WWJD? What Would Journalist (educators) Do?

In an exchange of emails today, I responded to a student's request for approval of a semester project. While normally I strongly encourage students to pursue "publishable" subject matter, in this case I developed cold feet. What would you have done? The email exchange follows, with the student's name removed:

Dear _____
While I would agree that this could be an interesting and publishable subject, I think it may be too fraught with "invasion of privacy" issues for you to do as a class project. Particularly since the subject you would use would need to cooperate with the photography and the videotaping. He may think his cooperation might be a good idea right now, but he may soon determine that such a forthright confessional was a very bad idea. Let's discuss and see if there's a way you might be able to pursue this project AND maintain the anonymity of your subject.

Howard


hi mr. goldbaum:
Sorry i am not writing you through my school e-mail but for some reason the web site hasn't been working for me all weekend. anywayz i wanted to talk to you about my idea for the semester project. I'm not sure if i am aloud to talk about this subject and if it fits the requirements. anyways my idea is to do it on teen/college drug abuse! i will focus on one guy and how the pressures of life and school have forced him into drug abuse. I will only talk about the one person so it is a biography and it will show the use of illegal drugs and the real effects and why a person would get into something
like this. I think it will be a really good topic to show visually. i'll be able to film him talking about drugs, take pictures of the drugs put music to the whole thing and have actual facts about the guys life and the drugs he uses. i hope this idea will work because i have thought it out quite a lot since thursdays class. if this idea won't work please let me know and maybe we can set up an appointment during your office hours to help me come up with a different idea. thank you for your time..

Morally engaged journalism

"Balance and objectivity have become code words to propagate the insidious and cynical moral disengagement that is destroying American journalism. This moral disengagement gives equal time, and sometimes more than equal time, to those who spread falsehoods and distort information. It tacitly sanctions the dissemination of lies. It absolves us from making moral choice. It obscures and often shuts out the truth."

From the Philadelphia Inquirer, "Journalists' objectivity needs balance of truth" by Chris Hedges

Media Technologies

For those of you interested in Media Technology, feel free to post or visit the blog devoted to conversation among the particants in this semester's graduate course Journalism 705, Media Technology. You can find us at MediaTechnologies http://www.mediatechnologies.blogspot.com

Feel free to comment, argue with us, or participate.

Language and The Power of Perception

In a book review on Morning Edition today (click the link to hear it) passages from Chistopher J. Moore's new book, In Other Words, are included. The book discusses how different languages describe experiences for which there are no equivalent words in the English language. It's not, as the author points out, that we don't share the perceptions or the experiences. It's just that we lack an efficient way to communicate the experience. I wonder: is this an argument for more and better neologisms; or do we need to incorporate more foreign words into the Queen's English?

An couple of examples:

French

esprit de I'escalier [es-pree de less-ka/-iay] (idiom)

A witty remark that occurs to you too late, literally on the way down the stairs. The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations defines esprit de l'escalier as, "An untranslatable phrase, the meaning of which is that one only thinks on one's way downstairs of the smart retort one might have made in the drawing room."

Chinese

guanxi (Mandarin) [gwan-shee] (noun)

This is one of the essential ways of getting things done in traditional Chinese society. To build up good guanxi, you do things for people such as give them gifts, take them to dinner, or grant favors. Conversely, you can also "use up" your guanxi with someone by calling in favors owed. Once a favor is done, an unspoken obligation exists. Maybe because of this, people often try to refuse gifts, because, sooner or later, they may have to repay the debt. However the bond of guanxi is rarely acquitted, because once the relationship exists, it sets up an endless process that can last a lifetime.

Reno the Center of the Cosmetics Litigation Universe

Whether or not you agree with the foundation of this article from the Alternet web site, you may wonder as I did if this story, centered as it is here in downtown Reno, was given sufficient local coverage. Forgive my blush if I missed it when it was published, but I never read such a critique by local columnists of the Ninth Circuit's decision on the Harrah's barmaid's cosmetics case when it was first announced.

Was our local media taking a powder on this issue? Did any of them think they might need to shadow the barmaid? It seems to me that they were creamed by this online commentator.

Using wikis to create a new type of journalism

Wikipedia is an increasingly respected online encylopedia that is written and edited by thousands of volunteers. Now the Wiki Media Foundation has started a new project called Wikinews, described in the article linked above. A short excerpt:

"The old broadcast model, in which an elite set of scribes sends out their thoughts to world--I don't think it will ever completely go away, but it's getting challenged by a more interactive model, in which communities come together to do things that fall somewhere in the realm that we traditionally thought the media do." (Jimmy "Jimbo" Wales, co-founder of Wikipedia)

It seems like wikis would also lend themselves well to collaborative learning in a classroom. What if instead of asking each student to write individual stories or papers about a topic, we asked them to collaborate and write one article that reflected something they all agreed upon? Wikis provide the technology to provide traceable group editing accessible to anyone online. It would be a way to get the very best thinking from a group about a particular subject...

Tsunami Interactivity

This site is an excellent example of how interactivity can add to the informational value of a news item. We've all seen these before-and-after satellite images, segments on a TV news broadcast, fade from one to another. But they would have more value, more information, and more emotional impact if the viewer could have the ability to move from "before" to "after" at his/her own pace. In this fashion one can focus on specific details in the images to carefully compare the details in the two views.

This is illustrated in this simple but efficient compilation site by Tony Demark where the user can view a large selection of before/after images.

A more complex site might have allowed the user to zoom in to see details in higher resolution. Also, the impact of the destruction might have been further dramatized by using a "morph" effect to see the changes occur in a gradual fashion.

