don't shoot the messenger

Should journalists write about stories people don't like to hear? Today I was reading about Kevin Carter, the photojournalist who committed suicide months after his photo of a starving girl won a Pulitzer Prize.

The picture is of a starving girl in Africa being watched by a vulture, waiting patiently for his next meal. With the photograph's publicity come criticism from the public - most said it was wrong of him to take the picture, and that he could have saved her life instead. This website about the image has comments protesting that Carter himself is a vulture, that he watched her die. But some say that he was trying to let the world know about the situation to create even more of an impact.

I agree that as a journalist we can do more by sharing the story than we could do alone. But sometimes it seems the stories are a little to sensationalist. Some images and details can be disturbing to readers, and hurt the families of those involved.

Did Carter deserve to feel bad about shooting the photo? What would stop you from giving a story to the public?

hometown paper vs. national news

This week a story about America's best state was featured in both the Star Tribune and the New York Times.

In the Minnesota Senate race Norm Coleman beat Al Franken by only seven-thousandths of a percent, which requires a recount by hand. Also, Al Franken wants the state to reconsider 461 rejected absentee ballots. (This hits even closer to home for me, because I've been worried the last couple weeks that I filled my absentee ballot out incorrectly.)

The New York Times article started the story with plenty of background information, for readers who didn't know about how close the race was, or which candidate was the incumbent. It referenced national figures like Sean Hannity, as well as a Minnesota reporter for the Star Tribune. The bottom of the page had links to other articles on the issue, but the most recent one was from February.

I thought the Star Tribune had a much more interesting presentation. Because the readers already know the issue, they started their article off with "The latest twist..." and skipped the background information. There were 237 reader comments, some graphics (see picture below) and links to nine other articles on the story, written in the last week.

While the New York times has a better design and readability, I'm glad I read the Star Tribune because of the extra information and reader comments. I think they have resources to actually do a better job reporting than the national news, when it's a story that happened in Minnesota.

How do stories in your hometown paper and the national news compare? What differences have you noticed in coverage of the same news, and which is usually more interesting?























image from StarTribune.com website

anxious, elated, hopeful, disgusted - the press wants to know how you're feeling

In other news, the New York Times home page today has a link to a feature where readers can answer the question "what one word describes your state of mind?" and check who they voted for. All of the answers roll across the screen - it's very cool.

de l'autre côté

I thought the American media couldn't be any more enthusiastic about the election until I saw today's home page on lemonde.fr, a popular french newspaper.



















Does the United States ever have this much coverage of another country's presidential race? There's even a section for French readers to post photos and comments about the American election. I think this election is an exciting time for the media, no matter what country you're from.

"I go to Fox if I want to get enraged"

An article in the New York Times yesterday interviewed liberals - who watch liberal news or conservative news, depending on their mood.

"Many liberal Democrats watch MSNBC, but some say it sounds too much like comfort food. CNN serves its election coverage with a stiff little chaser of doubt for Democrats, and many liberals say CNN and NPR are their regular evening companions. If they really want to rub the sore tooth of worry, they dial over to the 'Obama’s radical friend Bill Ayers' channel, otherwise known as Fox News.

"'Mostly I flip between CNN and MSNBC, but I go to Fox if I want to get enraged,' Mr. Downs [the liberal being interviewed] said."

I wonder if I might be guilty of doing the same thing - it's always easy to spot the bias in news that doesn't align with your own opinion. Do you usually look for news that aligns with your beliefs, but occasionally seek out the opposing side, just to see how wrong they are? Or do you try and read equal amounts of both sides, to get a balanced opinion?

How can an individual who is biases try and broaden their view, if the other side just makes them "enraged"? How can journalists monitor their bias, to make sure they are not catering to one side, or making one side angry - is it possible?

dangerous tweets

When I heard about Twitter my first thought was "why do we need it?" This semester we've found dozens of answers to that question - Twitter is used by journalists, friends, bloggers, scavenger hunters, state governments, and newspapers. This week the New York Times presented another possible use.

