Thursday, September 30, 2010
Bad Grammar Happens to Everyone
Grammar goofs: Even the pros make mistakes
By Denise C. Baron
Don’t expect perfection when flipping through The New York Times or Wall Street Journal
“A new wave of start-ups are cashing in on the next stage of the Internet.”
What’s wrong with that sentence? Worse, what’s discouraging about it?
Or this one:
"A forum of employees then work together to make desire a reality."
What’s wrong is the disagreement, in the first example, between singular subject “wave” and plural verb “are cashing in,” and in the second, between "forum" and "work." What’s discouraging is that the first sentence appeared in Newsweek, while the second came courtesy of The Wall Street Journal.
I used to consider The Wall Street Journal a paragon for writing excellence. I held Newsweek and The New York Times right up there, too.
I have to admit my dismay when I happened upon this in a recent Times restaurant review: “None require reservations.” You may argue that the noun none can sometimes take a plural verb, but not in this case. Requires was the required verb.
I wish I could say these instances were exceptions, but grammatical errors and typos of all sorts are easier than ever to spot in the publications many of us rely on to maintain high editorial standards. And that’s too bad, because readers assume the editors are getting it right. If the editors are not, then is it a matter of oversight, ignorance or downright sloppiness? Or has the publishing industry's perceived need for eagle-eyed proofreaders and copy editors—let alone flawless text—been downsized along with its staffing?
Those of us in the communications field will forgive the odd mistake, but that usually will depend on the source. For instance, we might dismiss the use of its’ if it appeared in, say, an ad for a plumbing service. Place that same grammatical goof in a brochure promoting writing seminars, and you’ve got to question how reliable those seminars will be. If a professional communicator’s organization can’t be bothered to mind the language, then who can?
A colleague of mine, bemoaning the declining state of grammar and punctuation among our peers, declared that “the price of admission (to be a professional communicator) is knowing how to write well.” In other words, she said, if you don’t fully grasp the fundamentals of spelling and grammar, you have no business in the business. That may seem like a harsh statement, but it's one that’s hard to refute. Those are the skills all of us should have mastered in school and brought with us to the work place.
Because of the daily demands placed on communicators and the extent of their audience—whether it be internal communications or external, the job is no place for basic training. After all, would you hire a landscaper who couldn’t distinguish an exotic plant from a common weed? Probably not. There’s an expectation that comes with billing oneself as a professional; the pro is expected to know the difference.
Even so, mistakes happen—even to the most seasoned pro. But there are simple measures you can take to help keep them at a minimum, if not eliminate them completely.
Walk away from it. Take a break from your writing. Set your draft aside for a spell, then come back to it with fresh eyes. That extra time between your final edit and submitting the piece for publication can save time in the long run—especially when you pick up errors that previously eluded you.
Send it to a peer for preview. This is the ol' "second pair of eyes" trick that you've heard a gazillion times, and which is particularly useful when your "fresh eyes" aren't so fresh anymore. You've heard it a gazillion times, because it works, by golly. And you'll be surprised by what that new set of eyes can notice.
Give it one more go. Review it again. Slowly. Carefully. Check for noun/verb agreement, use of adjectives vs. adverbs, spelling of names and places, punctuation, style and everything else in-between.
Then take a deep breath, let 'er rip and hope for the best. The very best.
Everything we publish sets an example, and our readers are paying attention. They’re expecting us—relying on us—to apply the language correctly. And they're expecting the very best. We mustn’t let them down.
Leads (and a little bit about false news)
Wednesday, September 29, 2010
A bit of humor
Now this is just confusing
"Is a football mainly for children? What about a Halloween costume or a model train?
None of the above, manufacturers say, as a new federal crackdown on dangerous toys has left some in the industry crying foul and not wanting to play."
What now? I had to re-read the lede several times to figure out its point. The opening sentence is just kind of strange, as is the second. The attempt at a clever turn of phrase at the end (crying foul and not wanting to play) is just forced and awkward. To be fair, the whole article (found here) is full of details that would be difficult to summarize in an interesting manner in a couple of opening sentences. However, the writer's attempt at a delayed lead is both confusing and and, frankly, unpleasant to read.
