Never Waste a Good Letter: Hello, North Carolina

Cover via Amazon

Alton:

God you read a lot in what seems to be a pretty active retirement. I *skim* a lot, wandering the net as I look for examples for journalism class -- examples of good writing, good reporting, good organizing, good gatekeeping and, of course, bad examples of all that and more. I save all sorts of things on the computer and use so few of them because teaching journalism is all about the basics, collecting some facts that may be "facts," understanding that having collected enough information to make a good judgment about including/emphasizing only some of that information is a clear and present manifestation of the inevitable imperfection of human knowing and human sharing .... But, hey, if you wade too deep in these waters, suddenly you seem to be teaching *against* the aims of a basic reporting course. You are suggesting it's too flawed an enterprise to attempt. Well, we don't believe that. We get out of bed in the morning and do our best. So should everyone else, including all the poor young journalists. There are limits on knowing but we should still try to know, right?

*Right?*

That's a long excuse for not reading much anymore in the long forms, either fiction or non-fiction or poetry or essays. I read news and news about news and some thoughtful analysis of news by scholars, though less of that than I probably should. God, I hate jargon but maybe only because I'm not very good at it. I don't play well with others when it comes to pitching scholarly ideas. I once had an article rejected by a reader because, as he wrote, Dr. Robertson "seemed to be under the misapprehension he should be entertaining." Ah. Enough of that.

We are still pretty much yellow dog Democrats. As I like to say, the Dems are in the pocket of big business but the Repubs are an organ inside its body. The Republicans really are more vigorous in their "know nothing-ess" when it comes to science -- global warming and so on. We were talking about this after going to Biltmore with you. You really can sink into comfortable despair about modern politics and curse both parties and all parties. It really is an intellectually defensible position, particularly if you are older, with maybe ten years of decent life left, and money in the bank. But by temperament, I choose to think it's worth hoping that -- if the world is not going to move forward (in terms of my definition of such) -- perhaps we can slow things down as the world slides back into the abyss. So: an inch of difference between the D and the R, but I live in that inch! So: We give some money to the Ds and try to be ready to engage in rational poltitical discussion when given the chance in the hope that Malcolm Gladwell is right and there is a tipping point and I will be the one who says the thing to the right person at the right time and thus the world will be saved.

Well, there you go.

Yours,

Michael

I Now Have an iPad

iPad as depicted in CrunchBase"

... because I am fortune's fool? No. It's just that I am wondering if some device might make paying for news so easy or cool or glamorous or beautiful or convenient that, in fact, being a journalist will not become some version of the artist's life, something one loves but at which someone starves.

I think it was Paul Fussell who wrote some decades ago that being a journalist was one of the few bohemian life choices in America. But I don't recall what exactly he meant by that, if it was the low remuneration that drove his notion. I have certainly told the kids over the years that journalism did not pay well at entry level and not spectacularly at the higher levels -- unless you make it to the TV big time.

And now things are even worse with -- from one point of view -- no hope at all. Whoa. When I say something like that I am allowing myself to mingle my worries about the willingness to the public to pay for "professional" journalism with my general despair over the public's disinclination to want information that challenges its self-satisfaction at knowing enough -- Keep those nasty facts *away* from me.

Step back and refocus. Let's see if the iPad does what I have the read the iPod did, that is, coax people into paying a little for what heretofore they were stealing.

I will keep you posted. I am part of a group at USF sharing perceptions of the value of the iPad in the classroom.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Virgin to launch 'iPad-only' magazine (guardian.co.uk)
• iPad's incredible demand (asymco.com)
• iPad Kiosks (adverlab.blogspot.com)
• Space Invaders Hits the iPad With a Bar-Top Twist And Secrets [Ipad] (kotaku.com)
• 6 Creative iPad Accessories (techeblog.com)
• When believing a lie is beneficial (beliefnet.com)

Zemanta">

The Horror, the Horror. How Reporters Love the Horror

From a Huffpost interview with retiring AP reporter Richard Pyle:

HUFFPOST: And then it didn't happen. You have to admit, Richard, that reporters kind of want bad news to happen so they can get a great story, right?

PYLE: No! I didn't wish for bad things to happen. It's more that if something bad does happen, I want to be the witness to it.

