By: Jason Del Rey on AdAge, Jan 31, 2012 – 

“New Yorker Editor David Remnick says his long-form publication continues to invest in web staff and digital-exclusive content. But he still sees the digital extensions as complementary to the core print product, not a replacement — at least not anytime soon.

Asked in an onstage interview at All Things D’s media conference whether he believes the New Yorker will still publish a print magazine 20 years from now, Mr. Remnick answered, ‘I do.’”

Read the full post on AdAge.

By Jeff Roberts on PaidContent, Jan. 28 –

“Why does Twitter get involved in so many interesting lawsuits? In its short life, the company has kicked up legal hornet nests involving everything from stalking to satire.

While technology companies always outgrow the laws that govern them, Twitter’s 140-character message system is proving to be particularly disruptive. At the same time, the microblog has been more aggressive in defending free speech than established companies like Facebook and Google.

Here are five examples that show how Twitter’s unique platform is creating a new set of media rules that are forcing the law to play catch up.” …

Read the list on PaidContent

By  A. Adam Glenn on MediaShift, Jan. 26 –

“As debris from the firewall that once separated journalism from the business of journalism continues to fly, a new educational landscape is developing, one that supports and trains those straddling the line.

American University is the latest to add to that, expecting soon to launch a full-fledged graduate degree in news entrepreneurship.

The faculty at the Washington, D.C.-based AU’s School of Communications has OK’d a new 10-course, 20-month Master’s in Media Entrepreneurship, and expects formal approval from the university this spring. Kickoff would be next fall.”

Read the full post on MediaShift

By  Howard Owens on HowardOwens.com (Jan. 25) –

“For no particular reason, I found myself looking at Google Analytics and decided to open the calendar all the way back to 2007.

I discovered that the most popular post I’ve written in that time (and probably since I started blogging in 2002) is “Ten Things Journalists Can Do to Reinvent Journalism,” published Feb. 16, 2008. It’s been viewed more than 40,000 times.  If I go back month-by-month since 2008, it is consistently among the top 10 posts for each month.

So, I just re-read it, and I found, not surprising, given nearly four more years of experience, I don’t agree with everything it says.”

Read Owens’ new list on his blog here

By Craig Silverman on Poynter, Jan. 23 –

“At around 9 p.m. on Saturday night, the AP newsroom was abuzz with reports on Twitter and elsewhere that former Penn State football coach Joe Paterno had died. AP associate managing editor Ted Anthony had been tracking the story of Paterno’s health since the afternoon, and he sent an email to roughly a dozen AP supervisors to make sure no one jumped the gun and declared Paterno dead.”

Read the full post on Poynter

By Daniel Victor, Jan. 23 on Poynter – 

“The Onward State tweet that erroneously reported Joe Paterno’s death Saturday night and led to an avalanche of false reports in other outlets was based on the work of two student reporters: One was snookered by a false email, and one overstated his knowledge of the events, according to the site’s co-founder.

A third student, Managing Editor Devon Edwards, decided to pull the trigger on the tweet. Edwards resigned Saturday night.

The independent, online-only, student-run site is an agile and highly collaborative organization with a staff of 30-50, including eight editors. Each story is run through two editors, and major decisions are hashed out among editors and reporters through Yammer, an internal messaging system.

The fateful tweet was no snap decision. The site has a complex editorial process that’s designed for the Web and has earned praise for its vision — but like any editorial process, it can easily be disrupted by bad reporting and pressure-packed situations.

“I’d have to say that this event … taught me how ego can be a very toxic thing for a news organization,” said Davis Shaver, who co-founded the site as a Penn State freshman in 2008. ‘Ego to act like you know something you don’t, ego to want to be the first person to break it.’

Read the full post on Poynter’s website

Creative Commons: Prasan

Alicia Eler recently wrote on the RWW site that connected consumers prefer using websites and mobile websites to apps. She said:

“Welcome to the connected consumer. This person most likely has a tablet and smartphone, and is constantly connected to their friends via Facebook. Today, more than 60% of 25-34 year-olds (Gen-Y) own a smartphone. One in three online consumers will buy a tablet by 2014. That’s a lot to digest at once, right? A new survey from Zmagsinvestigates the connected consumer and their digital habits.

Only 4% of these consumers use branded apps. Eighty-seven percent prefer to use websites and mobile sites. This is good news for the so-called tablet commerce revolution (can a consumer movement be rightly called a “revolution”? I shudder), which suggests that tablet owners are using tablet-optimized websites like Amazon.com. But this connected consumer is not a Gen-Y. She is…wait for it…a 40-something-year-old woman.”

You can read the full post on Read Write Web here.

Although these statistics don’t refer to news website directly, 87% is a very high majority of consumers who prefer websites to apps.

Question: Do you think a higher percentage of news readers prefer sites to apps as well? 

By Katy Culver on Poynter, Jan. 13, 2012 – 

“A friend and fellow educator sent a shock through my system last week. He told me he was so frustrated by rude and distracted behavior on digital devices in his journalism labs that he imposes a ban on laptops, tablets and cell phones turned on during class.

Not known for subtlety, I asked, ‘Are you insane?’

The interaction led to a productive conversation about digital distractions and effective teaching practices in a connected age. Somewhere in the combination of our approaches and their devices is a sweet spot that can move learning forward.”

Read the full post on Poynter.org

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE – Jan. 12, 2012 | The Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC), a nonprofit, academic organization of more than 3,600 journalism and mass communication educators, students, and media professionals, is committed to “defend and maintain freedom of communication in an effort to achieve better professional practice and a better informed public.”

AEJMC would like to respond to the October 27, 2011 Federal Communications Commission Order on Reconsideration and Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking in connection with “the Matter of Standardized and Enhanced Disclosure Requirements for Television Broadcast Licensee Public Interest Obligations.”

AEJMC supports the FCC’s important proposed rule change because this would bring closer to reality broadcasters’ transparency in fulfilling their “public-interest obligations” to communities.  The rule change would exponentially expand the public’s access to the broadcasters’ “public-inspection files,” now on paper, by requiring them to make them available online.  AEJMC applauds the FCC for its overdue effort to “modernize the way television broadcasters inform the public about how they are serving their communities.”

As Steven Waldman, the lead author of the FCC report titled “Information Needs of Communities: The Changing Media Landscape in a Broadband Age,” cogently noted in his Columbia Journalism Review article of December 29, 2011, the proposed FCC rule change mandating online access will impose little additional burden to broadcasters, since broadcasters are already required to assemble these materials.

From journalism and mass communication educators’ perspective, AEJMC believes that putting these political files online would enable educators and researchers to better teach and research how the public-owned airwaves have been used for political advertising.  Equally important, investigating the broadcasters’ “pay for play” arrangements would be much easier if these records are included in online public files.

AEJMC disagrees with broadcasters that the proposed FCC disclosure regulations could create problems for them in terms of additional cost and manpower from compliance with the regulations.  Their objections seem to be more transparency-averse than cost-motivated.  For putting the public inspection data online at the FCC would entail little additional cost for the broadcasters.

Professor Jeremy Harris Lipschultz, director of the University of Nebraska-Omaha School of Communication, who for more than twenty years has been sending students in his Media Regulation and Freedom course to inspect local public files, recently said, “Some operations are downright hostile about the current obligation of public inspection during regular office hours.”

In conclusion, AEJMC urges the FCC to err on the side of more transparency, not less, on the part of broadcasters’ obligations for public-file inspections.  This is all the more compelling than ever, given that off-line information about the broadcasters’ records for operating TV and radio stations for the “public interest, convenience, and necessity” is more often a case of “practical obscurity.”  This should no longer be allowed in the Internet era.  The media transparency proposal of the FCC would be one effective way to tackle the physical inertia inherent in the files in the broadcasters’ file cabinets.

To leave a comment about the proposed rule change on the FCC site, go here: http://fjallfoss.fcc.gov/ecfs/upload/display?z=yx8a4 (Enter proceeding number 00-168)

AEJMC Contact Information: Contact Linda Steiner, President, Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication, 2011-2012
Email: lsteiner@jmail.umd.edu
Phone: 301-405-2426

About PAC
The AEJMC President’s Advisory Council allows the association’s president to weigh in on important issues that are central to the association’s mission. A three-member subcommittee of the Standing Committee of Professional Freedom and Responsibility helps inform and advise the president of important issues.

About AEJMC
The Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication is a nonprofit, educational association of journalism and mass communication educators, students and media professionals. The Association’s mission is to advance education, foster scholarly research, cultivate better professional practice and promote the free flow of communication.

