Snow Storm!

Read the article here

In this article, they compare the weekend storm in New England to Hurricane Irene, which happened over the summer. The writer says that the storm this weekend had a greater negative impact on Mass and the surrounding states than the Hurricane did. People were trying to cancel Halloween! Or at least postponing it. Both Hollis, NH, and Brookline, MA, have postponed trick-or-treating until November 5th.

Looks like we could have quite a Halloween feature on our hands with the storm! My neighborhood wasn't very effected; however, I'll be interested to see how many trick-or-treaters I have this year.

Happy Halloween everyone!

Social Media and how you must write carefully if you want to be taken seriously

Last week in class we were discussing some of the rules and guidelines for us to follow as journalists in the social media.

I found it really interesting how it changes the way you say things when you’re a public figure compared to when you are a simple no-body who simply may, or may not, have an opinion on certain subject.

I’ve been using facebook and twitter for quite some time now and use them for two very different things. However, now that I’m studying journalism I find myself more and more aware of what I write and conscious of the possible effects it may have on the people who reads me. I didn’t care before, but now I think there’s a world of possible readers out there who may one day come across one of my comments and it could possibly have an impact.

Now, the things I say suddenly got a different weight. A friend of mine, journalist, who’s got her own twitter account and blog asked me to participate with her on her blog. She is a well know journalist and her blog has received many awards. I accepted gladly, but when I started writing for her, the things that I would have usually written on my own blog, or just for myself, I found it so much more difficult and I started asking myself why? Well, it is simple. Because now I was writing for a larger audience, but wait, the audience could’ve been just as large before, after all my blog is public and my twitter account is too, so why the distinction? Because now I am aware of the fact that there will be hundreds of eyes reading and scrutinizing my opinions, thoughts, reports, investigations, etcetera. Just like I am one of those readers who not only casually but rather regularly read her blog because I know I will find something of my interest there. And that made the whole difference. So I backed up and told my friend to wait until I had taken some baby steps in learning how to handle myself as a public writer, how to write for larger audiences and learn how to be more factual and less opinioned. That’s when I gained conscience that once you put something on the web it can last forever in the cyber space, so you better be cautious of what you say and how you say it if you want to be taken seriously when you build yourself a name just like she has.

For that and many other didactical reasons I found this book very useful for those who, like me, are still learning and/or in the process of becoming journalists. From the American Society of News Editors, the book 10 Best Practices for Social Media.
Helpful guidelines for news organizations. By James Hohmann and the 2010-11 ASNE Ethics and Values Committee.
From which I’m taking the key guidelines to share them with you:

1. Traditional ethics rules still apply online.
2. Assume everything you write online will become public.
3. Use social media to engage with readers, but professionally.
4. Break news on your website, not on Twitter.
5. Beware of perceptions.
6. Independently authenticate anything found on a social networking site.
7. Always identify yourself as a journalist.
8. Social networks are tools not toys.
9. Be transparent and admit when you’re wrong online.
10. Keep internal deliberations confidential.

David Carr Interview on Fresh Air

I was listening to NPR's Fresh Air the other day, and heard Terry Gross interview David Carr, media columnist for the New York Times.

Carr, one of the journalists followed in the media documentary Page One (just released on DVD), had a lot to say about journalism. One thing that resonated with me: listen to your sources. Let them tell you what the story is going to be--don't tell them. It's easy to want to force your story into some pre-determined shape. But if you keep it fluid, your sources will reveal what the true story should be. Listen to them.

Carr also touched on the value of Twitter, though "less as a megaphone and more [as a listener]." Either way, social media sites (and digital journalism in general) provide so much information--so quickly--that it's hard these days to debate their sheer power in the field.

Gross seemed to have a good time talking to Carr. His raspy voice and straight-shooter attitude made for an engaging interview.

