Monthly Archives: February 2009

Conrad Black Gives Jailhouse Interview

Former newspaper magnate, Conrad Black, who’s serving six years for fraud, gives an email interview from the inside. Doesn’t sound too bad. He’s apparently practicing the piano, freelancing up a storm and eating granola. Here’s the interview in the Canadian National Post LINK.

Leave a comment

Filed under In the News

Ban on Coffin Photos is Lifted

For 18 years, photographers have been prohibited from documenting the return from war of flag-draped coffins containing dead American servicemen and women. The Obama administration lifted the ban yesterday. The military and families of the deceased have been divided about the ban. Some said that by disallowing photographs, the government was preserving the dignity of the dead soldiers. Others, however, felt the blackout of media images of the returning coffins sanitized the war. Obama’s lifting of the ban is certainly a victory for the media, whose job it is to document all aspects of war. Here’s the New York Times’ story today LINK.

1 Comment

Filed under In the News

Rocky Mountain News Folds Today

As a newspaper lover, my heart bleeds again. After 150 years of business, The Rocky Mountain News published for the last time today. Some of the staffers shared their thoughts with Columbia Journalism Review.

Leave a comment

Filed under In the News

WBAL-TV Fires Reporter for “Scrotum” Prank

Here’s a cautionary tale for all journalism students: A reporter/producer inserts some rude language into a broadcast by Fox News anchor John Gibson as a prank. The broadcast is mistakenly posted as legitimate by the Huffington Post. The broadcast goes viral on You Tube and the reporter/producer gets fired. LINK.

Leave a comment

Filed under In the News

National Press Photographers Best of TV Awards

National Press Photographers Association Best of TV results are out. See the results at Poynter.org. Here’s the winner of the Deadline Spot News Editing award:

Vodpod videos no longer available.

Leave a comment

Filed under In the News

Boring Headlines

Great New York Times story about search engine optimization (snore!) and how web headline writers aren’t going for pith and wit anymore, but are loading up on search terms to score as many hits for stories as possible LINK.

Leave a comment

Filed under Multimedia

NY Post Says Sorry

s-monkey-largeThe New York Post apologized in an editorial for the political cartoon it ran that critics said showed Obama as a chimpanzee. LINK. The cartoon combined two news stories that were big last week: President Obama’s financial stimulus package and a chimpanzee who was shot and killed by police after it attacked a woman, severely mauling her face. LINK.The Post has been in this business long enough to know what the reaction would be to a depiction of Obama as a chimpanzee, even if the reference was an oblique one. So the paper either ran it with the intention of being racist. Or they didn’t believe it was racist and knew that some people might think it was, but ran it anyway. So why then apologize? My students had a theory: for the publicity.

Leave a comment

Filed under In the News

Reporters Working for Obama

Politico sotory about a number of reporters leaving to go work for Obama LINK.

Leave a comment

Filed under In the News

Got2BeGreen Looking for Aspiring Journalists

 

Got2BeGreen, an environmental blog recently named on TIME magazine’s Top 25 Blogs list, is looking for “aspiring journalists” to contribute. Here’s the graph from the posting :

Got2BeGreen has taken on a new regional focus. Our Green2gether section is dedicated to this effort. We are looking for aspiring journalists for all of the U.S. states and as many countries as possible to post green news and events from their region.

Got2BeGreen has readers in over 100 different countries and our visitor count is growing every month. This is a great opportunity to bolster your resume or CV and all of our journalists will have the option of posting a bio page on the site.
If you are interested, please use our Feedback Form to contact us and tell us the region that you would like to contribute for. No experience is necessary, we providing training and support. Thank you!

Leave a comment

Filed under Job Hunt

Facebook Backs Down

After a firestorm of protest about its new Terms of Use policy, Facebook announces it will go back to its old policy LINK.

Leave a comment

Filed under In the News

Top Newspaper Websites

The New York Times tops the Neiman Lab’s list of top 15 newspaper websites for 2008 LINK.

1 Comment

Filed under In the News

Tabloid Troubles

When journalism professors tell their students not to pay for stories it’s for good reason. Money makes people lie. Here is a case in point. The British tabloids have been all over a story about a 13-year-old boy who fathered a child with a 15-year-old girl. Now, it turns out the 13-year-old may not have been the father after all. But he stuck with the story for the cash LINK.

Leave a comment

Filed under In the News

Facebook’s New Terms of Service

Be warned: Facebook has changed it’s terms of service. Whatever you post is now theirs LINK.

Leave a comment

Filed under In the News

Blogs in Plain English

A great tutorial about blogging from Common Craft.. 

Vodpod videos no longer available.

more about “Blogs in Plain English“, posted with vodpod

Leave a comment

Filed under In the News

Abraham Lincoln

Abraham Lincoln

Originally uploaded by George Eastman House

Check out the free Library of Congress pictures on Flickr.

Leave a comment

Filed under In the News