03 Dec 2013
Journalism ethics: 5 levels that bring broad principles down to real-life decisions
Over my years in newspapers, I went to many mandatory in-house seminars on copyright and libel issues. Had to attend annual sessions on how to evacuate our building in case of fire, and participate in fire drills. Number of in-house formal discussions of ethics: Two. Not mandatory. And those were discussions I chaired. I know
25 Nov 2013
Why does the New York Times think it has to preserve its misjudgments online?
What should news media be willing to change about old online stories, and what should they insist on keeping unchanged? I faced this problem while Online Editor for The Plain Dealer. We regularly got calls from individuals or “reputation managers” (i.e., Internet fixers) who wanted us to make old stories go away. Usually, the stories
25 Nov 2013
Child sex trafficking and the 5 Ws and How: Another statistic gone astray
The report from KPTM, Fox42 news in Omaha, starts out strong: You might not think of Omaha as being a hotbed for the slave trade, but if you don’t, think again. There is evidence that hundreds of girls, some in their early teens are being sold as sex slaves in truck stops in our area.
19 Nov 2013
Could photojournalists have avoided the newsroom purges?
Let’s start with a basic fact, now confirmed: Visual journalists, particularly photographers, are suffering disproportionately as the industry retrenches. Move on to a conclusion that a lot of us have reached: This is not a good thing. I said that myself back in October; someone far more qualified to judge, Mario Garcia, said so today.
18 Nov 2013
Most quotes in news stories are needless, and you can quote me on that
Whether formally acknowledged or not, there is a quote quota in mainstream reporting, and I’m here to quash it. The spark for today’s post was an item on Robert Feder’s blog. With the anniversary of John F. Kennedy’s assassination nearing, Feder (a longtime Chicago media columnist) plucked a passage from the autobiography of another Chicago
14 Nov 2013
The Five W’s & How: Applying them to an individual fact
The Five W’s (who, what, when, where, why) and How are journalism’s double trinity. They’re generally applied to whole stories, as Jeremy Porter notes on the Journalistics blog. But they’re also a key to fact-checking, especially when you’re reporting on statistics dropped into speeches or such. An excellent example of that is a BBC News
12 Nov 2013
Training your staff: What science says about how to do it properly
Annie Murphy Paul has done an excellent job of summing up (The surprising science of workplace training) a report from 2012 in the Association for Psychological Science that was itself an amalgamation of decades of research (The science of training and development in organizations). The original report’s authors — Eduardo Salas, Scott I. Tannenbaum, Kurt
11 Nov 2013
What’s so bad about reporting good news?
The last, but arguably most important, of Elmore Leonard’s 10 rules for writers is “Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip.” In a blog post this weekend, former newspaper editor John L. Robinson suggested the same kind of principle for newsrooms. Try this exercise: Ask readers — it won’t work if
07 Nov 2013
9 things managers do that sabotage staff training
Newsrooms facing rapid change need training more than ever. But editors — or managers and executives in any kind of organizations — can sabotage training, often without realizing what they’re doing wrong. If you’re a manager in a newsroom preparing for or going through training, watch out for these mistakes: Impatience: Training takes time. It
31 Oct 2013
What do journalism students need to know before they graduate?
What do journalism students need to know as they move into the job world? That’s what Shaina Cavazos asked in the comments on my earlier post about whether journalists need to learn coding. I’m splitting my answer into three parts: First, what most editors are looking for; second, what I would look for; third, what