By Jeff Sonderman on Poynter, Jan. 9, 2012 – 

“One-third of tablet and smartphone owners in a Nielsen survey said they had downloaded a news app within the past 30 days, and 19 percent had paid for one. The chart below shows survey results for news and other categories.”

Image credit: Nielsen

Read the full post on Poynter

By Eric Schonfeld on TechCrunch, Jan. 8, 2011 – 

“At this point, video is just a regular part of the web. But how is it gaining on regular TV watching. Just in terms of audience reach, Nielsen estimates that almost 145 million people watch video online in the U.S., compared to about 290 million who watch traditional TV. So the penetration of online video is already about half of the overall TV-watching population.

Yet for all the video people watch on the web, it is still a tiny fraction of how much they watch on TV in terms of time spent. In a report put out yesterday on the State of the Media summarizing 2011 data, Nielsen estimates Americans spend an average of 32 hours and 47 minutes a week watching traditional TV. They only spend an average of 3 hours and 58 minutes a week on the Internet, and only 27 minutes a week watching video online. All those billions of videos watched online still only represent 1.4 percent of the time spent watching traditional TV.”

Read the full article on TechCrunch

By Eric Alterman on CJR, Jan/Feb 2012 –

“Ironically — and apparently somehow below the radar of most journalists in America — the profession was recently blessed with what could have been, and still might be, the most effective propaganda vehicle for the societal significance of journalism I could imagine. His name is Mikael Blomkvist, and the paunchy, forty-year-old, lady-killing, black-coffee-and-bourbon swizzling, cigarette-smoking, crusading, feminist, Swedish journalist just happens to be the hero of perhaps the best-selling book series in the world.”

Read the full article on the Columbia Journalism Review website.

The FCC is currently accepting opinions on a proposed rule change that would require TV broadcasters to post political advertising information from their network on their website. Currently, broadcasters are only required to have a physical file documenting the advertising that politicians have paid for on their channel. The new ruling would require this information to be posted online for everyone to access.

The deadline for comments is January 17.

Comment on the proposed rule change here:  http://fjallfoss.fcc.gov/ecfs/upload/display?z=xkixg  (Enter proceeding number 00-168)

View current comments here: http://fjallfoss.fcc.gov/ecfs/comment_search/input?z=gjx0v  (Enter proceeding number 00-168)

Creative Commons: Prasan

This post was originally posted on the AEJMC Small Programs Interest Group blog by Margo Wilson. Reposted with permission.

One of the first times I knew I really was in trouble as a new journalism professor was in August 2003 at the Association for Education and Journalism and Mass Communications conference in Kansas City, Mo. I had been feeling a bit cocky after surviving my first year on the tenure track after a 20-year tenure as a newspaper reporter and editor at places ranging from the Spruce Grove Star, near Edmonton, Alberta, to the Los Angeles Times. At the AEJMC conference, I was intrigued by the array of panels on multimedia, and I attended many.

The one I recall most was by a panel of speakers from the Annenberg School at the University of Southern California. They reported on their first year of offering a converged journalism curriculum, and I distinctly remember them saying words to the effect of: “Be careful if you’re still on the tenure track. Your student evaluations are going to suffer.” In a paper later published in the Journalism & Mass Communication Educator, three USC researchers wrote about surveys of students enrolled in those first converged classes. The students graded the converged curriculum as of “C” quality. When asked whether they would recommend the converged program as it then existed, those students ranked the program overall as “Poor,” with “Extremely Poor” their most frequent response (Castaneda, Murphy, & Hether, 2005, pp. 65-66).

Gulp. And that was USC and they have oodles of money, time, and well-trained staff. What was little old I going to do? I buried my head in grading, committee work, and my own writing for another two years. There was no pressure from the English Department in which I teach to get on the digital bandwagon. My sole journalism colleague was pursuing other interests and not digitally concerned. I taught myself how to use Microsoft Publisher. I learned how to use Blackboard. I tried to ignore most things digital. But I couldn’t. Many of my friends at the Los Angeles Times and other newspapers were being laid off as the papers tried to adjust to the Internet revolution. One of my co-workers who survived at the Times morphed into a graveyard shift web editor. The newspaper business that I had left three years previously was changing rapidly.

I invited the managing editor of one of the local Pennsylvania papers to speak to my feature writing class.

“What are you doing to prepare students to work online?” she asked.

“Nothing,” some of my students blurted.

I had to do something.

During Summer 2005, I attended a two-week “multimodal” English composition workshop at Michigan Technological University, taught by Cynthia Selfe, a leading technological guru in composition studies. Selfe and her colleagues introduced me to digital audio recording, digital video shooting and editing, and HTML, among other things, and oh, it was painful.

“When you came in, I thought, ‘Oh, that poor woman,’” Selfe later told me. Talk about an ego-deflating experience. There was no easy way I could transfer much of what I had learned at the workshop into the classes I was teaching in the fall. So, I didn’t.

But gradually, I enrolled in more workshops and online classes. The current count is 40. I bought my own equipment and attended the Summer 2008 multimedia workshop for journalism professors at the University of South Carolina’s Newsplex. I started experimenting with class blogs and requiring my writing students to take photos. I moved my editing class’s newsletter from Microsoft Publisher to InDesign (and now it’s on Issuu). During the summer of 2009, I did an “internship” at the Observer-Reporter newspaper in Washington, Pa., where I worked a little bit on the website but mostly shot and edited 15 videos. I gained a little confidence.

Meanwhile, I had drafted the protocol syllabus for a new “Multimedia Journalism”class. I pushed it through my department and the university’s Curriculum Committee. I persuaded the university administrators to upgrade our computer lab with spiffy Macs, new software, cameras, and audio recorders. I had all the fixings for a multimedia party. Now it was up to me to deliver the guests, uh, students, and make sure they had a good time, err, learned something. I taught my first multimedia journalism class in Fall 2010.

Was teaching multimedia journalism stressful? You bet.

We created a class blog and individual blogs, shot photos, and created Powerpoints, Soundslides projects with audio, and videos. From one day to the next, I was working at the edge of my knowledge, trying to stay one step ahead of the students. Our lab’s new projection system wasn’t ready until a month after class started. I had to improvise with a laptop and portable projector or an old-fashioned overhead projector until then. After the projector was installed, it needed constant adjustments. I’d call the Help Desk during class and my students would just roll their eyes and snicker.

But the projector was just one of my problems. Two students “forgot” to return their somewhat pricey cameras after dropping the class. One finally agreed to hand over the camera, and we met, late one night in a parking lot, à la Deep Throat. The other sneaked the camera into our department just hours before I was planning to file a police report and a few days after the dean of students contacted her.

How were my student evaluations? Mixed. They ranged from “Perhaps have a professor who know [sic] what they [sic] are doing teach the class next time it is offered” to “The class was fun and gave new experiences to students.” I guess if I had asked the students to grade the course, the grades might have averaged out to a “C.”

Since last fall, I’ve had a chance to look at some of the literature about the stress of teaching with technology. If nothing else, this reading has been therapeutic, reassuring me I’m not alone in my anxiety about teaching with technology and, especially, about teaching multimedia journalism.

Several articles about journalism professors’ stress over technology were published in theJournalism Educator in 2003. One article discussed a telephone survey of AEJMC faculty to determine the extent to which technology plays a role in the instructors’ feelings of exhaustion. The conclusion was that “technology-related stressors… mattered more than course load, tenure status, rank or gender” in contributing to exhaustion (Beam, Kim, & Voakes, p. 347). The study called for more technical support and for more technology training of faculty. Another article described how women, in general, are more stressed out. It discussed a UCLA study in which young women who were using computers as much as their male colleagues were half as confident about their computer skills (Ogan & Chung, pp. 355-356). Women just don’t have as much confidence about their digital prowess. Still another study found that older, female professors with heavy teaching loads, whose classes were predominantly skills classes, were among the most stressed (Voakes, Beam, & Ogan, pp. 329-330). Hmmm, a perfect description of me.

Other articles discussed the feeling among faculty who teach with technology that they are “perpetual novices,” which means that in order to keep a stiff upper lip, they need to have “strong self-efficacy” (Ertmer & Ottenbreit-Leftwich, 2010, p. 261). Leggget and Persichitte described 50 years of obstacles in implementing technology as “blood, sweat, and TEARS,” in which “TEARS” stands for “lack of time,” “expertise,” “access,” “resources,” and “support” (as cited in Mandefrot, 2001, Claims and Counterclaims section, para. 9). Commenting on their study of a community college, a school noted for its integration of technology into the curriculum and its emphasis on learner-centered instruction, Owen and Demb (2004) discussed how using technology “changes the fundamental teaching paradigm from teacher-centered to learner-centered instruction” (p. 636) and how the “transformational change associated with technology is even more disruptive for faculty than change without technology” (p. 658). They added that “Coupled with the unsettling nature of transformational change, which challenges assumptions, roles, values, and norms, [technology] participants experience a disturbing lack of control and the result is a situation full of both personal and institutional tensions” (p. 658). Owen and Demb, like many other writers, also mentioned how faculty become frustrated with the amount of time needed to prepare to teach with technology (pp. 662-663).

