors and students in the audience.”

AP Bulletin and ABCNews
(Thanks to alert WORDster Penny Byrne)

Editor’s Note: At least she’s not a witch.

PeezPix: Fishermen’s Memorial, Trinidad, Calif.

WRITING PROF WANTED! JCOM @ USU is hiring. A search for a new tenure-track faculty member to focus on the teaching of writing. Revolutionary! See job posting at Utah State University HR or email ted.pease@usu.edu.

NEWS NOTE: 2010 Sundance film 8: The Mormon Proposition, comes to the USU campus next week with Q&A discussion with filmmaker Reed Cowan, a 1997 USU broadcast journalism alumnus. Thursday, Oct. 21, 7 p.m., Eccles Conference Center Auditorium. URL

NOTE: Today’s WORD on Journalism is now on Facebook! Join up and rant daily! And join USU JCOM Alumni & Friends on FB.
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Potent Stuff

Just Add Water

“Words—so innocent and powerless as they are, as standing in a dictionary, how potent for good and evil they become in the hands of one who knows how to combine them.”

—Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864), American novelist

Editor’s Note: Use your words for good.

PeezPix: Summer Bouquet—Unfaded memories of summer 2010

WRITING PROF WANTED! JCOM @ USU is hiring. A search for a new tenure-track faculty member to focus on the teaching of writing. Revolutionary! See job posting at Utah State University HR or email ted.pease@usu.edu.

NEWS NOTE: 2010 Sundance film 8: The Mormon Proposition, comes to the USU campus this week with Q&A discussion with filmmaker Reed Cowan, a 1997 USU broadcast journalism alumnus. Thursday, Oct. 21, 7 p.m., Eccles Conference Center Auditorium. URL

Today’s WORD on Journalism is now on Facebook! Join up and rant daily! And join USU JCOM Alumni & Friends on FB.
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Spiked!

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‘Spike’ Is Spiked in the Modern Newsroom

WORDmeister Note: Washington Post columnist John Kelly struggles with a new newsroom computer system—“Methode”—that takes some of the blood out of journalism.

“I feel I should pause and mourn the passing of an old newspaper word. Now that Methode is here, stories are no longer ‘spiked.’

“To ‘spike’ a story is to eliminate it before it sees print. It has its origins in a physical act. If you look at old photos of newsrooms from the ’30s or ’40s, you will see eyeshade-wearing men, their sleeves held up with garters, sitting at long tables. Sticking up from those tables are metal spikes. A story that was insufficient for whatever reason would be smashed atop the spike, the paper perforated and pinioned like a butterfly or the head of a traitor.

“We long ago stopped using metal spikes, but the word persisted. In our old computer system, you could dispatch a story by clicking on a drop-down menu, highlighting the word ‘Spike’ and clicking enter. It was a bloodless, digital spiking, but I always got a kick out of knowing the word connected me to journalism’s past....

“Now, however, my drop-down menu doesn’t say ‘Spike.’ It says ‘Delete,’ just like on your computer.

“Spike has been spiked.”

—John Kelly, columnist, The Washington Post, Oct. 18, 2010 URL

(Thanks to alert WORDster Betty Medsger)

Editor’s Note: Kinder & gentler, or limper & duller?

PeezPix: Great Salty Vista—from Antelope Island

WRITING PROF WANTED! JCOM @ USU is hiring. A search for a new tenure-track faculty member to focus on the teaching of writing. Revolutionary! See job posting at Utah State University HR or email ted.pease@usu.edu.

NEWS NOTE: 2010 Sundance film 8: The Mormon Proposition, comes to the USU campus next week with Q&A discussion with filmmaker Reed Cowan, a 1997 USU broadcast journalism alumnus. Thursday, Oct. 21, 7 p.m., Eccles Conference Center Auditorium. URL

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Talking Heads . . .

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. . . No Thinking Needed

“Among the many things wrong with talking-head gab shows, which have proliferated/ metastasized in the past generation—they’re cheap to produce, they fill air time, they make journalists into celebrities, they suit the increasing political niche-ization of cable networks—is that they reward an affect of breezy confidence on all topics and penalize admissions of complexity, of ignorance on a specific topic, or of the need for time to think.”