Good Lede/Bad Lede
"Would it be all right if the Leader of the Free World stopped by your campus for a little while?"
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/29/us/29land.html?ref=todayspaper
Another good one:
"The case has existed almost as long as independent India itself. Dating from 1950, the legal battle between Hindus and Muslims over a religious site in the city of Ayodhya began as a little-noticed title dispute. With a ruling finally expected on Thursday, the case has become something altogether different: a test of India’s secular soul."
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/29/world/asia/29india.html?ref=world
It's clear, densely informative and interesting. I want to read more.
Not such a great lede:
Alan G. Hevesi, the former state comptroller, is poised to plead guilty to a felony corruption charge after a lengthy investigation into his office’s rewarding of pension investment business to firms that provided financial benefits to Mr. Hevesi and his aides, people with knowledge of the case said on Tuesday.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/29/nyregion/29hevesi.html?ref=todayspaper
I found myself drifting halfway through this one. It is somewhat informative, but far too wordy (this coming from a writer with a tendency toward long-windedness).
Gruesome story on today's front page
Tuesday, September 28, 2010
Examples of good and bad leads
Below are some examples of good and bad leads.
Where 1,000 words are worth more than a picture
I saw this short blurb in one of the newsletters I receive and thought I would pass it along as an example of the work the Poynter Institute does.
I believe last week's discussion centered on how long it took a reader to be drawn in or to dismiss a story. While not exactly an apples-to-apples comparison, turns out that in reading through a list of headlines on the Web, a headline has less than a second to capture a reader's attention.
Here's more:
Text is more important than images on the Web
By Gerry McGovern
Poynter Institute's Eyetrack III results reveal which headlines and blurbs attract online readers
The Web is primarily a text-driven medium and will remain so despite the rise of video.
“Dominant headlines most often draw the eye first upon entering the page—especially when they are in the upper left, and most often (but not always) when in the upper right,” according to Eyetrack III from Poynter Institute. This study of how people consume news websites found that, “Photographs, contrary to what you might expect (and contrary to findings of 1990 Poynter eyetracking research on print newspapers), aren't typically the entry point to a homepage. Text rules on the PC screen—both in order viewed and in overall time spent looking at it.”
In traditional print media it has long been established that images are more powerful than text in getting attention. But the opposite is the case on the Web. Text dominates. Consider the Google business model. It makes most of its money from advertising. What sort of advertising? AdWords. Text. Google has never sold a graphical ad on Google.com.
That is contrary to the traditional print and TV ad industry. There, the more color, the more fantastic the image, the bigger the impact. It’s the opposite on the Web.
What is interesting about Eyetrack III is how consistent its results are with various other Web behavior studies that have been conducted over the years. It’s long been known that the first couple of words are vital if you want to keep people reading. The study found that:
1. When people look at blurbs (summaries) under headlines on news homepages, they often only look at the left one-third of the blurb. In other words, most people just look at the first couple of words, and only read on if they are engaged by those words.
2. People typically scan down a list of headlines, and often don't view entire headlines. If the first words engage them, they seem likely to read on. On average, a headline has less than a second of a site visitor's attention. For headlines—especially longer ones—it would appear that the first couple of words need to be real attention-grabbers if you want to capture eyes.
The study found that average blurb length varies from a low of about 10 words to a high of 25, with most sites coming in at around 17. In 2009, Customer Carewords did a study of more than 500 news headlines. We found that 87 percent of headlines analyzed were between five and nine words long, with the most popular headline length being 7 words.
Some people think that I hate images and video. Absolutely not. Anyone who has seen my presentations will know that I use hardly any text. It’s all visuals and images. Why? Because after doing thousands of presentations I’ve found that telling a story based on a series of powerful images is very effective. A list of text-based bullet points bores people to death.