A Tweeting Traveler

Lauren's post made me recall a Twitter Boondoggle story that I thought would be fun to share. My friend Martha writes for magazines as varied as Travel & Leisure and More and has published a couple of books. She has 987 Twitter followers. One afternoon last winter from her NYC apartment, she tweeted something along the lines of, "Citarella or Fairway? What should I have for dinner?" One of her followers, a man she didn't know responded something along the lines of, "Citarella. Try the sweet potato raviolis with vodka sauce." Well, a Twitter chat ensued. It turns out he manages spectacular properties in the jungle in Mexico. If Martha would tweet a few times about her vacation to Mexico she and her family and friends (total of 8 people) could stay there for a week free--all she had to pay for was airfare. So this struggling writer got a family vacation for free because of Twitter. Not a bad outcome from indecisive dinner plans.

Tweet your heart out

After reading the social media package, I ended up following some bread crumbs through the blog of one of the journalists interviewed for the article, Stephen Buttry. Buttry talks a lot about social media and digital journalism throughout his blog, and I ended up on a post about Twitter tips for journalists.

I'm a recent convert to Twitter, but haven't really used it much, to be honest. I think part of my problem is not fully understanding how it works -- particularly when it comes to having a conversation, because conversational threads are not as visually clear as they are on Facebook. But after reading Buttry's post about just how useful Twitter can be for journalists, I'm more willing to pursue this whole tweeting business.

He makes a list of some very convincing ways journalists can use Twitter (the following list is taken verbatim from his blog post):


* Monitor the activities and discussions of people in your community and on your beat.
* Connect with people who will provide you helpful tips and information.
* Connect with colleagues and share ideas with them or get ideas from them.
* Crowdsource stories by asking the community for story ideas or information.
* Quickly find people who witnessed or experienced a news event.
* Break stories quickly.
* Provide live coverage of news events.
* Drive traffic to your content.
* Report a story by text message using Twitter in disaster situations when you can’t transmit data, as the New York Times’ Brian Stelter did in covering the Joplin tornado.
* Improve your writing as you learn to make points directly in just 140 characters. (If a lead doesn’t fit in a tweet, it’s probably too long. It really helps me write better leads on my blog and columns.)


All of these points are helpful, but one of the most helpful as an up-and-coming journalist (at least for me) is the first one. As a newbie, I'm still learning the art and science of journalism. Learning who else is in the field -- generally, locally, and on the particular beat I'm interested in -- means I can learn from a self-selected crowd. I can tailor who I want my teachers to be, by reading the tweets and full articles of those I deem as important journalists. That's an effective tool all right.

Is journalism school a waste? Maybe for public radio journalists, but not for us.

Hello, everyone. I don't know about the rest of you, but, for the journalist profile assignment, I had far more content than the word limit allowed. Angelia commented in class that, in completing the assignments, we would probably have far more quotes than we could use.

I chose to profile Meghna Chakrabarti, who is the co-host of the popular public affairs program 'Radio Boston' on WBUR, a Boston-based NPR news/talk station. Chakrabarti was very generous, giving me over 40 minutes of her time. The transcript of my interview with her runs almost 6,500 words. I also interviewed her co-host Anthony Brooks, which ran almost 1,900 words, and executive producer of the show Mark Navin, which ran almost 2,500 words. So, I had almost 11,000 words of content, forcing me to be very selective about what I included in the assignment.

I thought I would share with you some of the responses to my questions, most of which did not get included in the final profile, because of space limitations. I was very impressed with how thoughtful each person's answers were to all of my questions.

I asked all three people about the value of formal journalism training to perform their jobs. Here is how each responded:

Chakrabarti:

You're going to be mad at me when I say this. No, and I think journalism school is a waste (laughs), because journalism is still, at its core, an apprenticeship craft. It's a craft. So, the only way to really, really, really learn it is to do it, and to do it every day. So, I really do see it as an apprenticeship type career. That's why my apprenticeship was at “On Point” and that was like boot camp, high speed, high intensity. So, no, I do not see not having a formal training in journalism as being a detriment.

Co-host Anthony Brooks:

You know, I didn't go to journalism school, so I might have a bias. I think the best training that you can get become a journalist is to just start being a journalist. I mean, that's sort of the way I did...I was an English major, and I started volunteering at a public radio station out in Oregon many, many, many years ago, and I pretty much worked for free and learned the ropes that way, and then started filing freelance for NPR. And then, within a year, I had an entry-level position at NPR. So, I really learned doing the work.