—James Fallows, national correspondent, The Atlantic, in article titled, “Why Christine O'Donnell Could Be More Dangerous Than Sarah Palin,” Oct. 13, 2010.
(Fallows’ answer: “Because she has the idiot bravado of the talk show regular.”)
(Thanks to alert WORDster Brad Knickerbocker)

Editor’s Note: Let me think about that.

PeezPix: Autumn Country Road

WRITING PROF WANTED! JCOM @ USU is hiring. A search for a new tenure-track faculty member to focus on the teaching of writing. Revolutionary! See job posting at Utah State University HR or email ted.pease@usu.edu.

NEWS NOTE: 2010 Sundance film 8: The Mormon Proposition, comes to the USU campus next week with Q&A discussion with filmmaker Reed Cowan, a 1997 USU broadcast journalism alumnus. Thursday, Oct. 21, 7 p.m., Eccles Conference Center Auditorium. URL

Dueling Rights

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Point-Gunpoint

WORDmeister Note: Last week, in reaction to a P1 story in the student newspaper about concealed weapons on campus (which is legal in Utah), I foolishly shot off an email rant that was published as a letter to the editor. Gun proponents, including the regional director of Students for Concealed Carry on Campus (who knew?), have taken exception to my opinions. Thus, a disagreement between the 1st and 2nd amendments. A teachable moment.

“Ideas are more powerful than guns. We would not let our enemies have guns, why should we let them have ideas.”
—Joseph Stalin (1878-1953), Communist dictator

Editor’s Note: We aim to please, Pease.

PeezPix: Wide Open Spaces

WRITING PROF WANTED! JCOM @ USU is hiring! A search for a new tenure-track faculty member to focus on the teaching of writing. Revolutionary! See job posting at Utah State University HR or email ted.pease@usu.edu.

NEWS NOTE: 2010 Sundance film 8: The Mormon Proposition, comes to the USU campus next week with Q&A discussion with filmmaker Reed Cowan, a 1997 USU broadcast journalism alumnus. Thursday, Oct. 21, 7 p.m., Eccles Conference Center Auditorium. URL

NOTE: Today’s WORD on Journalism is now on Facebook! Join up and rant daily! And join USU JCOM Alumni & Friends on FB.

Pap

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Dis‘Content’

“I sure wish we could get rid of that word ‘content’ to refer to writing, photography, drawing, and design online. The very word breathes indifference—why would one bother about the quality of work when it’s referred to as ‘content’? I’m sorry to respond to your good question with a cranky diatribe, but this word has crept from New Media over to Radio Broadcasting where I live in my little cave and now my Show has become Content and is sent around to stations in a nice digital package that squashes the sound. Public radio, which holds itself up as a believer in quality, is cutting corners on all sides and I see this perfidious word ‘content’ as part of the downward slide. I loathe the word. It’s like referring to Omaha as a ‘development.’”

—Garrison Keillor, radio curmudgeon, in response to a listener question about how he develops “content” for his radio show, “The Prairie Home Companion,” 2009
(Thanks to alert WORDster Tim Harrower)

Editor’s Note: Sort of Twinkie news?

PeezPix: Harvest Time

WRITING PROF WANTED! JCOM @ USU is hiring! A search for a new tenure-track faculty member to focus on the teaching of writing. Revolutionary! See job posting at Utah State University HR or email ted.pease@usu.edu.

NEWS NOTE: 2010 Sundance film 8: The Mormon Proposition, comes to the USU campus next week with Q&A discussion with filmmaker Reed Cowan, a 1997 USU broadcast journalism alumnus. Thursday, Oct. 21, 7 p.m., Eccles Conference Center Auditorium. URL

NOTE: Today’s WORD on Journalism is now on Facebook! Join up and rant daily! And join USU JCOM Alumni & Friends on FB.

2 Words on College Writing

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Gibberish & Stifle

“I am returning this otherwise good typing paper to you because someone has printed gibberish all over it and put your name at the top.”