The issue is not whether text is inherently better than images. It’s about using the right tool for the right medium. On the Web, text dominates. Will there be exceptions? Of course, but they will be exceptions that prove the rule: text dominates.
Gerry McGovern is the founder and CEO of Customer Carewords and New Thinking e-mail newsletter. Contact Gerry at gerry@gerrymcgovern.com.
Shocking and sad
Its all about language
It is uplifting to see a story about language on the front page of the newspaper. In " 'Genius Grant' a lift to linguist as she revives a native language", found here: http://www.boston.com/lifestyle/articles/2010/09/28/reviving_wampanoag_earns_linguist_a_genius_grant/
"Jessie Little Doe Baird was overcome at the news that her 17 years of linguistic work — resurrecting the language the Wampanoag people spoke and wrote until at least the mid-1800s — had landed her a MacArthur Fellows “genius grant’’ of $500,000."
On its face, this is a story of the MacArthur Fellow "genius grant" awarded Baird for her work, but the more interesting content appears halfway through the piece, where several facets of a fascinating story emerge.
This is really the story of an ancient language (10,000 years old) that became a written language several hundred years ago, and what this means for a people (the Wampanoag) and the communities that have lived in southern New England since the time when the Wampanoag were the areas only human inhabitants.
"According to Baird, her ancestors were "the first American Indian people to use an alphabetic writing system," and the first Bible published on this continent -- a key document in her research -- was printed in 1663 in Wompanoag."
Baird explains the motivation for acquiring an alphabet and written language, which, she claims, was the legal protection of their resources. The result was a rich collection of the " land transfers, wills, personal letters," resulting in the “the largest collection of native written documents on the continent.’’
But there is also the sub-story, that I think deserves elaboration, of how Baird, a Cape Cod, high school educated, human service worker took on the task of resurrecting the lost Wampanoag language by becoming a MIT-trained linguist.
Finally, there is the other sub-story, described in one sentence, but worthy of many more, of how Baird came to devote her life to this project through a series of dreams in which her ancestors spoke to her in a language she could not understand.
What a delight of a story that could have been a series...or a book.
Saturday, September 25, 2010
Aw, c'mon
This story -- Netflix apologizes for using actors to meet press at Canadian launch -- from The Globe and Mail marks a new low by PR people trying to score coverage.
Here's a link to the story:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/technology/netflix-apologizes-for-using-actors-to-meet-press-at-canadian-launch/article1718924/
Now, it's accepted as fair game for PR people to fill out events with "extras" -- these are usually employees who are sent to the conference or promotion to help build a crowd. (First, if there is a bunch of people hanging around in one area, it tends to attract others. Second, these events usually feature a company executive, so it's to employees' advantage to participate.)
For this promotion, Netflix hired actors to play the parts of "geeks" and other customer-types to create the crowd (expensive, but not necessarily unethical). Netflix went over the line in allowing/encouraging the actors to lie about their identities when interviewed by the press.
Why is this case particularly upsetting (and by the way, it came to my attention through mediabistro.com, so the working press must have found it offensive as well)?
First, there are fewer reporters to cover an increasing number of "events," so wasting these professionals' time is just wrong. If people agree to be interviewed by a reporter, it's understood that they should tell the truth.
Second, this is the tip of a troubling trend in media relations. It's one thing to try to attract coverage. It's quite another to deliberately hire people to misrepresent themselves to the press. (If you want to see another example of this unethical behavior, see the Los Angeles Times story about the toy "expert.")
Wednesday, September 22, 2010
Quitting journalism
The author, Allison Wellner, talks about going on an assignment where she was to observe a group of executives going through a multi-day wilderness leadership program through the National Outdoor Leadership School. Her assignment was to observe the execs and watch their conflicts, struggles and victories, then tell their story. And, she reports, she did so very successfully.
The experience, however, left her with an uneasy feeling about her own role in the event. Certainly she was a participant - she backpacked along with the execs - but her story, her experiences are pointedly left out. That brought home for her the adage that journalists are always selling out. She quotes directly from Janet Malcom's work The Journalist and the Murderer: “Every journalist who is not too stupid or too full himself to notice what’s going on knows that what he does is morally indefensible. He is a kind of confidence man, preying on people’s vanity, ignorance or loneliness, gaining their trust and betraying them without remorse.”