You know, I think that if you’re lucky enough to go to a great journalism school, I don't see that it could hurt you. But, I mean, I know the way that senior journalists in this profession think, and the first thing they're going to look at is what experience do you have. And, journalism school, you know, is not usually regarded as the most important experience. The most important experience is, you know, have you written? Can you write? Do you know how to report, and have you done that? The quickest way to get that experience is to do it.

What I like about being a journalist is that there are a lot of different ways to do it, and there is no sort of formal, official stamp that makes you a journalist. I think that's important, that's sort of the definition of the Fourth Estate, in the way that we can sort of check and control and keep people honest. We should be, like, normal people. I don't have a certification from any official body that says I'm a journalist. You know, I'm a journalist based on the fact that I have done it for a lot of years and work for an organization that has done it for a lot of years.

So, you know, I wouldn't be as strong on that as Meghna, because I know there are a lot of terrific journalists that come out of some great journalism schools, and go on to be good journalists. But, I would argue that the most useful part of their nurturing and their becoming journalists is the actual act of doing journalism.

Executive Producer Mark Navin (Navin has a bachelor's in broadcast journalism from Boston University):

Well, first of all, I don't think that having formal journalism training is necessary to be a good journalist, but I also don't think it's a detriment. I do think it can be an asset. I think that the journalism schools are teaching people a lot of really important skills and values, and I think that's it's very important to have those skills and values if you're going to be a good journalist.

Having said that, I don't think it's essential to have a journalism background, because I believe that really what's most important in the world journalism, especially in the changing world of journalism, because it is really changing an awful lot, is having an intense curiosity about the world around you, and being able to express that, your discoveries to your audience. And so, those things are, those are skills that people have without training, you know, a lot of people have without training.

Certainly, you know, having another kind of academic background, as Meghna does, as Anthony does, as a lot of people here do, it gives you a good basis for being a good journalist, because you know, academia is all about research and discovery, and that's what journalism is all about. And, when I talk about the changing world journalism, the reality is anybody with a blog can call themselves a journalist today.

So, the days of, you know, there being a formal gatekeeper on what kinds of stories get out there, the days when the New York Times was the only person who could decide what news was fit to print are over. They really are. And, so, in my opinion, journalism organizations, like ours, our way forward is to try to invite as many voices in as we possibly can, to throw the gates open as much as we can.

I feel like journalism schools are sort of a vestige from the days when, you know, you became a professional journalist, you got your press card, and you were granted access to the kingdom. The gates were thrown open to you. You don't need that anymore. Having said that you don't need it, I think there are a lot of great skills that are taught in journalism school.

(end of Navin comments)

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I believe the journalistic "cocoon" that exists in the public radio world is unique. It allows bright, talented folks from very diverse backgrounds to develop their journalistic skills over time, on the job, as apprentices under the wing of more experienced radio journalists. In this environment, there is probably no need for formal journalism school. They learn the principles of practicing journalism as they go along.

But, in the world of print journalism, some formal training is essential. All of these assignments that Angelia is having us complete are slowly, methodically developing our skills. Each of the courses in the ALM journalism program will add to those skills, giving us the basic skills & experience to practice print journalism. I think most of us will work in the print world.

So, I think the training of a public radio journalist & a print journalist should be different. You have to take that into account, when considering the opinions of NPR journalists about the value of journalism school.

Later, Jim

Journalist profile: Share the experience

Dear fellow students,

having finished the assignment and being totally pooped out, I would like to propose some kind of knowledge sharing in this blog.

Some of you might be more advanced journalists, some others (like me) are not.
What were your experiences during the preparation phase of your profile?

I, for instance, wrote on a fashion journalist and I had to contact many fashion magazines and newspapers in London, but also in Amsterdam and New York.
In general, I have to say, that the people in the fashion writing business seem to be extremely busy...and you cannot reach them on the phone. There's always an answering machine where they tell you to write an email, which, of course, will up to 99 percent not be answered.

Also: What were your experiences when you wanted to contact your journalist's family/ friends? How did you find out about them? What are the Does and Don'ts in your opinion?

Perhaps these questions will come up tonight in class as well, but this blog might offer more space for such topics.

Please feel invited to write what you want to share...


Best regards

Gerda

from Germany