And yet, professors haven’t thrown in the towel on teaching with technology. That includes me. Last spring, while teaching feature writing, I had the students make a class blog and an individual blog. In the fall, in a reporting class, we’re going to try mobile journalism, using laptops and phones, to write stories that may be “livestreamed” to a class blog. I’m still exploring this. Wish me luck.

I never feel any better than a novice with each further step I take into the digital world. Everything is always new. In Lev Vygotzky’s terms, I’m continually operating in the “zone of proximal development” (University of North Carolina School of Education, n.d., “Zone of Proximal Development”). And it’s uncomfortable, scary, and lonely out here in the zone.

My university gives lots of awards, and in 2010, a woman from my department won the university’s technology award after getting certified in “digital storytelling” and incorporating digital storytelling into one of her composition classes. That was the spur I needed to apply for the award this past year. Somehow, I won. At the awards luncheon, each winner was to speak briefly. When it was my turn, my voice trembled and then the tears started to flow. The tears caught me by surprise. As are many of my experiences with technology, it was embarrassing. I blubbered on about how, even after winning the award, I still feel like a digital idiot. And I do. I thanked at least some of the people who’ve helped me along the way. And there have been many. Our IT department and administration have been supportive. I’m still not totally sure why I cried.

As a journalist, I’ve covered traffic accidents and suicides, fires, and political brawls. My house has been pelted with eggs by people angry about the stories I’ve written. My stories have led to people getting fired for unethical conduct. Journalists are tough. Journalists don’t cry. But I did. If you can do technology plus journalism, then you are one tough cookie. I crumbled.

Yet, despite the blood, sweat, and TEARS, I do believe journalism professors must infuse their teaching with technology. I’m committed to improving my technology skills enough so I can focus more on the content in my classes and less on the machinery.

I continue to be one of just a handful of professors in my department who are seriously wrestling with technology. For my journalism students, if it’s going to be, it’s up to me. And yet, as my student pointed out in his or her evaluation, it would be helpful to the students if they had a professor who knew what she is doing. I know the journalism. It’s the technology that is so much more elusive. Still, I soldier on. It’s my job. But it’s more than that. Making a video that’s true to journalism and interesting to watch can be fun and rewarding. Designing a blog or website that’s user-friendly, visually attractive, and journalistically attuned can be a kick.

When I won the university’s technology award, I also won a cool, new Ipad. I pray to the gods and goddesses of journalism and technology that it doesn’t take me months to learn how to use it.

Margo Wilson is an associate professor and chairs the English department at California University of Pennsylvania.

References

Beam, R. A., Kim, E., & Voakes, P. S. (Winter 2003). Technology-induced stressors, job satisfaction and workplace exhaustion among journalism and mass communication faculty.Journalism & Mass Communication Educator, 335-351.

Castaneda, L., Murphy, S., & Hether, H. J. (Spring 2005). Teaching print, broadcast, and online journalism concurrently: A case study assessing a convergence curriculum.Journalism & Mass Communication Educator, 57-70.

Ertmer, P. A. & Ottenbreit-Leftwich A. T. (2010). Teacher technology change: How knowledge, confidence, beliefs, and culture intersect. Journal of Research on Technology in Education, 42, 255-284.

Mandefrot, K. (2001). An embarrassment of technology. Journal of Research on Computing in Education, 33 (5), 1-34.

Ogan, C. & Chung, D. (Winter 2003). Stressed out! A national study of women and men journalism and mass communication faculty, their use of technology, and levels of professional and personal stress. Journalism & Mass Communication Educator, 352-368.

Owen, P. S. & Demb, A. (2004). Change dynamics and leadership in technology implementation. The Journal of Higher Education. 75(6), 636-666.

University of North Carolina School of Education. (n.d.) Zone of proximal development. Retrieved from http://www.learnnc.org/lp/pages/5075.

Voakes, P. S., Beam, R. A., & Ogan, C. (Winter 2003). The impact of technological change on journalism education: A survey of faculty and administrators. Journalism & Mass Communication Educator, 318-334.

By Stan Schroeder on Mashable, Jan 3, 2012 – 

Microsoft’s Internet Explorer is still the world’s most popular browser, but it and Mozilla’s Firefox lost a lot of market share to Google’s Chrome in 2011, which is now firmly in second place.

According to StatCounter’s 2011 data, Internet Explorer currently has a 39% market share, Chrome is at 27%, while Firefox holds 25% of the market.

Safari and Opera follow with 6% and 2% market share, respectively.

Read the full post on Mashable.

By MICHAEL POWELL on Nytimes.com, Jan 3, 2012 –

“In late November, the police commissioner, Raymond W. Kelly, ordered every precinct in his domain to read a statement. Officers, the commissioner said, must ‘respect the public’s right to know about these events and the media’s right of access to report.’

Any officer who “unreasonably interferes” with reporters or blocks photographers will be subject to disciplinary actions.

These are fine words. Of course, his words followed on the heels of a few days in mid-November when the police arrested, punched, kicked and used metal barriers to ram reporters and photographers covering the Occupy Wall Street protests.”

Read the full article on the New York Times website.

From the Sidney Hillman Foundation website – 

The Sidney Hillman Foundation is now accepting nominations and submissions for the 2012 Hillman Prizes that honor investigative journalism and commentary in service of the common good. The 2012 prizes will be given for work produced, published, broadcast, or exhibited in 2011.

This year’s categories are as follows:

1. Book (bound volumes and ebooks)

2. Newspaper Journalism (story or series/in print or online) 


3. Magazine Journalism (story or series/in print or online) 


4. Broadcast Journalism (story or series/at least 40 minutes in total length) Open to television, web TV, radio, podcast, and documentary film.

5. Web Journalism (publication/story or series/multimedia media project) Open to blogs, computer-assisted reporting, new investigative tools, mapping, crowd sourcing, and other multimedia media projects. Entries should feature a substantial text component.

6. Photojournalism (for a series of still photos, no single images) Entries in this category must include still photos, either alone, or as part of a multimedia package. For example, the winning entry of the 2011 Hillman Prize for Photojournalism featured still photos and web video.

7. Opinion Journalism (any medium) Includes all types of advocacy, opinion, and analysis, normally short-form and/or frequent, regardless of medium. Open to newspaper and magazine columnists, TV and radio presenters, podcasters, blogs, and bloggers.

If you are unsure about which category your work fits into, just go ahead and submit, and the foundation will determine the best category for it.

Winners will be announced in April 2012. Each winner is awarded travel to New York City to receive a $5,000 prize and a certificate designed by New Yorker cartoonist, Edward Sorel, at our awards ceremony and cocktail reception to be held Tuesday May 1, 2012.

Find out more information on the Hillman Foundation website.

By Robert Steiner on MediaShift, Dec. 15, 2011 – 

“After 25 years in and around journalism, my understanding of media changed with one table in the “2009 State of the News Media Report” by the Pew Project for Excellence in Journalism. Time Magazine and Newsweek each saw ad pages drop 19 percent in 2008, it said, while Motortrend gained 24 percent and Car and Driver increased 4 percent. If two auto magazines could grow their business in the very year that Chrysler and GM were headed towards bankruptcy, then specialized coverage had to be the most exciting place for a career in journalism.”

Read the full post on MediaShift

Photo Credit: Valley Library

Social Media, the Classroom and the First Amendment, written by Melissa Wantz, and published by the First Amendment Center and Knight Foundation, takes a fresh look at how America’s schools can enhance learning through the use of emerging and interactive media.

This guide is designed to give teachers the tools and ideas they need to engage students using social media and existing curricula. The guide was inspired by the recent Knight Foundation study “Future of the First Amendment 2011” written by Dr. Kenneth Dautrich. The Knight study – based on a survey of 12,090 high school students and 900 high school teachers — indicates that students who are most active in social media also have the best sense of First Amendment principles. That suggests that Twitter, Facebook and other social media can play an important supplemental role in the classroom.