She is struggling with the identity, as she puts it, of being a bemused monarch observing her subjects.
I found this post particularly poignant because I have always struggled with this issue and I think it goes back to the class discussion from a couple weeks ago about journalistic ethics. It is why I have always avoided journalism classes and becoming a "reporter."
I've always felt that a reporter's mere presence in a situation effects it and changes it. That may not be the case for a simple report on a tragic car accident but it rings true in anything bigger than that. A reporter always brings his own biases, opinions, prejudices to a situation and sees the events (say of a court case) unfold through his own eyes.
When we interview someone about their most frightening experience, we experience their moment through our own fears. When we write about it, we choose the moments that speak to us most directly. We color their story through our own blurred vision. I think the only way to avoid this is the not "write" a story but to "transcribe" the exact events as they happen. It would be what a security camera records, with no edits or viewpoint changes. And that would be a tragic loss of great storytelling and would be painfully boring.
I think it is almost necessary for a journalist - or just a writer if that's what you want to call yourself (I do) - to put himself into a story. I think that we want to know more than just the 5W; we want to know what to feel, how to react, when to be angry, when to laugh. I don't think that this is a willingness to give up our own choice of reaction; I think that often, when faced with tragedy beyond our normal scope, we don't know how to react and a reporters interpretation of events helps us to know the appropriate response. It is a guide.
And I don't think that allowing a journalist to insert himself into a story is unethical. The only unethical thing would be if he intentionally misquotes someone or leaves out a fact in order to color a story. I think there is plenty of room for the facts, the reporter and the truth in any story.
But maybe that's the difference between magazine journalism and newspaper journalism.
Tuesday, September 21, 2010
Today's Front Page
What is the human face of the current economic disaster?
In the New York Times article found here, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/20/business/economy/20older.html?ref=todayspaper writer Motoko Rich explores a facet of the current unemployment picture, the difficulties faced by the middle aged jobless, by featuring the story of 57 year old Patricia Reid, who was laid off four years ago after twenty years at Boeing as an internal auditor and analyst.
The background research is not balanced. There are six sources, but they are all institutional: AARP, the Census Bureau, the Labor Department, an academic, WorkSource and the Gallup Poll. This makes the article only slightly less numbing than those that are purely economic, relying solely on facts and figures. If the writer had interviewed others in Pat’s age group in more depth (there are a few snippets from her classmates in a WorkSource training session) the article might have had more power and been more interesting to read.
I think it is of paramount importance to portray the human cost of the economic slump if citizens are to have the knowledge they need to make responsible (not kneejerk) political judgments, and I have seen very little such reporting, except for superficial reviews of people who have lost their homes.
Getting a Response From the Media Relations Department
The story involves Apple's Steve Jobs and a journalism student's request for cooperation on a piece that was a class assignment. Here's the link:
http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/apple-ceo-steve-jobs-liu-student-chelsea-kate/story?id=11686415
Now whether you are (a) on Apple's side (b) support the student (c) think each side has made good points and/or mistakes, here are some observations:
* Media-relations teams are bombarded with requests from working journalists -- and this now includes bloggers. If the journalism student was writing for a school news outlet, she was correct in requesting help from Media Relations; if this was for a journalism class, she should have made her requests through customer service (customer-service folks are amazing and have a knack for regularly delivering the impossible).
* If a student still wants to make a request for a class project via Media Relations, make the first request at least 10 working days in advance and in the request email -- never voicemail -- have a short explanation of the project, bullet-point exact questions and give Media Relations at least two full working days to respond. Remember to include your contact information.
* Many media-relations people have been on the side of the student, so if the request is made respectfully (in both prose and timeline)and has a decent storyline, most of the time the request will be answered with information. The CEO may not do a phoner, but it's possible another person in the company will.
