Online Power and Giving

Woah, check out this blog. It's a 9-year-old who is climbing summits to raise money for his school. I remember collecting coins for charity in a rinsed-clean milk carton when I was a kid. What does the Web do for kids who support causes?

Heckling at Home

Excellent blog addition from a 202er:

1. read this CapTimes story about an alleged crime in the dorms
2. read this response to it on the Critical Badger blog
3. digest the debate in the blog comments
4. weigh in through our comments

The poster sent this as an accompaniment to the Discussion Arena reading on digital heckling. What do you think of the response here?

Should news organizations endorse candidates?

TIME magazine's managing editor offers an intriguing question: why do newspapers endorse political candidates?
I'm curious what you think. You are the generation at issue here. What does it mean to you if the Wisconsin State Journal says it thinks you should pick, say, McCain over Huckabee. Take it closer to home. Does it matter who the Herald or Cardinal endorse as the best in the race? Does that kind of endorsement affect how you judge their objectivity or credibility?

Student Newspaper in Hot Water

The student paper at the University of Colorado is under the microscope for publishing an opinion piece that offended many.
Extend this to your own campus. Could this happen at the Cardinal or Herald? Has it? If it does, what means should be used to address the issue? Should the editor be fired?

McCain and the New York Times

It looks like the McCain campaign may be spoinlin' for a fight with the New York Times over an article posted online last night, covering his record on ethics choices.
What are the media ethics ramifications of this? To get you started, read this perspective from the Poynter Institute.

Ethics and Medill, an update

In case you missed it, I started an earlier thread about controversy brewing at Northwestern's journalism school and its dean using unattributed comments in his letter in the alumni magazine.
Yesterday, some Medill faculty fired a shot across the bow.
I have a lot of thoughts here but want yours. Specifically, I'd like to know what you think about the idea that PR writing is held to a lower sourcing standard than journalism.
And what about anonymous sources, are they OK to use? When?
And let's get right to the heart here. Is the problem that people think the dean should have named his sources or is it that they suspect he didn't really have those sources? If it's the latter, do they have a responsibility to come out and say it?
Finally, does it matter? I was having a little IM spat with a journalist friend yesterday, warning him that it's all too easy to blow these insider controversies out of proportion when they may not matter much to the wider public. I used you guys as Exhibit A: you posted only two comments to the thread on Medill but put up 30 about NIU. You have a clear sense of what is important to you. Do news media share those priorities?

The Race Card

I found this column intriguing. It's an argument about reactions to race in the presidential campaigns and how small comments can be inflated. I liked the way he tied it to past campaigns to illuminate the differences, especially the Willie Horton case, which was a key issue in the presidential race when I was your age (does that make me sound as old as I think it does?).
So what do you think? How does race matter here, if at all? Is it being used strategically by either side in the Democratic race? What will happen in the general election?

Are We Dumb?

I'm quite curious what you think of this piece, as a member of a generation she targets in her argument.

Is it copying or is it not?

Hey Katy,
An interesting blog topic regarding plagarism in speeches...

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/19/us/politics/19campaign.html?adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1203437157-zYC6qCDhBwxaXX/8/VFJSw

http://badgerherald.com/news/2008/02/19/obama_catches_flak_f.php

KC News Meeting

Sorry, I got locked out of Blogger for a bit because Google thought I was a spyware robot. Never thought I was that nefarious.
Here's what I've been reading, in massively abbreviated version. Please add yours:
- Wisconsin primary
- street racing tragedy
- Castro stepping down
- Kosovo recognition
- elections in Pakistan
- Microsoft fights for Yahoo

Sourcing lecture linx

ESPN hoaxCity of Madison
AP on gun seller
NIU
HP
Election graphic
Street racing
Race and crime

AP and Its Members in Conflict

The Associated Press, built on the bedrock of newspapers, is finding itself less tied to them as a revenue stream. At the same time, newspapers are finding themselves looking for a way, any way, to cut expenses. This puts the two in conflict and highlights the economics of this industry.

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.

Ethics and Medill

A great discussion topic from a 202-er:
______
Hi Katy,
I'm sure you've heard the dean of the Medill school of journalism at Northwestern was caught possibly using fabricated sources in the alumni magazine. I thought this would be interesting to discuss on the blog. It is really shocking that the dean at the most prestigious journalism school would resort to this- what kind of example does his behavior give to journalists everywhere? Here is the link to the article in the Chicago Tribune: http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-northwestern-dean_14feb14,0,4916533.story
__________
Let's explore this.