—English Professor (Name Unknown), Ohio University

and…

“Everywhere I go I’m asked if I think the university stifles writers. My opinion is that they don’t stifle enough of them. There’s many a bestseller that could have been prevented by a good teacher.”

—Flannery O’Connor (1925-1964), writer

Photo: Flannery O’Connor and self-portrait in 1955.

Editor’s Note: My heroes.

PeezPix: Hitched

HELP WANTED! JCOM @ USU is hiring! A search for a new tenure-track faculty member to focus on the teaching of writing. Revolutionary! See job posting at Utah State University HR or email ted.pease@usu.edu.

NOTE: Today’s WORD on Journalism is now on Facebook! Join up and rant daily! And join USU JCOM Alumni & Friends on FB.

Come On Out!

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For National Coming Out Day
Oct. 11, 2010

WORDmeister’s Note: The LDS Church-owned Deseret News weighs in with a Sunday editorial on criticism of Mormon church leader Boyd K. Packer’s condemnation of “the gay lifestyle” at last week’s LDS General Conference.

“Contrary to what some have written in provocative press releases, nothing in President [Boyd K.] Packer’s talk says that ‘violence and/or discrimination against LGBT people is acceptable.’

“This distortion is not only misguided and political, it is dangerous. It frays trust that helps people of goodwill from different perspectives to constructively address the serious problems under consideration. By holding up a caricatured account of people’s spiritual leaders, those in greatest need of pastoral care may be mistakenly alienated from the very people who can compassionately help them get access to professional resources and counseling.

“The challenges facing the families and individuals affected by same-gender attraction are poignant and real. Religion provides a unique perspective on how these challenges can be addressed that has every right to be heard and evaluated on the merits. Indeed, religious organizations provide the vital infrastructure for the economy of care that undergirds our community. For the sake of our youths and the health of our communities, we call for thoughtful and civil dialogue on this and all difficult conversations. That dialogue should respect context, should not prejudge motive and must work to include instead of isolate.”

—Editorial, “A call for civility following Apostle Body K. Packer’s address,” The Deseret News Oct. 10, 2010

Related:
• 2,000-3,000 protest for gay rights, The Deseret News, Oct. 7, and The Salt Lake Tribune, Oct. 8
• Human Rights Campaign
• Sarah Estrella, Examiner.com: Why National Coming Out Day matters, no matter who you are
• Tufts University celebrates Coming Out Day amid the somber backdrop of recent deaths
• The Oklahoma Daily: Open your mind to Coming Out Day
• Brenda Cooper: Remembering Woody, Newsweek, 2000

Editor’s Note: Filmmaker Reed Cowan brings his powerful documentary on same-sex marriage and the LDS Church—8: The Mormon Proposition—to Utah State. Free screening and Q&A with the filmmaker. Eccles Conference Center, Oct. 21, 7-10 p.m. See also URL.

PeezPix: Moon Sliver

HELP WANTED! JCOM @ USU is hiring! A search for a new tenure-track faculty member to focus on the teaching of writing. Revolutionary! See job posting at Utah State University HR or email ted.pease@usu.edu

NOTE: Today’s WORD on Journalism is now on Facebook! Join up and rant daily! And join USU JCOM Alumni & Friends on FB.

Counter Measures

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So What, You Twit?

WORDmeister’s Note: We continue this week’s conversation on the impact and effects of social media—does it matter?—with Malcolm Gladwell’s skeptical discussion in The New Yorker. Earlier this week, NPR ombudsman Alicia Shepard told the WORD that we’re in the middle of a revolution. But did Twitter really threaten the government in Moldova in 2009, or in Tehran? Or are social media irrelevant for social movements? The Civil Rights Movement would not have been Tweeted, Gladwell argues.

“The instruments of social media are well suited to making the existing social order more efficient. They are not a natural enemy of the status quo. If you have the opinion that all the world needs is a little buffing around the edges, this should not trouble you. But if you think there are still lunch counters out there that need integrating it ought to give you pause.”

