Margy’s Journalism Blog

Hi - on a recent visit to the Canadian Media Research Consortium site - not a bad place to check on a regular basis, I was directed to a new piece on Poynter Online by Mallary Jean Tenore, How technology is Renewing Attention to Long-Form Journalism. Lots of interesting tidbits here including projects to archive long-form stories from the past, use technology to build communities around stories, and use various widgets and gadgets to store, return to and enjoy stories.

enjoy

m

Thanks to Carol for sending this along. - Tom Scott has posted an intriguing answer to the challenge of less professional journalism now so widely available in the mediaverse - Warning Labels! It shows how bad habits can give journalism bad press. Tom is not a journalist himself, but a self-described geek Comedian whose credentials include managing the UK operations of International Talk Like a Pirate Day. Still - he’s nicely identified some things I’ve found disturbing in mainstream news lately - never by any Mount Royal folk, of course.

Enjoy, welcome back, those of you coming back to campus this fall and best of luck with all endeavours to everyone.

Hi folks

Just followed up an article in a library journal to the great ReadWriteWeb blog - fabulous for news on tech trends. This one is of particular interest to journalists. How to Manage Your News Consumption in the Real-Time Web Era gives some interesting perspectives on changes in how we absorb news content, and some useful strategies for dealing with 60/60/24/7 infoglut.

enjoy

m

Hi
Spent the morning at the Newseum - http://www.newseum.org - an absolutely first rate experience! Great displays, engaging activities, very well thought out. Highlights include a display of Pulitzer -winning photos, an ethics exhibit and a movie on the use of of unattributed sources. Wish I could take everyone down for a field trip - the website will have to do.

enjoy

m

Hi - busy week last week, but my most trusted source alerted me to a recent report from the OECD on newspapers. The opening page has the highlights with some links to commentary on print and online futures for news. The full report, entitled The Evolution of News and the Internet is 98 pages of information deliciousness. Great summary of the current state of the biz, plus information on readership, journalistic skills for the 21st century, etc. I was worried about not having enough to read on an upcoming flight - not any more!

Two interesting sites on the new business of news came across my radar today- one thanks to insomnia, and the other to J-alum Duncan Kinney. Rather early this morning I was listening to BBC news via CBC Radio One. Among other things, they were talking about sustainable new models of journalism - had an editor from Wall Street Journal and other voices. The most interesting part described a project out of CUNY with models of how news can work. New Business Models for News presents several ways forward. Later I saw DK’s post on FB about a post entitled Aggregators, Curators, and Indexers: There’s a Difference, and it Matters, by C. W. Anderson, also about finding ways to make money from news content.

Incidentally - in trying to find the BBC piece, I came upon a few other useful links:

• BBC piece on media coverage of the middle east
• Tips page from Journalism.co.uk with some possible venues for publication
• BBC’s news editors’ blog
• BBC’s College of Journalism - this bears exploring - lots of intriguing content here
• Zimbabwe’s New Press Freedom

didn’t find the piece I heard though - maybe it was a dream…

enjoy - congratulations to all tomrrow’s graduates!
m

Well - it’s taken a while but the Supreme Court has rendered a decision on the Shawinigate case and a reporter’s right to maintain confidentiality of her/his sources. The slightly good news is that in the decision explicitly recognizes the importance of confidential sources - but the not-so-good news is that the Court concluded that, as in this case, the needs of the law can override the public interest in maintiang source confidentiality. In their ruling, the Court cited the Wigmore criteria as providing a ” workable structure within which to assess, in light of society’s evolving values, the sometimes?competing interests of free expression and the administration of justice and other values that promote the public interest.” The Wigmore criteria are:

(1) The communications must originate in a confidence that they will not be disclosed.

(2) This element of confidentiality must be essential to the full and satisfactory maintenance of the relation between the parties.

(3) The relation must be one which in the opinion of the community ought to be sedulously fostered.

(4) The injury that would inure to the relation by the disclosure of the communications must be greater than the benefit thereby gained for the correct disposal of litigation, or as the judgement puts it “The public interest served by protecting the identity of the informant from disclosure outweighs the public interest in getting at the truth.”

There are also concerns that the judgement places the burden of proof on the reporter to prove that the needs of law enforcement are not sufficient to override the need for confidentiality. - There will be a lot in the media in the next few days on this. The whole judgement makes interesting reading, particularly Justice Abella’s dissenting view which eloquently defends the role of confidentiality in the public interest.

Late breaking news - just caught one of our very own on camera discussing the case on Global National -

enjoy

m

Hi - Today’s Globe and Mail had a couple of articles of interest - one in the business section about the newspaper war between the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal which promises to be interesting and another with career advice for aspiring journalists. Judith Timson’s column, Get a job new grads. Here’s how, contains this gem:

“Also, bug everyone you know for advice. I hear from grads in journalism from time to time, and I’m always impressed by those who politely ask for advice from someone they barely know. The best ones acknowledge you might be too busy to help them, but nonetheless succinctly ask their questions. When I respond, they follow it up immediately with a profuse thank you. (It’s amazing that no matter how busy you are, you notice when you don’t get thanked.) ”

This is packed with key points - ask!; acknowledge the busy-ness of the person you are asking; be succinct; and say ‘thank you’.

So I encourage you all to to send an email to a journalist whose work you admire - what’s the worst that can happen?

cheers,
m

Hi - just read a favourite column of mine in the NYT - The Public Editor. Nice piece on how the pressure to produce new news 24/7 can lead to not quite enough fact checking. This has amusing consequences on April 1st, but causes problems year-round. The column isn’t on the web, but tracking it down led me o a dedicated page - http://topics.nytimes.com/top/opinion/thepubliceditor/index.html - with lot of good stuff, including links to discussions about the use of anonymous sources.
enjoy
m

Hi - had some time on the weekend and read a really interesting piece by Rick Groen in the Globe and Mail. Are we throwing complexity in the trash is a complex book review that wanders through fiction and non-fiction writing, ponders representations of reality,  and takes a side trip into the recent history of newspapers as impacted by web-based reading habits. Incidentally, it also led me to a very funny piece in the Onion, Nation shudders at large block of uninterrupted text.
enjoy

m