We are indebted to Knight Foundation for its support and the funding of this teachers guide. Knight Foundation, along with the First Amendment Center, Newseum, American Society of News Editors and McCormick Foundation are also the core founders of 1 for All, an unprecedented national campaign on behalf of the First Amendment (http://1forAll.us).

1 for All is the collaborative effort of educators, artists, journalists, lawyers, librarians and many more who believe that the American public would benefit from a greater understanding of the First Amendment and the need to protect all voices, views and faiths.

Read the full post and get the PDF

By Meranda Watling on 10,000 Words, Dec. 14 – 

“Student journalists should know by now, you likely won’t start out earning an enormous salary. And that money will seem even scarcer if you’ve got student loans to pay back. So Thursday is your chance to both support the First Amendment — that’s the one with freedom of the press and freedom of speech, which I really hope you already knew — and to potentially earn a $5,000 scholarship. It’s as easy as exercising your right to tweet — by tweeting about why you love that right (or any of the others in that near sacred amendment). For those who’ve gone through other scholarship competitions, that’s a scholarship essay of 140 characters instead of 1,400 words or so. And with 22 available awards, your odds may be better than many national winner-take-all competitions.”

Read the full post on 10,000 Words for more information about the scholarship

Creative Commons: Jon S

Press Release by Pulse Research, Dec. 13, 2011 – 

“The assumption has been that the newspaper’s digital audience is younger, more affluent and better educated than print. Now, a recent Pulse Research national survey shows just how distinct and compelling newspaper’s digital audience is.

Demographics: The average age of a digital audience member is 44, seven years younger than the average age of 51 for a print household. In the 30 and under segment, there are 60% more digital households than print. The average household income of a digital household is $65,480, which is 21% higher than a print average household income of $53,776. Even more significant, 82% more digital households earn over $100,000 per year. Digital households are better educated; 22% more digital households have a college or post degree education. In addition, 50% more digital households have children at home; 48% compared to 32% of print households having children at home.

Purchasing plans: In the key real estate and automotive categories, the digital household has much higher planned purchases over the next 12 months. Personal home: 46% more digital households plan to purchase a personal residence in the next 12 months; 7.6% compared to 5.2% of print households.

Digital household purchasing plans for new cars in the next 12 months is 24% higher than print households; 8.4% to 6.8%. The same upward purchasing trends hold true for furniture stores. The planned purchasing by a digital household at a furniture store in the next 12 months is 51% higher than a print household; 24.4% compared to 16.2%.

The digital audience is defined as a household that has visited the local newspaper website in the last 30 days and owns a smart phone.”

Read the full press release on Editor & Publisher or visit the Pulse Research page

By TOM STITES on Nieman Journalism Labs, Dec. 9, 2011 – 

“It’s stocktaking time — five years since the Big March to the digital journalism future stepped off in 2006, strutting toward what was widely trumpeted as inevitable triumph. Auspicious events amplified the cheering:

• The City University of New York launched its Graduate School of Journalism with an innovative curriculum and hired the outspoken citizen-journalism advocate Jeff Jarvis to direct a new interactive media program and teach entrepreneurship.
• Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society widened its interest in the growing edges of news by adding to its roster of fellows Dan Gillmor, author of the seminal 2004 participatory journalism book We the Media, and the protoblogger Doc Searls.
• In his widely followed PressThink blog, New York University journalism Prof. Jay Rosen headlined an item The People Formerly Known as the Audience; it immediately became a defining meme for journalism on the web, which empowers everyone to participate.
• The Knight Foundation, the premier funder of journalism projects, kicked off its $5-million-a-year News Challenge grants program.

So, five years later, how’s the Big March working out for journalism — and for the democracy that’s so dependent on it?

Read the full post and Stite’s perspectives on the Nieman Journalism Lab website

By Michele McLellan, posted on the Knight Digital Media Center website Dec. 5, 2011 – 

“Since 2007, Knight-McCormick leadership programs at KDMC have given me a front row seat at the transformation of news leadership to meet the demands of the digital age. The more than 100 news leaders who have participated in the programs faced a dizzying array of choices about how to best shape a digital strategy, how to navigate tricky organizational sandpits as they implement it, and how to adjust and reset their tactics each time a new innovation or a new cutback hits.

In the face of these challenges, news leaders bring to the task remarkable energy, creativity and determination, born of their passion for news. In the process, the more effective ones have developed new skills and practices – some of them hard skills like understanding digital tools and metrics; others soft skills like knowing when to step up and when to pull back.

Based on dozens of conversations and interviews, the report, ”New practices shape transformative news leadership in the digital age” highlights key practices:

1. Focus the mission - “The toughest choices are about resources today, and you have to pick the things that go to your core mission. Part of the answer is as much what you don’t do as what you do.” – Sherry Chisenhall, The Wichita Eagle

2. Adapt the structure - “You have to first think about your goals: What are you trying to achieve? Then you start talking about roles, then procedure and processes.” – Julia D. Wallace, Cox Media Group Ohio

3. Overcommunicate - “Your message begins to resonate more clearly when you have training. You begin to get feedback from staff that they’re confused, so you work to explain it and the staff ultimately gets it.” – Carlos Sanchez, formerly Waco Tribune-Herald

4. Get comfortable with not having all the answers - “To be at the front of a room and not have an answer is difficult. ‘I don’t know, but we’ll figure it out together’ is an acceptable answer. It took me awhile to figure that out.” – Jon Cooper, Digital First Media and Journal Register Co.

5. Be a catalyst - “I had to figure out a way to get everyone to think about it … This stuff isn’t just something nerdy people do in some corner.” – Melanie Sill, formerly The Sacramento Bee

6. Get out of the way - “You have to have leaders who understand that they don’t understand the new world and be willing to hire people who are steeped in the new world, and they need to then trust them to lead.” – Michael Skoler, Public Radio International

7. Use the tools - “Using an iPad, using an iPhone, using apps, location-based tools, mapping, etc., if you’re not using these things, you can’t understand the readers’ expectations.” – Carolyn Washburn, The Cincinnati Enquirer

8. Own the numbers - “We did extensive audience research where we tried to really drill down on our audience. Understanding what their interests are is important.” – John Yemma, Christian Science Monitor

9. Make time for the future - “Now it’s much more about staying on task for this five-year plan in order to enable the organization to continue producing superior content and also earn revenue around those efforts.” – Nicole Hollway, St. Louis Beacon

Read the full post on the Knight Digital Media Center website

Photo Credit: Valley Library

Susan Crawford recently wrote in the New York Times about the ongoing and increasing digital divide in America. She says that Internet access for Americans will be a major factor in our economic competitiveness in the future.

She says,

“Increasingly, we are a country in which only the urban and suburban well-off have truly high-speed Internet access, while the rest — the poor and the working class — either cannot afford access or use restricted wireless access as their only connection to the Internet. As our jobs, entertainment, politics and even health care move online, millions are at risk of being left behind.”

Read the full article on the New York Times website.

The Newspaper Association of America posted a press release yesterday about the increase in mobile traffic to newspaper websites. The NAA had this to say in their release:

“Newspaper publishers increased page views to their mobile content by 65 percent on average in September compared to the same month one year ago, according to the Newspaper Association of America. Many newspapers reported triple-digit page view increases to their mobile sites and apps, demonstrating that newspaper content remains a leading choice for consumers across their multiplatform offerings.

“NAA’s analysis is based on traffic figures for more than 20 newspaper media companies – large and small, public and private – that supplied year-over-year internal measurements of mobile page view traffic and unique visitors from September 2010 and September 2011. Unique visitor count increases ranged as high as 200 percent, with an average increase of about 70 percent for the publishers reporting.

You can read the full press release on the NAA website here

Ted Han, DocumentCloud, in a video by Jon Vidar.

From the Knight Foundation Blog, Nov. 17. 2011

“Above, Ted Han describes how DocumentCloud, a 2011 Knight News Challenge winner, is developing a new feature allowing newsrooms to invite public participation in annotating and commenting on source documents.

The tool will help newsrooms involve their readers in the news and improve DocumentCloud as a journalistic tool and investigative reporting resource. The site recently merged with Investigative Reporters and Editors.

As a two-time Knight News Challenge winner (it won also in 2009 to launch), DocumentCloud already helps journalists analyze, annotate and publish original source documents. The site is used by more than 200 newsrooms nationwide.”

Read the full post on Knight Blog

The 1 For All website is hosting a Free To Tweet contest for students on Dec. 15. The idea is to get as many students talking about and exercising their First Amendment rights. Students who participate in tweeting about the First Amendment using the hashtag #FreeToTweet will have a chance to win a $5,000 scholarship.