The United States army is investigating the possibility that terrorists could use Twitter to plan attacks, and communicate strategies and information. They realized the website's potential after political activists used it to plan their protest at the Republican convention in St Paul (world's best city). The range of possible uses from a website that seems so ridiculously simple is unbelievable.

What new possibilities do you think twittering might have for journalists that we haven't seen yet?

Read the article here.

The Onion Reports - "Swaggering Down 87%"

"A wide-legged gait accompanied by an overconfident smile and a jauntily raised eyebrow may soon be a thing of the past due to recent economic turmoil." - The Onion





















Ever since I started thinking of bloggers as journalists and of the Daily Show as a news broadcast, my idea of the media has completely opened up. My latest interest is The Onion. The newspaper calls itself "America's Finest News Source" and they make fun of almost any topic - lately there have been frequent articles parodying the election and the economy.

While their articles are clearly satire, they are usually based on an element of truth, and they portray the truth in ways you would never see on the news. Can anything be gained from this type of comedy? Do they ever give the public truth that they couldn't find on the evening news?

for sale: sturdy cardboard box, $5

Since I started looking for new housing a couple weeks ago, I've become a hundred times more interested in a former source of income for newspapers - the classifieds. But, bad news for newspapers - I haven't used them once. It's all about craigslist.com.

Anyway, I wanted to let you know that newspapers are trying to catch up. I recently received a tip that KSL.com has an online classifieds section. Genius. My hometown newspaper has one as well, although theirs isn't nearly as popular as the Utah one.

It's necessary for newspapers to switch online classifieds, but there is no way they can charge anyone for the service anymore. I wonder if there is anything they can do to get back that revenue? Probably not. Craigslist is phenomenal.

Hopefully my housing situation doesn't get so desperate that I have to settle for the title of this blog post.

From the front lines of the News War

I didn't make it to watch our journalism movie during class time, so I brought the call number to the library over the weekend to check it out. The girl at the LRC lookd at it and said "Sorry, I think you had the wrong number. This is a movie called News War, it doesn't look very interesting."

On that note, my favorite ideas from the movie:

Acts of Journalism
I loved the concept of "acts of journalism" - that anyone can do journalism without being a journalist. They may not do it all the time, they may not be a journalist at all, but they still might perform the occasional "act of journalism." Besides bringing new meaning to the idea of the news, this phrase can also become an interesting part of your vocabulary: "I passed by the library today and performed an act of studying."

We've never given journalism much thought
One of the creators of Rocketboom, a video journalism podcast said: "We've never been interested in journalism, or even given it much thought." Rocketboom has as many viewers as some cable news shows.

So journalists are no longer interested in journalism, but non-journalists are performing acts of journalism? Is there any hope? Can one be a journalist without giving it much thought?

I was happy to tell the LRC employee how wrong she was about the movie.

It's love

I think the new Chicago Tribune redesign is pretty fabulous.

This might sound crazy, but it looks more like a website than a newspaper to me. All the images, the bright colors, and especially the way each page is divided into sections. The way "Chicago Tribune" was printed in the top corner made me want to click on it to go to the home page. Phenomenal.

golf ball sized hail

The video we watched this week talked a little about news websites featuring reader-submitted photos and videos, and it just so happens that StarTribune.com has a section for that on their website.

In the Your Photos + Video section Minnesotans can post images of local news, scenery, sports, history, and of course weather. Now anyone can be a photojournalist.












Reader-submitted photo of hail from killer storm this summer.

Go Twins!

My hometown paper, Startribune.com has had fantastic coverage on the Minnesota Twins' AL Central lead the last couple days, which for some reason wasn't a top headline on any of the national newspapers.

I know the average American would probably rather read about the bailout or the debates instead of local sports teams and problems with local public transit, but that's why I love local news. It doesn't update as fast or have as many videos as my favorite national websites, but it's the only place I can read about things like this.