—Malcolm Gladwell, The New Yorker,
“Small Change: Why the revolution will not be tweeted,” Oct. 4, 2010

Editor’s Note: I twit, you twit, we all twit...

PeezPix: Rogue River Bridge

HELP WANTED! JCOM @ USU is hiring—a search for a new tenure-track faculty member to focus on the teaching of writing. Revolutionary! See job posting at Utah State University HR: https://jobs.usu.edu/applicants/jsp/shared/frameset/Frameset.jsp?time=1286546342053 or email ted.pease@usu.edu

NPR OMBUDSMAN Alicia C. Shepard talks about journalism. See The Hard News Cafe and her interview with Lee Austin on Utah Public Radio.

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Cushions & Technology

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Padding

“In the first years of this magazine, technology was only a modest factor in its production. Harold Ross, the founder of The New Yorker, . . . was an editor acquainted with the nightmare of the empty page. Once, when he asked Dorothy Parker why she wasn't in the office writing, she replied, ‘Someone was using the pencil.’ ...

“Technology, the means of delivering this writing, is a very important, but secondary, matter, and we intend to keep providing the magazine in whatever form seems to work. Editors here are always willing to make improvements in the cause of writing. Take Mr. Ross again, and the way he encouraged E.B. White to finish an essay:

“‘Mr. White: If you get that story done, I’ll take steps to get you a new cushion for your chair.’ H.W. Ross.”

—The Editors, The New Yorker, announcing the magazine’s availability on iPad, Oct. 4, 2010

Editor’s Note: Don’t pad that column, Ross.

PeezPix: Autumnscape

HELP WANTED! JCOM @ USU opens a formal search for a new tenure-track faculty member to focus on the teaching of writing. Revolutionary! See job posting at Utah State University HR

NPR OMBUDSMAN Alicia C. Shepard talks about journalism. See The Hard News Cafe.

NOTE: Today’s WORD on Journalism is now on Facebook! Join up and rant daily! And join USU JCOM Alumni & Friends on FB.

Fifth Estate

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You Say You Want a Revolution

“It’s not often that you are aware of a revolution while you are in the midst of it, but we are. It’s certainly not that journalism is dying, only that delivery systems and public habits are changing. NPR used to be just radio, but they recognize that to stay relevant they have to go where people are. They have to be on the Internet, the iPad, the iPod, the MP3 player, the Droid. And on whatever else is coming....

“The traditional Fourth Estate is getting smaller, but there’s no end in sight for the so-called Fifth Estate—citizen journalists. But they are blurring the definition of journalism, and blurring the line between fact and opinion.

“Since we are in the middle of a revolution, no one can really see the end. Anyone who says they do is lying. But one thing I'm certain of is that, over time, it will be the trusted sources that will endure.”

—Alicia C. Shepard, ombudsman, National Public Radio,
at Morris Media & Society Lecture, Utah State University, Oct. 5, 2010

Editor’s Note: Sixth Estate: Smart phone that talks to itself.

PeezPix: Fall in the Wellsvilles

NOTE: Today’s WORD on Journalism is now on Facebook! Join up and rant daily! And join USU JCOM Alumni & Friends on FB.

Yo?

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Who’s in Charge Here?

WORDmeister’s Note: Yesterday’s WORD on Cheez Doodles lauded Washington Post writer Gene Weingarten’s celebration of “Cheez Doodle” and his lament on the death of the English language. For context, we turn once more to our English Lit classes, when we actually used to read books, yo?

“‘When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.’

“‘The question is,’ said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean so many different things.’

“‘The question is,’ said Humpty Dumpty, ‘which is to be master—that's all.’

“Alice was too much puzzled to say anything; so after a minute Humpty Dumpty began again. ‘They’ve a temper, some of them—particularly verbs: they’re the proudest—adjectives you can do anything with, but not verbs—however, I can manage the whole lot of them! Impenetrability! That's what I say!'’

“‘Would you tell me please,’ said Alice, ‘what that means?’

“‘Now you talk like a reasonable child,’ said Humpty Dumpty, looking very much pleased. ‘I meant by “impenetrability” that we’ve had enough of that subject, and it would be just as well if you'd mention what you mean to do next, as I suppose you don’t mean to stop here all the rest of your life.’