* CEOs are human. They only have 24 hours in a day, and not every day is their best one. If Jobs did indeed write the messages (which I am not entirely sure he did as there has not been a response from Apple), he/his ghost writer would have been better off not to respond...old saying about "if you can't say something nice, say nothing."
* Students, especially, need to have a list of relevant sources as options to interview for stories -- we can't just wait for Steve Jobs to respond. While quotes from Steve Jobs probably would have helped this student's story, professionally completing the assignment on deadline is more important.
* The reporter always has the option of including "Emails and phone calls to Apple Media Relations and Steve Jobs were unanswered as of press time."
Monday, September 20, 2010
Sources and balance
Sunday, September 19, 2010
Cool Breeze
Anyhow, the story was about fashionista's Rachel Zoe's main assistant and has the headline "Brad Goreski, the Zelig of Fashion Week." I've tried to post the link here, but have been unsuccessful, so please just GoogleNews Goreski to call up the story.
The reporter Ben Widdicombe did a nice job with the piece, drawing a good picture in a light, breezy and -- mercifully -- quick read. I mention the last attribute, because these are the types of stories that easily can become ponderous, especially when you note that Widdicombe interviewed at least the following "authorities" on Goreski (and probably others as well):
- Goreski himself;
- Goreski's client Cameron Diaz;
- designer Chris Benz;
- costume designer for TV's Mad Men, Jane Bryant;
- Goreski's boss, Rachel Zoe;
- Goreski's mother, Debby Goreski.
Widdicombe interviewed Goreski in at least two scenarios, at what seemed like a sit-down at the Mercer Hotel, and possibly just briefly at a fashion show (it was Fashion Week in New York last week).
Bottomline: a good example of a well-rounded profile.
Thursday, September 16, 2010
RESEARCH ABOUT EX DICTATORS IN SOUTH FLORIDA
http://www.miaminewtimes.com/2010-09-16/news/latin-american-dictators-love-south-florida/
It speaks about dictators and tyrants who moved to South Florida. We were speaking of sources and it is interesting that the author here mentions his sources in particular;
“So we plumbed property records, consulted historians, and dived into overflowing boxes of lawsuits.”
The background research for this article is well executed. The same cannot be said of the article itself. Although the topic is fascinating, the author’s voice seems so unique that it overshadows the subject matter.
The author uses words like “turd” and “hancho.” I can understand he may want to write about these dictators in a comical or light manner, but when it comes to these type of dictators it just seems inappropriate.
Wednesday, September 15, 2010
Pew Research
Anyway, you can sign up for Pew Research emails, which are not only interesting, but worth following to see what research individual news outlets choose to highlight.
http://pewresearch.org/pubs/1725/where-people-get-news-print-online-readership-cable-news-viewers
The awkward art of the recap intro
"Tom Brady survived a frightening car crash, signed a rich contract and ended his week with what he wants most: a win.
The quarterback who makes headlines on and off the field threw two of his three touchdown passes to Wes Welker, who returned after a speedy recovery from a serious knee injury, and led the New England Patriots to a 38-24 opening win over the Cincinnati Bengals on Sunday."
Recaps serve a very basic purpose in sportswriting: to describe the events of a game. However, I noticed that they often open with a quick and dirty human interest angle. The opening paragraph is fairly awkward, to be honest, and it jumps very rapidly to a description of the game, and then suddenly (mid-sentence, no less) to another angle of interest (Wes Welker's return from injury).
Recaps routinely open in this sort of fashion: an awkwardly phrased intro that sets up some sort of drama and allows for an easy segue into the description of the game. Here is Barry Wilner's intro to a recap of the Jets-Ravens game: "The Baltimore Ravens starred in this version of "Hard Knocks," punishing the New York Jets with plenty of them."
Wilner refers to the HBO show "Hard Knocks", which followed the Jets preseason, and uses it to make a pun about the Ravens' defensive performance.