Good Advice to Journalism Grads. (Good Ain't Always Pretty)

Barbara Ehrenreich talks sense to Berkeley journalism grads.

How do you think it feels to be an autoworker right now? And I've spent time with plenty of laidoff paper mill workers, construction workers and miners. They've got skills; they've got experience. They just don't have jobs.

So let me be the first to say this to you: Welcome to the American working class.

A Student Asks Advice on Creating a Narrative for Her Application for Graduate Study in Journalism. She Says She's Never 'Done Anything Remarkable'

I would ‘tell them a story.’ Maybe you don’t have a long list of disconnected ‘brags’ to bombard schools with, but think about some personal experience, or life narrative, that illustrates your passion, your curiosity, your commitment to some of the things a journalist should be committed to. The point is not that you have done a whole bunch of disconnected things, like some over-scheduled high school student trying to brag his/her way into an Ivy League college. The point is that at a moment when a career in journalism takes a real leap of faith because no one knows who will pay you to do journalism , you still are going to embrace it, go for it, follow your heart *and* your mind because society needs journalists – that’s what heart and mind tell you. You see the sacrifices that this moment of crisis in journalism may require. And you are still going to go for it.

And that's remarkable. I think I’ve just made myself cry.

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]">

This is Not a Well-Written Headline

Supreme Court Rejects Obama Citizenship Claim

On the other hand, to undertake the job of writing headlines is to accept inevitable embarrassment. There's a slice of foolish pie on the buffet for all of us who write.

I recall two lines from my days of teen poetry that have outlived all the rest of it, at least in the mind of my wife, who loves love and love's howlers even more.

One was a rather melodramatic imagining of a man's life at sea containing this stanza:

And then the West Wind turned again and brought from inland farms
The smell of all I'd done and been far from the ocean's arms.

Talk about an excremental vision!

But this one is better:

I aim my shaft of love toward whom I choose
Though shaft fall short.

Yeah, we've all dated a guy like that, my wife says.

Off the Record

Those of you who have been following the resignation of the Obama advisor after a British journalist failed to follow her instruction that her "monster" comment was off the record might have missed the journalist's interview with Hunter Tucker Carlson in which he praised the supine attitude of beltway journalists toward commands from their betters.

A friend sent this message:


http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/03/08/carlson/



Scroll all the way -- there is a lot of cool stuff here.



We were taught that nothing is off the record unless agreed upon ahead of time.


Were we wrong?

To which I replied:

Carlson: full of shit. American beltway reporters: all too often conduits for misinformation and objects of manipulation. Now, the interesting ethical dilemma is how often allow sources to speak anonymous, which concession to high ethics is often the only way to get important information before the public.

But letting folk who have been interviewed time and again play the "oh by the way don't quote me" game: bullshit. Now, Jessica Mitford the muckraker wrote about an interview in which a source said he did not want to be quoted, and she said something to the effect, "Well, restate it if you are unhappy with how it sounded." He did, and she said, "No. I will use both." My *only* criticism of the Scotsman's reporters is that the highest ethical act would have been to say immediately, "No, I will be using that. Perhaps, you'd like to elaborate." Letting people think you won't use something could be seen as dishonest, though perhaps the Scotsman's reporter assumed the Yank should have known the quote was fair game and that she understood that silence in response to her request did not mean it would be acceded to.

One last point: When you are quoting inexperienced folk who have never been interviewed, I think you proceed with compassion. You really might "hurt" them with no good reason. At minimum, if *they* announced in mid-interview that something is off the record, you stop and say it isn't and then go over the rules again. Oh. Off the record is supposed to mean you are supposed to behave as if you have never heard what is OTR, that you can't repeat it later on to get confirmation. OTR is not the same as "not for attribution."

Editor's Note:

Buckminister replies: Then OTR in the press is the same as in real life. Someone tells you something, and no one else (and I mean no one else) ever knows about it. Thought as much. Thanks for the clarification. I was surprised by the smarmy one's attack on The Scotsman journo, it was ruthless & efficient and he "won". She was rattled. And, like me, rather surprised! I'd *never* heard of anyone arguing that you could invoke OTR retroactively! A child can see that this means that nothing is ever really *on* the record...