Citizen's Journalism

The American Press Institute just started a group blog called Morph, and one of the recent entries (linked from the headline above) is about citizen's journalism at the Santa Fe New Mexican. The online editor encourages comments from readers at the end of every article, and the editor has the option of automatically re-ordering the front page and section front stories based on the number of comments on each story. The editor reads every comment before posting (upward of 200 some days) -- he calls them little microblogospheres.

Dan Gillmor has a blog on grassroots journalism, initiated by his book "We the media" -- a great set of observations and ideas about how journalism is changing as a result of citizen input into journalism (I have the book if anyone wants to borrow it, but it is also available free online).

The question for us is: as journalism evolves to include more input from citizens, how does the journalist's role change? How is a story written differently if it encourages reader comments and discussion as part of the story? How does an editor's role change? What new skills does it take to successfully produce participatory journalism? How is the mindset different in the newsroom and how can we best prepare our students for this different attitude/emphasis?

Editorializing on Radio and TV

Rosemary has an excellent column in today's Reno Gazette-Journal (linked off the headline above) that advocates greater involvement by local radio and television stations in fostering civic dialogue, through the use of on-air station editorials.

I noticed on the same page that the "Silver Pen" award went to a letter to the editor about the moralizing tone of a recent Gazette-Journal editorial, that castigated cheering spectators at the recent verdict in the Scott Peterson trial. The letter writer pointed to the media as a catalyst for the jeering crowd. What struck me was how RGJ editorials sometimes come across as scolding readers, rather than encouraging debate and engagement. I thought Rosemary's explanation of what good editorializing can accomplish for a community was very well crafted.

Journalism Education, the sequel

Donica's thoughtful entries about undergraduate and graduate education embraces many of the ideal qualities that most of us would like to enhance in students. There is not much that I would add except perhaps leadership skills and an entreprenuerial spirit. Our students will face a media environment that is not as stable nor is it necessarily controlled by the standard media publishers of 20 years ago: newspapers, magazines, broadcast TV, radio, etc. Our students will have choices that are not so traditional. As faculty we need the same spirit of exploration that our students will face in their professional lives -- I'm thinking primarily of undergraduate students here. For our graduate students, assuming our role is to facilitate the professional growth of individuals with some experience, we need to ensure that while they spend time with us retooling and engaging in critical thought about the profession, we also provide them with a sense of empowerment to be leaders and to influence the professions in a positive way. I also believe that as faculty we need to address how we do that on the graduate level. For the most part, our program is not one that leads students to Ph.D. programs. How do we fully embrace that fact? What is the true function of a master's program in this place and time?

Jean

Room in the crown for other journalistic jewels

As I think about taking over from our outstanding outgoing graduate director, who has brought our graduate program forward many leaps and bounds, I am imagining what the next level of progress for our program could be. The article referenced above reviews some of the basic tensions inherent in journalism graduate education, brought to the fore in 2002 when Columbia temporarily called off its dean search. As the article concludes, Columbia may remain a jewel in the crown of journalism education, but there is room in the crown for other jewels to sparkle too.

I found this quote in article that featured seasoned educators reflecting on journalism education:

"The graduate program would be a program for professions and professionals, where issues facing those who practice what they preach are discussed and debated, where the communication issues facing the public are examined. We would seek in graduate programs to improve professional practice, not by teaching skills to novices better, but by providing the reflexive scrutiny to those who know the "how to" that will challenge and raise the standards of public communication" (Cohen, J., Autumn 2001, "Symposium: Journalism and mass communication education at the crossroads" Journalism and Mass Communication Educator, 4-27.)

Developing a program that challenges and raises the standards of public communication, as well as challenging and raising the standards of individual students, parallels some of the larger goals of our university. What might it take for us to create a program that does this effectively? Is this what we should be doing?

Reconstituting a public demand for news

Evan Cornog writes a thoughtful essay in the most recent CJR on the disappearing public demand for serious journalism. He traces the historic roots and current consequences of creating a public based on individual ownership as opposed to common purpose.

One of his conclousions: schools need to play a role in forming the “great customers” who will ensure the future of first-class journalism.

Thus, our responsibility is not just to train the journalism professional -- isn't it also to nurture a demand among university students in general for the journalism we feel is vital?

What do our students need to know to succeed?

As we grapple with the recurring question of the journalism curriculum, we could come at the problem from a number of directions. One strategy is to identify what our students need to know by the time they graduate to be successful professionals. What should they know by the end of their freshmen, sophomore, junior years to get to the senior level of proficiency?

To identify those essential skills could give us a target by which to rethink a journalism curriculum -- from evaluating our existing curriculum to creating new paths and possibilities.

Some skills are technical:
To write well (accurately, clearly, concisely, correctly, mastering a increasing range of complexity each year)
To master a range of journalistic writing styles (hard news, features, cutlines, ad copy...)
To think critically (to keenly question, analyze, evaluate, judge issues and questions)
To be information wizards (knowing how to find a range of information quickly and evaluate it accurately)
To be facile with a range of publishing technologies (online, video, audio, photography, print)
To be able to comfortably and accurately apply basic math concepts
To be able to conduct a fruitful professional interview

Some components are attitudes and habits of mind:
Curiosity
Courage
Empathy
A strong sense of justice
Commitment to democratic principles and the public interest
A strong work ethic
Tolerance

Other components have to do with bodies of knowledge:
A knowledge, appreciation and commitment to the First Amendment
A foreign language

What else should be added to these lists?