Or how about Chris Duncan's intro to his story on the Colts-Texans game: "It took a record day by an undrafted running back for the Houston Texans to end years of frustration against Peyton Manning and the Indianapolis Colts. "
How's that for drama? An undrafted running back, leading his team to victory after years of futility against a powerhouse rival and their superstar quarterback.
That intro works quite well, I think. It relies on a story from the game, and doesn't try to jam a smorgasbord of information to create drama like the Ulman recap. Recapping games is not as easy as I've long thought, I think, and writing a good intro is probably the most challenging aspect of the form.
Interviews vs. Depositions
Many times it’s something that has to be spontaneous. Once the moment is past to ask the right question, it’s very hard to back. The rhythm of the interview is lost.
As an attorney I take depositions for a living. These are very similar to interviews. However, the difference with depositions is that you can take as long as you want and always go back to questions that pop up in your head.
It’s like if your brain is somehow digesting the previous information and then out of nowhere a new question or issue arises. However, in journalism this opportunity to go back is rarely an option. I hope that interviewing is an acquired skill.
Tuesday, September 14, 2010
Lack of Analysis in Immigration
http://www.boston.com/news/education/higher/articles/2010/06/19/officials_harvard_student_will_not_be_deported/
This story is short and straight forward. It does not go into politics and arguments and counterarguments. This is a bit refreshing as the issue of immigration is a very volatile one and it has tendency to provoke strong reactions from an audience. What bothers me about immigration stories and commentary in the current media is lack of true analysis. We often hear arguments like,” they should get in line.” These could be quotes from the common man or a sheriff in Arizona, but reporting them is problematic. True reporting and analysis would show that there is no line and that immigrations mechanisms are arbitrary, antiquated, and irrational.
Lack of analysis or background is not only a problem in the immigration debate, but also in most legally related matters. It’s almost as if bias is built to any sort of reporting on legal matters (like the pizza murder discussed in class) because lack of knowledge and understanding leaves a lot of room for the reporter and audience to make assumptions. The reporting of these assumptions then becomes rampant and leads to misconceptions that then influence public opinion and policy. For example, it could be argued that assumptions about illegal immigration lead to misconceptions that influence the public and legislature which lead to laws such as the one passed in Arizona. Of course, the matter becomes even more convoluted when the media reports on the Federal Court proceedings to pass an injunction against the law. Most media focuses on guttural public reactions instead of interviewing an unbiased constitutional law professor to really analyze the issue.
Speaking of "Invisible Person", how about "Invisible People"?
Example: Reporter Captures 5 Ws as the Story Unfolds
Monday, September 13, 2010
Journalsim about journalists
I thought this was interesting and startling: The New York Times did a piece in The Arts section about this guy named Ted Genoways, a young and talented man, who took over the staid yet small publication the Virgina Quarterly Review which is published out of the University of Virginia. Helping bring it big accolades, everyone celebrated Genoways until the managing editor killed himself. The story, which goes so far as to assert a connection between the stress Genoways put on his staff and the suicide also alleges his shirking of responsibilities, abusive interpersonal interactions and general bad management without attributing to many named sources:
“Then on July 30, the review’s managing editor, Kevin Morrissey, took a gun to a coal tower on the outskirts of town and killed himself, an act that some of Mr. Morrissey’s friends and family attributed partly to stress in the workplace — even going so far as to lay that stress publicly at Mr. Genoways’s door.” (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/11/books/11quarterly.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&sq=virginia%20quarterly%20review&st=cse&scp=1)
Since the investigation is ongoing and at this point only being carried out by the university, I felt that much of this story walked the line of libel as the implications are clear and unretractable - whether or not Genoways is found responsible for any real crime.