I wrote a piece in our alumni newsletter a few years ago and led with a reference to an old city editor of mine. Unlike Lavine's vague memory I recall clearly, actually, stewing a bit over quoting him, grappling with whether to go with "show them" or "show 'em." But I decided the latter was really the way he spoke to me. Honestly, it never occurred to me to name him. I never considered him an "unnamed source." His identity was in no way germane to the story, and I remembered vividly what he had said to me (I routinely saw him as god-like in my reporting infancy).

I also realize now that I did just the same thing with a column I wrote last summer on the ethics of using social networking profiles of crime victims in reporting. The wrap to that story came from a visit I made to a 202 lab to discuss the issue. I recall just as vividly who told me the story and the context in which it was raised. Yet, again, I did not name her and made no conscious decision not to do so.
___________
Journalism schools are interesting places to play out journalism ethics. So what of it, the dean's and my choices? What of the other sources -- students and faculty members -- refusing to go on the record to discuss the situation? Is it OK to use anonymous sources? If so, in what circumstances? Was the dean's letter "journalism"? Did I do my audiences in both cases a disservice?

NYT job cuts

Another post from a 202er ...

___________
Hi Katy,

I saw this article today on the NY Times about the newspaper cutting about 100 jobs in the newsroom.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/15/business/media/15times.html

It's another case in the last week of changes in the newspaper business.

Have a good weekend,

NIU Shootings

As raw as the events are, I'd like you to think about the Northern Illinois mass shootings and the media implications.
Check out news organizations:
- Chicago Tribune
- Washington Post
- New York Times
- CNN
just to name a few. How are they handling the coverage? What's the level of sensitivity? Of information? Are you getting insights? Or repeats of the same information? How are they handling the questions of mental health? Of victims' stories? What writing has resonated most with you? What images? What things shouldn't have appeared?

Then I want you to look at the strat comm angles. I know this seems odd, but this is a story that was handled by PR people, the university communications staff at NIU. Go to their Web site and look at the information. Did they provide enough info and do it quickly enough? Look at some of the info updates earlier on. I found them interesting because they didn't just update and replace info. Instead, they used strikethrough to show what info had been updated or replaced. Watch the press conferences and examine those interactions. What role did public relations play in this tragedy and was it done ethically and effectively?

Ads and Newspapers in One Post

Great intersection of news and strat comm. A cooperative has introduced quadrantONE, a way for national advertisers to push their messages out to smaller local and regional newspaper sites. If you're Miller Beer, you're not going to negotiate individually with the Journal Sentinel, State Journal, etc., to post ads on their sites. The theory is that quandrantONE will give media buyers a chance to specialize without too much effort in contacting individual outlets.
Newspapers are in trouble. Ad revenues are down, as is circulation. Advertisers need new avenues to consumers. No one has figured out a way to truly leverage the Web as a revenue model. Will this work? What do you think?

In College in Wisconsin? Help me out

Do me a favor if you're a college student in Wisconsin. Take the survey below and pass it along to other students, especially those on campuses other than Madison. Let's take this baby viral because representative results will help us tell a better story.
_______________
The Journal Sentinel is asking students to complete a short, anonymous survey about drinking behavior and to send the link via e-mail to at least 20 friends. Students also could post the link on their Facebook page.

The survey will be used confidentially by staff writers working on an upcoming series of stories about alcohol.

Here is the link to the survey, which takes about 5 minutes to complete:
http://tinyurl.com/2vzveb

The survey results will be sent directly to a database at the Journal Sentinel.

Journalism students who help spread the word about this survey will get their name in a contributor box that will accompany an upcoming series of stories.

Thanks.

Cool Digital Strat Comm

OK, this is really fun. Look at the innovation from marketers at Holiday Inn Express. They found a way to tie into the interest and energy about the primary campaigns with an interactive branding message. You can highlight a candidate and find out how much he or she would have saved by staying at their hotels instead.
This is edging into an area of interactive that tries to get users to play games to keep them on a site and attending to a message. It happens in news too. It also emphasizes viral, not paying to get a message out but making it interesting enough to get people to forward it for you (much as I'm doing here).
Is this effective? Would you share it?

KC's News Meeting

What's going on this week? Here's my start to the thread. Post your ideas via comments.
- Yahoo! rejects Microsoft's bid
- do you know what "superdelegates" are?
- BlackBerry service down (what are all those CrackBerry addicts doing tonight?)