Category Archives: In the News

Any journalism student unconvinced about the importance of a style manual at a news organization should read this week’s essay in The New York Times by the public editor to see how seriously copy editors take these issues. Here’s a Quick Guide to AP Style and a good list of things to look out for from Dr. Michael Sweeney, Utah State Uni.

The Shack, as the modest warren of offices for the press located in New York’s Police Headquarters is called, appears to be destined for the chopping block. If it happens, this will severely cramp the style of New York’s newspapers in particular.

Here’s a piece in The New York Times about local websites popping up around the country providing “hyper local” news to communities. Some of them hire reporters. Most seem to link to stories and information they find on the Internet.

Sign of the times, perhaps. This just in from Prof. Rachel Wedding McClelland. The American Society of Newspaper Editors is to drop the word “newspapers” from its name and replace it with “news.” Here’s the STORY.

Here’s a good roundup by Nicholas Lemann in The New Yorker about media moguls, Hearst, Pulitzer and Murdoch. It’s good to be reminded that the newspaper landscape has not always been dominated by the Times and the Wall Street Journal. In days of yore it was the World and the Journal. It’s also good to be reminded, if you think journalism is going  down the tubes, that it’s been down the tubes before and up again.

According to the Project for Excellence in Journalism’s New Media Project, this was the most popular YouTube video last week. CBS are now using the clip to promote their show. If you haven’t seen it yet it’s pretty cool. By the way, I’m one take too.

Vodpod videos no longer available.

Poor old Bob Quick. Britain’s most senior counter-terrorism chief was on his way in to brief the prime minister when a photographer snapped his photo with a telephoto lense. In Quick’s hands were folders containing top secret information about an anti-terrorist raid. The raid was brought forward because of the blunder. Quick had to resign.

According to The Guardian newspaper, the ­document contained names of several senior officers, sensitive locations and details about the nature of the overseas threat. So the government imposed a “D notice” to restrict the media from revealing the contents of the picture.

Here’s a great BBC piece by Clive James, a famous Australian transplant to the UK, about a story that has gripped the Australian media about a highly-regarded judge’s spectacular fall from grace after he got caught trying to avoid paying a speeding ticket.

Jade Goody, the strange creation of the British media, was buried in Britain over the weekend with thousands coming out to watch the funeral procession. Here’s the Guardian’s story LINK.

This is cute. See what you think.

Vodpod videos no longer available.

The BBC has a great twist on an the April Fools’ Day tradition of running fake stories. They’ve put together a list of ten stories that sound like fake April Fools’ Day stories, but aren’t. The list includes Miss Universe describing Guantanamo Bay, where she has gone to visit as a morale boost for the troops, as a “relaxing place, so calm and beautiful.” Here’s the list LINK

If you haven’t read Mark Bowden’s profile of New York Times owner Arthur Sulzberger Jr., here’s the LINK. It’s a great portrait, with telling details and anecdotes. A masterful write-around: Sulzberger did not cooperate. Perhaps he should have. Bowden portrays the Times heir as a nice guy with a naive belief that superior journalism will triumph in the end, who has driven the paper into the ditch. Bowden’s condemnation of Sulzberger’s business prowess seems a little unfair as nobody seems to have figured out how to keep newspapers afloat. A great read.

Here’s a story in Boston.com (website of The Boston Globe) about police officers at MIT who were caught trying to dispose of hundreds of issues of the student newspaper, The Tech, because it had a story covering the arrest for drug trafficking of a fellow police officer. The officers apparently took them from the newstands and dumped them in recycling.

Here’s The Tech’s version of the story.

Newspaper lore is full of stirring stories of journalists rallying to cover a large story that consumes their town or city. And increasingly that coverage is going online. So it is with the The Forum of Fargo, which is up to its eyeballs in flood water. According to a story in Editor & Publisher, the paper has mobilized most of its staff to cover the flood and taken their web coverage to 24 hours. Reporters are working 12-hour shifts covering the story, then going out to help with sandbagging. Blog-like posts with information about the latest developments are going up on the site as they come in. Never do news organizations seem more important than in moments like these.