“‘That's a great deal to make one word mean,’ Alice said in a thoughtful tone.

“‘When I make a word do a lot of work like that,’ said Humpty Dumpty, ‘I always pay it extra.’”

—Lewis Carroll (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, 1832-1898) , writer and impenetrable WORDster.

Editor’s Note: Did I just write, “yo”?!

PeezPix: Drowning Party . . . whitewater rafting on the Trinity

NEWSNOTE: National Public Radio’s ombudsman Alicia C. Shepard, comes to Utah State University today for a series of conversations on journalism, including her Morris Media & Society Lecture at noon today: “The Promise and Perils of Social Media,” Come on down! USU Performance Hall. Maybe we can get her to address the “Cheez Doodles Issue.” And “Yo.”

<--NPR OMBUDSMAN Alicia C. Shepard talks with USU students after a public affairs reporting class yesterday.

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Cheez Doodles

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Mis‘Communications’

“It was not immediately clear to what degree the English language will be mourned, or if it will be mourned at all. In the United States, English has become increasingly irrelevant, particularly among young adults. Once the most popular major at the nation’s leading colleges and universities, it now often trails more pragmatic disciplines, such as economics, politics, government, and, ironically, ‘communications,’ which increasingly involves learning to write mobile-device-friendly ads for products like Cheez Doodles. Many people interviewed for this obituary appeared unmoved by the news, including Anthony Incognito of Crystal City, a typical man in the street. ‘Between you and I,’ he said, ‘I could care less.’”

—Gene Weingarten, columnist, The Washington Post, Sept. 19, 2010 URL
(Thanks to alert WORDster Jared Thayne)

Editor’s Note: Me myself, I care fewer.

Today’s Wish-I-Were-Here Photo: Speaking of mourning, Beachscape Morning . . .

NEWSNOTE: National Public Radio’s ombudsman Alicia C. Shepard, comes to Utah State University this week for a series of conversations on journalism, including a Morris Media & Society Lecture tomorrow, Oct. 5, “The Promise and Perils of Social Media,” noon-1:15 p.m., USU Performance Hall. Maybe we can get her to address the “Cheez Doodles Issue.”

NOTE: Today’s WORD on Journalism is now on Facebook! Join up and rant daily! And join USU JCOM Alumni & Friends on FB.

Barking MAD

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Political Discourse

“My colleague, cartoonist Jim Morin, did this great animation on The [Miami] Herald’s website. Guy sits down with the family dog to watch a little television. Out of the box spews a loud cross-talk of invective, accusation, venom, tirade and diatribe. Dog starts barking at the hateful box. A moment passes. Guy starts barking, too.

“It is as succinct a description as you will see of what now passes for political discourse in America. . . .

“Watching cable TV news—often a bad idea—one cannot escape a sense that everybody in America is yelling at everybody else.

“But what about the rest of us?

“People frame all this as a debate between political extremes, a mud fight between conservatives and liberals. I submit that it is more than that. I submit that because they are louder, more colorful, crazier, angrier, and thus, more entertaining, the fringe elements of American political thought—right, and, increasingly, left—have made themselves irresistible to the 24-hour cable and Internet megaplex which, like a shark, is always swimming in search of its next meal. In response, that megaplex has ceded those denizens of the fringe the center stage and given them a megaphone.

“The result has been less a clash between ideologies than a clash between reason and its opposite, between those who are willing and able to talk a thing through, think it through, even argue it through, and those who are unwilling and unable to do so. We’re talking about people who believe what they believe because they believe. Their ignorance is bellicose, determined, an act of sheer will, and there is not enough reason in all the world to budge them from it.”

—Leonard Pitts Jr., Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist,
The Miami Herald, Sept. 25, 2010. URL

Editor’s Note: Watching the watchdogs of the press.

Today’s Wish-I-Were-Here Photo: Amber Waves of Grain

NOTE: Today’s WORD on Journalism is now on Facebook! Join up and rant daily! And join USU JCOM Alumni & Friends on FB.