Posts tagged journalism
Baseball. Books. The Boy Wonder. Newspapers. Unabridged.
148/366 The boy wonder shared this class project with me. He was supposed to draw himself dreaming of what he was going to be when he grew up. So he drew himself at a desk with a pencil and a typewriter. “It’s a writer like you, Daddy,” he said. I don’t know whether to cry or, you know, cry. (Taken with instagram)
86/366 Front page of Chicago Sun-Times from March 27, 2012. (Taken with instagram)
Fact-checker: “This still seems to violate about ten different rules of journalistic integrity.”
Author: “I’m not sure that matters … This is an essay, so journalistic rules don’t belong here.”
— The Lifespan of a Fact, by John D’Agata (author) and Jim Fingal (fact-checker), from page 19.
I’m settling into this book after a day at the ballpark, and these exchanges are … astonishing. “Punched up” quotes? Changing facts for the sake of “rhythm”. As I told a friend it would be much better for the “rhythm” of our writing if Albert Pujols hit .300 last season. Alas, he hit .299. We can’t change the facts, not even for an essay. I had no idea that the “non” in “nonfiction” had different definitions. It’s always been rather self-explanatory to me.
I hope at the end the answer to the books title is that the lifespan of a fact must certainly outlive its author.
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Bissinger: Are investors out to save newspapers or just control them?
31/366 On my way to meet with young high school journalists, and this is what I passed on the way through the lobby of The Post-Dispatch. Nice reminder. (Taken with instagram)
Column creating buzz in P-D newsroom
St. Louis Post-Dispatch columnist Bill McClellan wrote an article about a colleague this past week that has caught a lot of attention within the walls of the P-D not just because of how he eulogized our peer but for how he positioned his passing as a sign of the times in the newspaper business.
That isn’t writing at all, it’s typing.
Carr: When Truth Survives Free Speech
Journalism has experienced a universe of positives as a result of social media and the proliferation of Twitter, Facebook and other online sources as a suped-up vehicle for news. Accountability is on the rise. Scoops, while sometimes poached, are more often shared. Important stories reach broader audiences than ever. One corrosive negative, however, is the fact that professionally trained journalists and gifted, inventive bloggers often have the same platform as an agenda-spewing hack.
In short: All of our soap boxes are the same height now.
Heck, I recently saw a cable news network quoting Tweets using handles. We don’t even require people to sign their opinions anymore with a name. That’s a blank check for blowhards.
Ink used to bring a clear gravity to the truthfulness of the information. Pixels lack that same weight and often are like dandelion seeds floating through the Internet and looking for a place to land, take root and multiply. The level playing field has had an unfortunate effect. It should be a meritocracy. It’s not. Instead of driving readers to news sources that prove they can be trusted — the august newspapers, the nightly news, etc. — free-range bloggers have actually undermined the media, all of it, mainstream or otherwise. No one questions just the individual’s ethics or facts; rather they question the whole industry. In The New York Times article by David Carr linked above, the subject of an aggressive blogger’s attacks sums it perfectly:
“I view our case as a blow for the First Amendment,” said Mr. Padrick. “If defamatory speech is allowed just because it is on the Internet, it cheapens the value of journalism and makes it less worthy of protection.”
Cheapens is one verb. Weakens would be another. He’s hauntingly correct.
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Journalists travel in packs with transferable tension.