Their website has this to say about the contest:

“Beginning at midnight on Dec. 15, students ages 14 to 22 can tweet their support for the First Amendment with the hash tag #freetotweet, which will enter them in the “Free to Tweet” scholarship competition. Students are encouraged to freely express themselves in their entries, which can be posted on any publicly viewable social media platform, including blogs.

The Free to Tweet contest takes place throughout the day, Dec. 15, 2011, on National Bill of Rights day.”

Read more on the 1 For All website.

By Dave Gwozdz on AdAge, Nov. 29, 2011 – 

“While many publishers are bringing content to the growing number of mobile users, others still struggle to adapt. Transitioning to the medium in haste, many cut corners, not fully understanding the nuances involved. In advertising, for example, long-form video with sound and automatic-play is effective for desktop users, but fails when delivered on mobile. With seconds to get a mobile user’s attention, intrusive noises and slower-loading video will turn users off.”

“A strategy tailored specifically to mobile is essential. Publishers need to ask themselves a few key questions before jumping in:

• Are we really committed to making mobile a revenue stream?
• What resources do we need to add to maintain it?
• Is there demand from our users — do we have page views on wireless devices?
• Is there demand from our advertisers to buy mobile media?”

Read the full post on AdAge

By Peter Kafka on All Things D, Nov. 21, 2011

“After an initial wave of excitement about iPad magazines, some publishers have dialed back their enthusiasm. But the readers who have actually downloaded them like them quite a bit.”

“So says a survey commissioned by a publishers’ trade group: It finds that two-thirds of people who read magazines on tablets and e-readers think they’ll be spending more time with digital issues over the next year. Many of them — 46 percent — are consuming more magazines — both in print and digital form — than they did before they got their hands on an iPad.* And 63 percent of them want more digital stuff to read.”

Read the full post on All Things D

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE – Nov. 21, 2011 | The Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC) is committed to freedom of speech and the press in the United States and abroad. AEJMC supports citizens’ and journalists’ First Amendment rights in every city and every state, including in participating in the Occupy movement. AEJMC fully supports the Occupy protesters’ freedom of speech and assembly as a whole, and urges that journalists’ right—and responsibility–to cover these important matters of public concern be respected by all law enforcement officials. This is all the more compelling because other countries are closely watching how city, state, and federal governments handle the Occupy movement across the United States.

While recognizing the need for law enforcement officers to maintain public safety, AEJMC encourages public officials and law enforcement officers to work with Occupy participants and journalists covering their protests to ensure that basic constitutional freedoms are maintained and not encroached. The rights to protest and to criticize government are core values enjoying Constitutional protection. Additionally, the press must be allowed to freely communicate to the public information about these important and powerful demonstrations and the ideas they express. AEJMC reminds public officials at every level of government that as a nation we are and should be exceptionally committed to the often tested proposition that, as the Supreme Court of the United States declared in 1964, debates on matters of public concern remain “uninhibited, robust, and wide-open.”

For further information: Contact Linda Steiner, President, Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication, 2011-2012
Available at lsteiner@jmail.umd.edu
973-762-6919 (Nov 21-27). After Nov 28: 301-405-2426

About PAC
The AEJMC President’s Advisory Council allows the association’s president to weigh in on important issues that are central to the association’s mission. A three-member subcommittee of the Standing Committee of Professional Freedom and Responsibility helps inform and advise the president of important issues.

About AEJMC
The Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication is a nonprofit, educational association of journalism and mass communication educators, students and media professionals. The Association’s mission is to advance education, foster scholarly research, cultivate better professional practice and promote the free flow of communication.

The Ethics Advisory Committee of The Canadian Association of Journalists recently published an article on best practices that news organizations should use when correcting or updating online stories.

They identified three main areas that are emerging in online corrections:

1. Helping readers report errors
2. Having transparency in corrections
3. Placement of corrections

From those emerging areas, they made the following recommendations:

Transparency

• All verified factual errors in digital content should be corrected promptly.
• We should aim for transparency, telling audiences when digital content has been amended or corrected.
• While we should not “scrub” content, minor editing to correct spelling and grammar errors that do not alter the meaning of the content for the reader may be amended without including a corrective note.
• In correcting and amending developing content, particularly in a breaking news story in which sometimes contradictory facts will emerge over time, we should be transparent with audiences throughout the reporting process about what we know and when we know it. When there is a significant verified change in the information first published, subsequent files should inform audiences about how the new information differs from what was first reported.

Engaging Readers

• We should make it easy for audiences to report possible errors of fact and errors of omission in digital content by providing a mechanism for audiences to report errors.
• But readers are not always right. Changes to digital content should not be made as a result of readers’ errors reports without verification.

Timeliness

• We have the ability – and responsibility – to correct digital content as soon as we verify something is wrong and no matter how long ago it was published. There is no time limit on making things right.
• We generally do not unpublish content if we discover errors. In some rare circumstances, there may be legal reasons to delete digital content entirely. This is generally done on the advice of legal counsel.

Placement

• When we verify factual errors in digital content, we should amend the copy to make it correct. In all but the most insignificant errors, we should also append a clearly visible note to the article to tell readers that the material was changed/edited/corrected from a previously published version and provide explicit details about what was corrected. For example: An earlier version of this article misstated the overnight price of a litre of gas as $2.40.
• Legal circumstances can determine where corrective notes are placed within online content. Generally, retractions and apologies for legal reasons should be published promptly and displayed prominently at the top of content. In some cases, it may be necessary to publish retractions and apologies more conspicuously on a website’s homepage to fulfill legal obligations.
• It should be easy for readers to find corrections. For instance, corrections may be captured on a prominent online Corrections page linked from a website’s homepage. And, when errors of fact are discovered as a breaking story unfolds through several published versions, corrective notes may be appended to link initial less complete reports to the most complete/correct report.
• If inaccurate information is broadcast through social media such as Twitter and Facebook, audiences should be informed of the inaccuracy – and when possible given correct information – through those same channels as soon as the error is determined.

You can read the full best practices report on the Canadian Association of Journalists’ website

According to Joe Coscarelli at New York Magazine, the AP recently sent out an email to its employees reminding them not to tweet breaking news before it’s been published. The email was sent after a number of AP staff were tweeting about fellow AP reporters being arrested at Occupy Wall Street protests.

Coscarelli wrote that the email said,

In relation to AP staff being taken into custody at the Occupy Wall Street story, we’ve had a breakdown in staff sticking to policies around social media and everyone needs to get with their folks now to tell them to knock it off.

The official AP staff guidelines for using social media states,

Don’t break news that we haven’t published, no matter the format.

Do you think AP staff should refrain from tweeting breaking news before it’s published?

Image courtesy of Pew Research Center

A new Pew study that came out recently shows that most news organizations are using Twitter to push their stories, rather then engage with followers. Thirteen print, TV and radio news organizations were studied. Megan Garber, from Nieman Journalism Lab, said,

 For these organizations, Twitter functions as an RSS feed or headline service for news consumers, with links ideally driving traffic to the organization’s website.”

You can read Garber’s post here or view the full Pew study.

By Dominic Rushe on The Guardian, Nov. 11, 2011 –

Icelandic MP and former WikiLeaks volunteer Birgitta Jonsdottir has slammed the decision by US courts to open her Twitter account to the US authorities and is taking her case to the Council of Europe.

On Thursday a US judge ruled Twitter must release the details of her account and those of two other Twitter users linked to WikiLeaks. Jonsdottir learned in January that her Twitter account was under scrutiny from the Justice Department because of her involvement last year with WikiLeaks’ release of a video showing a US military helicopter shooting two Reuters reporters in Iraq. She believes the US authorities want to use her information to try and build a case against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

Later in the article Jonsdottir said,

“I want everybody to be fully aware of the rights we apparently forfeit every time we sign one of these user agreements that no one reads,” said Jonsdottir.

Read the article on The Guardian.

Here’s a quick recap of the top journalism and mass communication news from this past week. Most of the articles and posts mentioned below were sent out from our Twitter account earlier in the week. Enjoy!

• News360: A Pandora for News?
• 6 Data Journalism Blogs To Bookmark, Part 2 
• Online enrollment grows but doubts still persist
• Twitter Ordered to Give Up WikiLeaks Data
• Another blogger has been killed in Mexico for reporting about gang activity
• Romenesko Leaves Poynter After Conflict Over Quotes
• Poynter Review: ESPN’s early coverage of Penn State sexual abuse scandal slow, ‘tone-deaf’
• The 50 Best Books for Journalism Students
• The problem with retweets & how journalists can solve it
• “Free to Tweet” promotion will award $5K to students who celebrate 1st Amendment most creatively through social media

Adobe announced this week that it will no longer develop a mobile version of its Flash program. In a statement released by Adobe they said,

Our future work with Flash on mobile devices will be focused on enabling Flash developers to package native apps with Adobe AIR for all the major app stores. We will no longer adapt Flash Player for mobile devices to new browser, OS version or device configurations. Some of our source code licensees may opt to continue working on and releasing their own implementations. We will continue to support the current Android and PlayBook configurations with critical bug fixes and security updates.

