LA Times Hoax

The LA Times had to apologize this week, acknowledging that its controversial story on the Tupac Shakur slaying relied in part on falsified documents. The Smoking Gun revealed the hoax.
It's a valuable case for you to look at through the lens of our discussions on judging source credibility. Check out this piece in Slate and this one from Poynter on how they might have avoided falling into this trap.

Race and crime

When I ask you what distinguishes online journalism, some of you answer a key is the space to do more than you could in another medium. This is an amazing and heart-rending illustration of that. I'd love to see them go beyond the blog now, to put some depth to the breadth, particularly by using audio or video to give voice to families that have so often been invisible. I think it's also interesting how on-scene reporting can deepen the kind of data you'd find in everyblock and how race played in different ways for the audience.

Updates on Previous Posts

Some new stuff on things posted earlier:
1. The Washington Post's Eugene Robinson has a interesting twist on the Dan Rather lawsuit while the LA Times' Tim Rutten calls it "pathetic"
2. The New York Times screwed up ... and badly. Their ad rate for the controversial moveon.org ad was indeed grossly low (definitely fired a bullet into the foot of their credibility there and handed new ammo to the "liberal media" faction)
3. I referred you earlier to a book by Rajiv Chandrasekaran called Imperial Life in the Emerald City. He's coming to campus to deliver the J-School's Nafziger Lecture, 5 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 17, in the Pyle Center on Langdon. It's titled, "Iraq's Elusive Peace" (and yes, attendance does count for extra credit in 202)