I can't wait to go to StarTribune.com and read about the Twin's getting a spot in the playoffs later this week.

blogs are tedious

I read it in the Daily Universe - Utah state government now has a twitter. They post pretty much anything about Utah - events, hearings, or how the elk are doing.





It's good news. Twitter is so hip now, it looks like I got one just in time. Chief Deputy of the Utah Senate, Ric Cantrell, agrees: "Maybe this is a sign of the times, but blogging got to be too tedious."

What are your thoughts on journalists, and government, having Twitter accounts? I love the instant news, but I think it definitely needs to be supplemented by something.

economic pandemonium

An article printed in the New York Times the other day says that journalists are trying to tone down the language they use when writing about the economy, to make sure that they don't scare people. I always find articles about journalists, and obviously by journalists, amusing. None of my coworkers agreed that journalists are toning it down - one of them even claims that journalists have invented the economy problems.

We talked a little on Monday about the tendency for the press to attack things, do you some journalists are making the economy problem out to be a bigger deal than it is? Do you this is telling people what they want to hear? Or just giving honest news?

I personally don't think most journalists are toning it down... the article mentioned that words like "'Crash,’ ‘panic,’ ‘pandemonium,’ [and] ‘apocalypse'" are being avoided by the Wall Street journal. Those seem extreme, an article can be sensationalist without using the word "apocalypse." Check it out here.

The Star Tribune

It was easy to choose my hometown newspaper : the Star Tribune. Besides having a classy name and a killer location (Minneapolis-St. Paul), they're a huge part of the community where I'm from.

They've gone through some pretty big changes recently- StarTribune.com was created in 1996 (I think that's about the time most papers started going online, what have you noticed with your hometown papers?). Possibly even cooler is the local news sections the paper started doing a couple years ago, which tells me about concerts and news going on within a few minutes of my house. I'm pretty impressed with the way StarTribune.com stays current and connected. And excited to start following their online news.

Breaking News: White girl writes blog post

It might be a little late for this, but I thought the Race and Ethnicity lesson we did the other day was pretty sweet. I'm definitely going to be paying closer attention to the articles I read.

Has anyone noticed this problem with other ways of describing people, besides race? What about when an article mentions that someone is elderly, or lower-class? I think that sometimes descriptors like these can help paint a picture for the reader, but they can also be biased or just completely unnecessary.

fine line between online and on the newsstand

After becoming better acquainted with the New York Times in the past week my only complaint is the constant double-takes : reading an article on the web and then seeing it again in the paper. I'm thinking of the article on sexual stereotyping in ads, which showed up online last night, and was printed the exact same in this morning's paper. The online version delivers us the stories as soon as possible, but the print edition wants to give us the biggest stories, even if they took place the night before. So obviously there's going to be some overlap.

I wonder how the paper could solve this problem, if it is a problem. The benefits of online and print versions definitely outweigh annoyances of news deja-vu. But is there something the print version could offer that the online version doesn't have? (Besides making me look sophisticated as I carry it around campus.)

On a related note, I'm amazed at how fast newspapers are printed. How did an article put on the internet at midnight make it onto a stack of newspapers outside the Kennedy Center by 7 am? In my opinion that's even more fascinating than instant news updates online.

What is a journalist?

A journalist is anyone who reports the news. In the past few years "anyone" has become literal, as journalism has become an interactive medium. Readers can add their comments as a story unfolds and expands, bringing new levels to the idea of journalism.

Audience interaction forces a writer to listen to their opinions. It also allows the readers to become journalists themselves. Thanks to internet publishing, anyone can produce news, even if they're not a journalist in the traditional sense. Non-traditional journalists can offer their views on news that interests them faster and more personally than the New York Times.

Lee Wilkins, a teacher at the Missouri School of Journalism, was recently quoted in the Times as saying “I think our profession has not decided whether bloggers are journalists.” (read the story here)