Joshua Benton, at Nieman Journalism Lab, wrote a post about what this means for news organizations. He said that the lack of a mobile Flash player impacts the video, interactive graphics and advertisements on news websites. The technology will still work on computers, but mobile devices won’t have the same options for displaying the media. The announcement will help push news organizations to adapt to HTML5, if they haven’t started already, but could hinder the sharing and displaying of content that’s already in the Flash format.

You can read Benton’s post here.

Press Release from the Center for Scholastic Journalism at Kent State University

School census shows strong high school student media presence
Study reveals online presence lagging, poor and minority students excluded

(KENT, OHIO) Nov. 8, 2011 – The Center for Scholastic Journalism at Kent State University today released its 2011 Scholastic Journalism Census results, one of the most extensive national counts of American public high school student media ever conducted. The findings reveal student media presence remains strong in American public high schools, but schools with large poor and minority student populations have diminished opportunities. Findings also show that online student media numbers are lagging across the country, and yearbooks outnumber newspapers as the most common form of student media.

Of the schools surveyed, 96 percent offer some opportunity for students to create content in a school-sponsored journalistic activity, leaving only four percent that exclude student media from their schools entirely.

“Our study doesn’t really tell us how healthy high school journalism is, but it does confirm that it’s there and in large numbers,” said Mark Goodman, Center for Scholastic Journalism Knight Chair in Scholastic Journalism.

Goodman said he hopes the telling results from this year’s Scholastic Journalism Census will prompt a periodic assessment of the state of scholastic media.

“We want this count to provide a baseline from which we can assess changes in student journalism over time,” he said.

Other key report findings include:

• Fifty-four percent of students in schools without any student media qualify for free or a reduced lunch price. In schools with student media offerings, that number is 41 percent.
• Public high schools across the country publish more than 11,000 student newspapers outnumbering daily and weekly U.S. newspapers by more than 3,000 publications.
• More schools have a student yearbook than any other form of student media.
• More than 15,000 public high schools offer a journalism or publications class, and the majority of all student media activities are produced in relationship to a class.
• Only 33 percent of surveyed schools have any form of online student media, and only 8 percent publish materials strictly online.
• The average school with student media has 873 students and a 35 percent minority population. The average school without student media has 222 students with a 56 percent minority population.
  

The study’s principal investigators were Mark Goodman, Kent State University Professor and Knight Chair in Scholastic Journalism; Candace Perkins Bowen, Kent State University Assistant Professor and Director of the Center for Scholastic Journalism; and Piotr Bobkowski, University of Kansas Assistant Professor.

In their research, the investigators mailed paper surveys to a random sample of 4,354 public high schools in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. They received responses from 1,023 of those schools between Feb. 1 and June 6, 2011 for a 23.5 percent response rate.

For a complete copy of the 2011 Scholastic Journalism Census results, visit the CSJ website.

About the Center for Scholastic Journalism
The Center for Scholastic Journalism is a national clearinghouse committed to conducting and collecting the best research on scholastic media and the role it plays in journalism education. As an advocate for high school and middle school journalism, the Center strives to be both a resource for information about youth journalism and journalism education and one of the most effective national voices supporting scholastic journalism and freedom of press outlined in the First Amendment of the United States Constitution. For more information about the Center for Scholastic Journalism, visit www.csjkent.org. 

### 

By Amir Efrati on WSJ, Nov. 8 2011 

Twitter is becoming a big star on TV–and now the online-messaging service wants to shine even brighter.

A growing number of TV shows such as Fox’s “Glee” and PBS’s “Nova” regularly direct their viewers to Twitter in order to view and broadcast short messages, called tweets, about the shows.

Some live shows, such as NBC’s “The Voice,” take it a step further by displaying tweets by viewers on the air, thanks to companies such as Mass Relevance, which helps find the most relevant tweets. The TV appearances have helped Twitter increase its active user base, which stands at more than 100 million people worldwide.

On Monday, Twitter announced that Mass Relevance and another Twitter-analysis company, Crimson Hexagon, now have unfettered access to the more than 250 million tweets broadcast on Twitter every day so that they can directly work on such partnerships with media firms without Twitter’s help.

Read the full post on the Wall Street Journal website

Many news organizations have handed out guidelines to their staff about the use of retweets on Twitter. Their rules are there to help stop any controversial tweets before they get associated with the organization, or at least to encourage their employees to think twice before retweeting.

In a post on Poynter, Jeff Sonderman had this to say about the topic:

The Washington Post’s guidelines tell reporters not to tweet anything that could be perceived as reflecting political bias or favoritism. The Associated Press just published new retweet guidelines warning that retweets can appear to express a reporter’s opinion.

The result is a lot of confusion and fear that a “mistweet” could cost journalists their credibility or their jobs. That is a shame, because Twitter is a vibrant network for real-time information, and journalists should participate fully in it. The retweet is the network’s method of spreading information, and journalists should understand how it works.

The post goes on to suggest the use of a new designation, “NT”, to specify that a user is retweeting something as a neutral tweet. You can read the full post on Poynter here.

Do you think current journalism students will have to deal with this issue when they get their first job?

Through a grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, AEJMC has funded ten proposals to develop innovative and creative academic applications of projects already funded through the Knight News Challenge. The goal is to implement these projects in ways that enhance the education of future journalists for the new media landscape. Individual grants are up to $8,000 each.

Below are the recipients of 2011-12 Bridge Grants (alpha):

1. Ingrid Bachmann and Sebastian Valenzuela, Universidad Catolica de Chile; (Ushahidi) “Adopting Ushahidi for Crowdsourcing and Data Visualization: New Paths for Event-mapping in Chile”
2. Peter (Piotr) Bobkowski, University of Kansas; (Printcasting/FeedBrewer) “Kansas.com High School News Feed”
3. Serena Carpenter and Nancie Dodge, Arizona State University; (CityCircles) “CityCircles Light Rail Job Classifieds”
4. Julie Jones and John Schmeltzer, University of Oklahoma; (Ushahidi) “Reporting from the Storm”
5. Jacqueline Marino, Kent State University; “OpenBlock Campus”
6. Ray Murray, Oklahoma State University; (DocumentCloud) “In-depth Reporting of Methamphetamine Production and Abuse in Oklahoma”
7. Cindy Royal and Jacie Yang, Texas State University San Marcos; (VIDI) “Telling Stories with Data: Life at a Hispanic Serving University”
8. Hyunjin Seo, University of Kansas. (OpenBlock) “LarryvilleKU: Web and Mobile Application of OpenBlock to The Kansan”
9. Adam Wagler, University of Nebraska-Lincoln; (BookBrewer,Politiwidgets, DocumentCloud) “Photojournalism and Social Engagement Tablet App”
10. Amy Schmitz Weiss, San Diego State University; (Ushahidi) “@SDSU — Where’s the News?”

Creative Commons: Shannan Mortimer

A Canadian media commentator, Mathew Ingram, gave his opinions in a post the other day on how online newspapers can make money without paywalls. His ideas are for papers to sell non-news products such as ebooks and online events. He also suggested that news organizations look at their platforms to bring in money. Ingram said news organizations could sell their application programming interface (API) to companies who could build on them, similar to what The Guardian does.

Although the Wall Street Journal, Financial Times and the The Economist are using paywalls effectively, he said that not everyone can duplicate what their doing because those publications have highly targeted markets. As for the New York Times’ paywall, Ingram said the NYT is a leading brand for national and international news and other publications would have a hard time modeling their success. Ingram also has a pessimistic view on the continued growth of NYT online subscribers.

You can read Matthew Ingram’s post here.

Other sources: 

• The Guardian: Stop Taking the ‘Paywall Pill’ by Pioneering New Forms of Online Revenue

From C. W. Anderson, Tom Glaisyer, Jason Smith, New America Foundation and Marika Rothfeld

As the media industry evolves to meet the challenges of the emerging digitally-networked era, so too are journalism schools. Democracy and healthy local communities require this evolution. As the media industry reshapes itself, a tremendous opportunity emerges for America’s journalism programs. Neither news organizations nor journalism programs will disappear, but both must rethink their missions, particularly now that many more people can be journalists (at least, on an occasional basis) and many more people produce media than ever before.