In more slanderous news, I discovered a contact and acquaintance of mine is facing a career meltdown after former staff members took to a blog (which aspires to be a pop news hub) to anonymously bash everything he had done as EIC of his magazine. This guy had started a cutting-edge music mag that saw some national exposure in Borders etc. which ended up folding. The accusations range from bad editorial decisions to sexual harassment, racism, financial delinquency and outright fraud. The posts have been up since June and the chronicles are both epic and demoralizing. Despite his Cease and Desist letters the blog host will not remove the posts. Although I’d like to get your opinion of the posts and the legitimacy of the stories, I’d rather not perpetuate a bad situation by re-posting any part of them or linking you to them (but I will if you insist). Whether or not this guy is guilty of the transgressions I wonder how professional – or legal – and never mind decent it was for these people to go so far as to make these damaging and unsubstantiated accusations. It also points to the ever-growing issue of free-speech on the internet and whether or not a blog is a news outlet like any other that must operate with under the same legal parameters.
An overreaction?
I had a strong visceral reaction to it and I would love to hear/read your thoughts about it, from personal and journalistic perspectives.
http://www.pressherald.com/news/newspaper-apologizes-to-those-offended_2010-09-12.html
At the risk of sounding 'insensitive,' I don't believe that marking the end of Ramadan in a newspaper article displays any disrespect toward the events of 9/11; the two are unrelated. While a follow-up story could have been printed about the widespread public reaction, I think that an apology or a retraction of the original story are both unnecessary.
Is this:
a political move (going against popular opinion)?
a personal decision (an editor's sense of conscience)?
a financial one (fear of losing advertising and readership)?
none or all of the above?
Friday, September 10, 2010
Perception, the truth and the press
As I mentioned, I am a former longtime newspaper reporter and most lately a PR person. I bring this up because PR people deal a lot in "messaging." Messaging involves not only the crux of the info we want to convey, but the words we use to tell the story.
Anyhow, the thing that really rang out for me was that the assistant DA had a very compelling story to tell, essentially speaking as the voice of the murdered father. It goes a bit further though, because the assistant DA also told the story well.
Why is this important?
It's important because deft messaging influences the way the reporter writes the story -- and this has absolutely nothing to do with the reporter's impartiality. (And it certainly doesn't mean that even if somebody is lying but his/her delivery is slick that the reporter will buy it.)
Just thought I would mention, as it is another way to look at news stories, and why certain angles get played up more than others.
USA Today Story on Muslim Victims of 911
The USA Today article, "For families of Muslim 911 victims, a new pain", reminded me of Lee Bollinger's quote in Samuel G. Freedman's book, Letters to a Young Journalist. It stated, "The most valued [trait] is that of having the imaginative range and the mental courage to explore the full complexity of the subject. To set aside one's preexisting beliefs, to hold simultaneously in one's mind multiple angles of seeing things, to allow yourself to believe another point of view as you consider it ...The stress is on seeing the difficulty of things, on being prepared to live closer than we are inclined to the harsh reality."
Given the current controversy of building a mosque 2 blocks from ground zero and a rise in anti-Muslim sentiments, the USA Today reporter, Rick Hampson, could've written about 911's non-Muslim families affected by the loss of a loved one. However, by writing about Muslim families that also lost their loved ones, Rick Hampson’s article tampers with a perspective which is often missed when covering surviving family members of 911 victims.
Thursday, September 9, 2010
While we are talking about unconventional leads!
I read this quote couple of times to confirm!
Wednesday, September 8, 2010
Examples of Court Story - Dull vs Colourful
Since we’ve just looked at an example of court reporting, I’d like to share a court story that was published recently in an English newspaper in
(Story background: A political aide was summoned to the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) office on July 15 last year to be questioned over the irregular disbursement of the state funds. He was found dead on the fifth floor service corridor of the building the next day. Did he commit suicide? Or was it a homicide? An inquest is taking place to find out the cause of his death.)
This story is quite straightforward and dull, if compared with the example we read in class. The journalist plainly reported the conversation between the counsel and the forensic pathologist.
There are two arresting paragraphs in this story (because of the content, not the writing style):
1. When Abdul Razak asked Dr Pornthip if, as an expert witness, she had to be fair and not take sides, she replied that she worked for the rights of the dead and not for the Selangor Government or for anyone else.
