Posts for 'Others' Category

This whole Shirley Sherrod controversy got me so worked up I thought of writing this column last month while on vacation in northwest Wisconsin. Then I calmed down, sat on the pontoon and watched eagles fly while enjoying a beverage, surrounded by evergreens.

If you missed this story, here are excerpts from a Los Angeles Times article: "Shirley Sherrod ... African American federal agriculture official ... was forced out of her job after a conservative blogger posted a heavily edited portion of a speech she had made.

"In the part of the speech that was posted, Sherrod appeared to indicate that she would not help a white farmer as she would a black farmer. In reaction, the NAACP condemned her and Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack ordered her resignation.

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The tight journalism job market is taking its toll on recent college graduates, according to a new report released today by the University of Georgia. The survey of more than 2,700 journalism and mass communication students who graduated in 2009 found the lowest level of full-time employment in the 24-year history of the study.

The results, included in the University of Georgia's "Annual Survey of Journalism and Mass Communication Graduates" reveal that just 55.5% of 2009 journalism and communication graduates with a bachelor degree were able to find full-time work within a year of leaving school.

That is down 4.9 percentage points from the year before and stands in stark contrast with the 70.2% of graduates who found work as recently as 2007. The most recent masters degree recipients fared little better, with their employment rate dropping to 61.9% from 65.4% in 2008.Although 2008 was a difficult year for new graduates seeking employment, the 2009 jobs picture was markedly grimmer.

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The nastiness index keeps on rising, and all of us are getting sullied in the process. Media outlets, which once merely chronicled this era of hyper-partisanship, now seem to be both the purveyors and often the targets of ugly attacks.

In just the last few weeks, Salon Editor in Chief Joan Walsh and CNBC contributor Howard Dean have accused Fox News of racism; conservative crusader Andrew Breitbart has delighted in pushing a maliciously edited video smearing Shirley Sherrod and refused to apologize; Fox hosts have denounced mainstream organizations as Obama lap dogs for downplaying a case involving.

The New Black Panther Party; e-mails from an off-the-record discussion group showed one liberal pundit wishing for Rush Limbaugh's death and another suggesting that conservatives such as Fred Barnes be tarred as racist; Rolling Stone's Michael Hastings was accused of betraying journalistic ethics with the story that torpedoed Gen. Stanley McChrystal, and Hastings's critics were ripped as lackeys of the military establishment.

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RICHARD WATERS had a piece yesterday in the Financial Times looking at Demand Media and other firms that produce search engine-optimised journalism. The model involves mining search data, doing a quick web search to pull the necessary "news" information from secondary sources, and creating quickie news stories that pack the top search terms in as tightly as possible, thus leaping to the top of Google News's search indexes. A couple of quotes leapt out at me. First this:

“If there is an information gap out there and someone fills that gap, it’s good for the world,” says Amit Singhal, the Google engineer responsible for its ranking algorithm. And then this:  “What they’re doing isn’t wrong,” says Eric Goldman, a professor at Santa Clara University law school. “The fault is Google’s, which hasn’t come up with an algorithm that screens out all this junk content.”

Well, no, that's not correct. To the extent that these articles are in fact junk, what companies like Demand Media are doing is wrong. Creating cheap, crappy products that fool people into thinking they're good, useful products is ethically wrong, even when it is not illegal. I would actually go so far as to say that the needless creation of lousy stuff is ethically wrong as such. This is doubly so when good stuff is available at the same price (viz, on the internet, $0.00).

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Journalism Online received some good news last month when News Corp. invested in the startup, which aims to help newspaper and other media companies generate additional revenue from paid content. Financial terms of News Corp.'s investment were not disclosed.

Jon Miller, News Corp.'s chief digital officer, said in a statement that the move underscored the company's “ongoing commitment to create strong business models that support journalism at a time of great change in our industry.”

In the next several weeks Journalism Online media customers will begin using the company's Press+ e-commerce platform, enabling them to charge for content online. Newspapers will lead the way, but other media companies—including business media outlets—are planning to use Journalism Online's platform.

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Like many journalists, I have a bulletin board in my office on which I have pinned dozens of media passes accumulated over years of working for CBC Radio. I have accreditation for political meetings, sporting events, concerts, conferences, even a press pass for the West Edmonton Mall.

One of my prize possessions is my media pass for Canadian Country Music Week from the early 1980s. It was the first story I ever covered and, even though I was just a freelancer, it was pretty exciting to see my name and CBC Radio on the same piece of paper.

I was "the press." I felt as if I had joined a pretty exclusive club. Back then, it was a pretty exclusive club. If you were writing stories or taking pictures for a newspaper or magazine, or shooting video for a TV station or collecting audio for a radio station, you could call yourself a journalist.

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When people think of giving back to the community, they think sandwich lines, clean-up service, and financial charity. Though all of these are great and important, there is no better way to give back to your community than with the very talents you are practicing for your career. Give back with what you do best.

I spent my first week of summer at the Oregon State University campus being journalistically revived by 24 bright-eyed, teenaged writers. For the past three years, I’ve dedicated June 19th through the 27th to the High School Journalism Institute, a joint effort between the Oregonian and Oregon State to promote newsroom diversity. It is, without question, the most cultural journalistic experience possible in Oregon — students in the program are all from underrepresented backgrounds.

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Azola Maliti is part of a group of young South Africans from the Khayelitsha township in Cape Town taking part in the Siyakhona project, which combines media training and soccer in programs for young people in Africa.

Soccer's international governing body, FIFA, and Sony International collaborated to create Siyakhona in 2009 as part of Football for Hope -- a 5-year-old movement that seeks to harness the power of soccer for social development (soccer is called football in most of the world).

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An academic critic of New Zealand media says journalism is "heading for hell in a handbasket". But Joe Atkinson says there is no point in asking media companies about the new direction or consulting them for a six-part Winter Lecture series he is organising.

"This is a timely series in a period of extreme upheaval for traditional media and the lectures will be of wide general interest," he said. The six lectures at Auckland University from July 20 to August 24 will include appearances by academics and Gavin Ellis, a former editor-in-chief of the Herald.

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I thought that the rise of social media and quick, easy access to information would render our politics more transparent, but it appears as though the opposite is true.  Social media has enabled politicians to bypass the traditional channels to create their own narratives and directly reach their audience. Sadly, it appears as though this arrangement suits most journalists.

They seem more than happy to summarize Facebook posts or write articles about incoherent tweets.  If they put an edgy headline and enable comments they can increase the number of hits on their website without having to invest any real time in holding politicians and candidates accountable.  As we have seen, even nationally televised "debates" don't require candidates to answer questions anymore. I fear that the "Palin model.

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