Journalism education programs have an opportunity to become “anchor institutions” in the emerging informational ecosystem. Many schools have long embraced elements of this vision, but satisfying the information needs of communities will require schools to take on all the challenges of engaging as serious and valuable producers of meaningful journalism.

Read the full post at the New America Foundation website

Below is an infographic created by Shep McAllister at HackCollege on how college students are using their phones and smartphones. It’s evident how much mobile technology is a part of their lives. Luckily, using a phone to cheat on an exam is rare, according to the survey.

Created by: HackCollege

On the London School of Economics and Political Science blog, Charlie Beckett asks the question of whether or not journalism students should be taught to be more like Julian Assange. He makes the argument that they should. He said at the beginning of his post:

“Imagine Julian Assange ran a journalism school. Why not? He’s created one of the world’s biggest media brands on a tiny budget. It’s produced some of the most extraordinary pieces of journalism in the digital era and he’s worked with all the big names. If you judge journalism by how much the people in power hate you, then he scores A*.

I think we can all learn from WikiLeaks.

Later in the post he goes on to say:

“What made WikiLeaks work was Assange’s ideological drive and his all-consuming desire to use digital communications as a political weapon. He spotted a new business model and a novel kind of platform.”

His argument is that students should learn not only what their mainstream media bosses want, but also learn new and “disruptive” ideas.

Read the full post at LSE

Requests to Google to remove videos of police brutality on YouTube have been denied. Google, who decides what to take down on a case by case basis, said in its mid-year transparency report,

“We received a request from a local law enforcement agency to remove YouTube videos of police brutality, which we did not remove. Separately, we received requests from a different local law enforcement agency for removal of videos allegedly defaming law enforcement officials. We did not comply with those requests, which we have categorized in this Report as defamation requests.”

You can read more about this on ReadWriteWeb

Winning with Words: The Origins and Impact of Political Framing. Brian Schaffner and Patrick Sellers, eds. New York, NY: Routledge, 2009. 200 pp.

With this book, political scientists Brian Schaffner and Patrick Sellers set out to bring some clarity to a set of issues that had troubled their own investigations into the nature of public opinion, public policy, and the role that message-framing might play in the process. They convened a conference of scholars at American University in 2007, and this unique little book is the result. In it, they and their contributors have managed to clarify some important distinctions between approaches to the study of elite framing strategy and practice, and those that are focused on understanding the factors that govern the impact of those frames on audiences, and on the policy process more generally. 

As editors, Shaffner and Sellers have been especially careful to ensure that each chapter calls the readers’ attention to a broad range of issues, insights, and concerns that are addressed in other chapters in the book, as well as within the scholarly literature.

Eight of the chapters in this volume pursue these goals through their assessments of policy debates and alternative strategies used in electoral campaigns, aided in part by a number of original experimental and time-series analyses designed to assess the impact of alternative and evolving issue frames. However, the final chapter, written by Shanto Iyengar, serves to remind us that the problem of generating a definition of framing that could unify the approaches of scholars in political science, sociology, communication, and social psychology is not yet close to being solved.

The policy topics featured in these core chapters cover some interesting ideological terrain. Thomas Nelson, Dana Wittmer, and Allyson Shortle explore the strategic use of framing techniques in the service of what they refer to as “value recruitment.” They demonstrate how competing camps in the debate over the place of “intelligent design” within the nation’s public school science curriculum attempted to claim the moral high ground through the use of specific strategies and tactics. Experimental evidence helped to validate activists’ assumptions about the importance of specific value frames.

Another highly contentious ideological debate is featured in Jessica Gerrity’s assessment of the role that interest groups played in framing the issue of  “partial-birth abortion.” Gerrity’s analysis emphasized the differences in strategies used by organized interest groups in delivering targeted framing appeals to the public, to the media, and to the policy elites in Congress.

Douglas Harris characterized the strategies that have been used by congressional policy entrepreneurs in their efforts to influence legislative debates over issues that frequently divide the political parties. He noted their use of public opinion data to determine which frames have the greatest potential for mobilizing traditional constituents, as well as for repairing the party’s image in a particular policy domain.

Electoral campaigns were the point of focus for Taylor Ansley and co-editor Sellers’ chapter on strategic framing efforts. They provide key markers of changes in campaign strategies over time. Many of these were in response to the opportunities and challenges represented by web-based communications. They make good use of the 2006 senatorial campaigns to help outline the role that greater decentralization may play in future electoral contests.

The chapters that focused primarily on the nature of framing effects made use of a number of different and, in some cases, quite innovative approaches to extending the power of survey-based experiments. James Druckman utilized election day exit polls to test the impact of randomly assigned message frames on a casino gambling referendum in Chicago. Druckman’s use of competing frames in some of the treatments made it possible to engage in a kind of sensitivity analysis that helped to clarify the relative power of moral versus economic rationales in garnering support for particular policy options.

Co-editor Schaffner and Mary Atkinson also used a survey in an explicit test of the power of a rather simple, but powerful shift in the reframing of inheritance tax policy from an “estate tax” into a “death tax” by Republican strategists.

Two studies made use of time series analysis to explore the links between changes in media frames and associated changes in the public’s response. Michael Wagner explored the impact of congressional issue framing on party identification by examining the relationships between the frames regarding taxes and abortion used by congressional and presidential candidates from 1975-2000 in relation to changes in national election survey respondents’ self-identification with a political party. Unlike many other studies that emphasized the variety of frames being used, Wagner’s analysis examined the importance of frame stability over time as an influence on party loyalty.

Frank Baumbartner, Suzanna Linn, and Amber Boydstun used a more traditional approach to assess the impact of media frames on American policy toward the death penalty. Their comprehensive analysis of the New York Times’ framing of capital punishment between 1960 and 2005 was compared against changes in capital sentences and executions during the same period. A social movement to challenge the injustices within the court system is also shown to have played an important role in a rather complex process of change.

The authors here have done an admirable job of collecting these discussions. Naturally, Schaffner, an associate professor of political science at the University of Massachusetts, and Sellars, a professor of political science at Davidson University, approach the issues and processes through their primary identification with political science. But there is much of value to be derived from this collection by students and researchers in communication, journalism, and media studies.

OSCAR H. GANDY JR.
University of Pennsylvania

What Really Happened to the 1960s: How Mass Media Culture Failed American Democracy. Edward P. Morgan. Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 2010. 405 pp.

The late A. J. Liebling, press critic for The New Yorker, proclaimed from time to time that, “By not reporting there are a lot of things you can avoid finding out.” In this book, Edward P. Morgan, university distinguished professor of political science at Lehigh University, recounts what we avoided finding out about the 1960s and how that has shaped our stereotypes of the decade. This book is a must-read for journalists and journalism students not only because it tells us of important media history, but also because of the implications of that history for today. 

Morgan begins by discussing what he refers to as the “contradictions between capitalism and democracy” that create tension because of the inequality of wealth. He said these contradictions came to a head in the post-World War II period and spawned the forces that generated change in the 1960s. The changes came in participatory democracy, the civil rights movement, the Vietnam War, war protests, education, and women’s liberation in the 1960s. He examined the coverage of these areas in great detail, looking at coverage by the New York Times, the three news magazines, and the television networks. To this he adds in the center of the book thirty-five pictures that said a lot about media coverage in the sixties.

He found a consistent pattern in coverage that cut across issues: Coverage was from the establishment perspective, and demonstrations were seen as driven by small groups of deviant individuals. The press underestimated the size and significance of these movements, and was quick to cover violence and blame it on the protestors. Thus was the stereotype formed of the Baby Boomers agitating, pushing a misguided agenda, and thereby bringing on turmoil.

Having lived through the 1960s myself, I am not surprised by Morgan’s findings. I remember the daily briefings by U.S. generals in Vietnam that became known as the “5 o’clock follies.” I recall that the claim by Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara that he could see the light at the end of the tunnel became a national joke with some of us, who wondered if, “Isn’t that the headlight of a locomotive coming toward us?” Those were indications that we were not being told the whole story of the war. And we knew it.

And while the news media minimized the antiwar movement through the mid-1960s, I also noticed that the Gallup Poll reported growing opposition to the war, until by 1968 more than half of Americans opposed it. The social agenda was not set by the press or by the politicians, but by the public itself, and it took at least four years for the press and the politicians to catch up.

We were told that the demonstrators at the 1968 Democratic convention in Chicago rioted, but I watched the coverage on television and doubted that interpretation. Morgan points out that civil rights coverage focused on a few big events, like the Rev. Martin Luther King’s speech at the Lincoln Memorial in 1963 and the situation at Selma in 1965, but the press generally missed the story of the life blacks lived.

It took the Watts riot to get that point across, and those of us in professional journalism and journalism education were at least chagrined at the discovery that the Los Angeles Times, one of our great newspapers, did not have a single African American in the newsroom, and had to send someone from the advertising department to cover the story.

Likewise, those of us who were paying attention knew that women’s liberation was not about bra-burning—which was an iconic myth—but about real issues of equality that were important for our country. Morgan also points out that movies and TV entertainment also contributed to the disinformation about the 1960s by building scenarios around the establishment stereotypes of the time, and thus helped perpetuate them.

To some extent, the American people recognized that the media were not serving them well. At stake was the credibility of the media, and as journalists and journalism students read this book they should ponder what price the media—especially the press—paid in credibility for their reportorial failings. They also should wonder if we are walking down the same path again as the media offer increasingly inadequate coverage of major concerns of today. Is it good reporting to discuss the federal deficit and never mention the role that tax cuts have played? Is it good reporting to cite Social Security as one of the causes of the deficit, when in fact it has paid its own way and has a surplus of $2.7 trillion? Does it reflect good reporting that you can get a much more complete and more accurate picture of Afghanistan from Greg Mortenson’s 2009 book Stones Into Schools than from our news media?

Morgan has done us a service by refreshing the memory of the 1960s for those of us who were there, and informing those who were not there. But simply looking back is not enough. This book challenges us who are involved in journalism to look ahead and do a better job than was done in the 1960s, or we’re all doomed to repeat our mistakes.

GUIDO H. STEMPEL III
Ohio University

War with Mexico! America’s Reporters Cover the Battlefront. Tom Reilly, edited by Manley Witten. Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 2010. 335 pp.

From the perspective of the early twenty-first century, the U.S. war against Mexico (1846-1848) is easy to overlook. It was a relatively short war, after all, pitting the nascent power of the United States against a divided Mexico and its irrepressible leader, Gen. Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna.

Yet the Mexican War looms large in the history of American war reporting as the first U.S. foreign conflict covered by an enterprising band of professional journalists and amateur correspondents. As documented by the late Tom Reilly, a journalism historian at California State University-Northridge, Mexican War reporting was an important test of American journalism’s newfound energy and its fraught relations with the military, issues that would surface in later U.S. wars. 

Reilly’s goals here are straightforward and descriptive: “to reconstruct the efforts, methods, lifestyles, achievements, and failures of the individual American correspondents and, to a lesser degree, the journalistic system in which they functioned.” In this, he is largely successful, providing a detailed chronicle of an enthusiastically imperialistic era in American war reporting.

Reilly’s subjects include such reporting stars as George W. Kendall of the New Orleans Picayune and James L. Freaner—known as “Mustang”—of the New Orleans Delta. Both men were fearless, dedicated, and well organized, employing multiple couriers to elude Mexican guerillas and carry their dispatches from the front lines to Veracruz, where U.S. ships carried them to New Orleans.

New Orleans was front and center in Mexican War news. As the nation’s fourth largest city at the time, and the principal port for ships arriving from Mexico, New Orleans had a highly competitive newspaper scene. The New Orleans papers, Reilly concludes, “provided the tone, direction, and content for the reporting of the conflict—and in the journalism style of the day, most of the nation’s press followed their lead.”

Reilly also unearths the war reporting of several lesser-known correspondents, including William C. Tobey of the Philadelphia North American. In the aftermath of the U.S. victory at Cerro Gordo, Tobey described the terrible cost of combat: “While the fight is raging men can look upon death and shrink not from his bloody features; but to walk coldly over hundreds of human bodies, blackened and bloated in the sun…sickens the senses and the soul; strips even victory of its gaudy plumage and stamps the whole with an unspeakable horror.”

Another notable journalist was the outspoken Jane McManus Storms, the only woman war correspondent. Writing for the New York Sun, Storms reported from Veracruz, where she criticized one of her favorite targets, the U.S. Navy, for its “deplorable inefficiency.” She also slam-med Santa Anna and other Mexican generals for inflicting on their citizens “more burdens and outrages than the Americans dare impose.”

Many correspondents, Reilly found, advocated Manifest Destiny and were openly contemptuous of Mexico and Mexicans. Storms and other journalists argued for the annexation of Mexico as a way to bring democracy and order to the land. For his part, Tobey described Mexicans as “ignorant, barbarous, treacherous and superstitious; given to thieving, cheating [and] lying….” The Picayune’s Kendall, who had been a Mexican prisoner before the war, hated Mexicans, a fact evident in many of his reports.

Unofficial correspondents and letter writers served as another significant source of Mexican War news. Publishing under pseudonyms such as “Hombre”  and “Cactus,” these writers—junior officers, former journalists, and printers—were quick to criticize their officers, the lack of equipment, and poor rations. Like the military bloggers of the recent Iraq war, these reports frustrated Army leaders and caused headaches for the Polk administration. Even some in the press criticized the outpouring of unofficial reports: “The public has no means of judging the truth or falsehood of these statements and erroneous opinions are necessarily formed,” the New Orleans Tropic complained.

Back in the States, Mexican War reports had important political consequences because of the presidential ambitions of its leaders, including Gen. Winfield Scott. In the three elections following the war, Reilly writes, “four of the six leading candidates were Mexican War officers, and two, Zachary Taylor and Franklin Pierce, were elected president.”

The torrent of stories and letters raised other controversial topics, too, including U.S. mistreatment of Mexican civilians. After the battle of Buena Vista, for instance, Picayune correspondent John E. Durivage reported that U.S. volunteers deliberately murdered twenty-four Mexicans in retaliation for the murder of an Arkansas volunteer. In fact, many reports documented the unruly behavior of the volunteers, soldiers who were poorly trained and often resentful of—and resented by—the regular Army and its officers.

With his focus on the war and its journalism, Reilly says too little about the causes of the conflict and its complex moral dimensions. Reilly’s short chapter on anti-Mexican stereotypes is also inadequate. Although he catalogues a number of anti-Mexican attitudes and ethnic insults, he offers little explanation of the origins and consequences of these ideas.

Nevertheless, Reilly’s years of research on Mexican War journalists and their reporting make this book a valuable addition to the history of U.S. war reporting. As Reilly makes clear, Mexican War correspondents demonstrated extraordinary ingenuity to get first-hand reports to their readers, pioneering the best tradition of U.S. war reporting. Reilly’s War with Mexico! is worthy achievement and a credit to Manley Witten, a former Reilly student who edited this volume.

JOHN M. COWARD
University of Tulsa

Terror Post 9/11 and the Media. David L. Altheide. New York, NY: Peter Lang, 2009. 214 pp.

It has been a decade since that awful landmark day of smoke and fire that we now know as 9/11. Among other things that changed with those attacks in New York and Washington was a growing need to know more about “terrorism,” its perpetrators, what they hope to accomplish, and how they can be stopped.

The media, of course—oriented to either news or popular culture more generally—have played a substantial role in communicating what has been learned and what is still unknown. This is the focus of David L. Altheide’s latest study. 

Altheide is a long-time member of the Arizona State University’s School of Justice and Social Inquiry and author of numerous books.  His focus here is less on the events of a decade ago than on how those events, and others since that have been related or attributed in some way to terrorists, have been used by the political system and by news media. Part of his larger project on fear, the media, and social control, the media portion of the equation does not come off well in Altheide’s analysis.

Chapters assess the varied and changing role of media in global crises, including terrorism—the all too evident “herd” mentality of flash and personality over declining substance and analysis. There are countless examples cited in Altheide’s discussion of terrorism and propaganda, terrorism and the politics of fear, terrorism and the problem of evidence, terrorism    as moral panic, a case study of the Columbine school shootings in Colorado, terrorism programming, and the terrorism narrative and mediated evil.

Just that listing tells you how much of Altheide’s analysis focuses on fear and how the mass media build that fear as one way of building their audiences. “Team” and “sports” terms also abound with talk about our side and theirs, use of flags and other bits of nationalism, and a general “rah-rah” tone in reporting “our” wins and “their” losses. The biggest recent “win” over terrorism, of course, was the raid that killed Osama Bin Laden in Pakistan. So are we feeling safer or less fearful now?

Sadly, little of this adds to real understanding of what is going on, though it does play to the desire of many for simpler answers to complex situations. Some of the media examples you will read in Altheide’s collection will make you shake your head in wonder. All of the discussion will contribute to your understanding of how we got here.

CHRISTOPHER H. STERLING
George Washington University