2. But when Abdul Razak asked Dr Pornthip if she had ever jumped out of a window, council representing the Selangor Government Malik Imtiaz Sarwar said: “With questions like these, we would all want to jump out.”
I felt that these two quotes would make pretty strong and attention-grabbing leads, but the journalist had chosen a safe one. However, if the journalist had started off the story with either of these, it would have set a certain direction or tone, resulting in a biased report.
For instance, if he had chosen the first quote, he would somehow make Dr Pornthip appear heroic. If the second quote was used, the readers might straightaway label Abdul Razak as “unreasonable and insensible”.
In contrast to this story, an online news portal provided a more interesting coverage, using adjectives and adding in some descriptions of what happened in the court.
Examples:
1. “You have to understand. I work for the rights of the dead, not the Selangor government,” she told the Coroner’s Court, drawing applause from a packed gallery, after Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) lawyer Datuk Abdul Razak Musa had questioned her qualification.
2. After telling Abdul Razak that she was working for the rights of the dead, she added that “my objective is to help the dead.” Undaunted, Abdul Razak asked the Thai pathologist why she did not consider what transpired the night before Teoh was found dead.
3. At one point, Dr Pornthip even asked Abdul Razak if was indeed a lawyer, drawing more laughter from the gallery. Abdul Razak said he had been a lawyer for 24 years. In what became a battle of wits, Abdul Razak also suggested that Dr Pornthip kept changing her position and “the goalpost.”
Its lead is also very different from the one in the first story:
As Dr Pornthip Rojanasunand faced relentless questions today about her qualifications and her testimony, the Thai forensic expert delivered what could perhaps be the line that fortifies her credibility as an expert witness in the Teoh Beng Hock inquest.
It is also interesting to note that the earlier story came with a headline of "MACC and pathologist trade barbs" (safe) while the second story had "Pornthip: I work for rights of the dead, not Selangor government" (attention-grabbing) as its headline.
Many readers will no doubt prefer to read the second story (including myself), even though it might not be totally objective in the eyes of journalists (honestly, the readers don't care about this point). So, I guess we have to ask ourselves what we want to achieve - an engaging story that would attract the readers, or a plain story that informs the readers on what happened and let them make their own judgement.
How do we strike a balance in between?
Boston Globe on yellow jackets
This just could have been straight cop-shop stuff, but instead the duo interviewed the fire chief whose company rescued the victim along with:
* a state official in agricultural services;
* a specialist on bees from a California university;
*an additional fire chief from a nearby area who had to rescue children from a similar experience, and
* two pest-control professionals.
The story gave good details about why yellow-jacket attacks happen more frequently at this time of year and what to do to prevent attracting/disturbing the insects.
The reporting was excellent, although -- and this is very subjective -- I thought the lede was weak. I'm just glad I got beyond it to the good information.
Tuesday, September 7, 2010
NYT 9/11 coverage
In Sunday's Style section there was a story on how people mark their birthdays if they were born on Sept. 11. Frankly, if I were the reporter and got that assignment, I would have been nonplussed. (Who knows, though, maybe the reporter came up with the idea.) But the story was well-written enough to be played on the section front, so I give the writer a lot of credit.
Monday's Times offered the Bill Keller story -- which was one of the most emailed stories in that edition. The piece quoted some who attended the Keller gathering at the Marriott. No matter which side of that debate you are on, I don't think you could have come away from that article without feeling some despair.
Today's piece on how the family of Brooke Jackman is honoring this young woman (who was murdered in the collapse of the towers in the 9/11 catastrophe) is actually inspiring. Ironically, Ms. Jackman was preparing to leave a brief career at Cantor Fitzgerald and was headed for graduate school for a social-work degree. Today, her family keeps her memory alive by promoting literacy for elementary-school children. The family deserves a lot of credit, because they are responding by putting hope into the future. That isn't easy: A child dying before a parent is its own hell; a child being murdered has to plummet a parent into an inconsolable abyss.
Saturday, September 4, 2010
Warning! Proceed with caution.
Hey everyone!
A little introduction about myself – I am Xin from
I thought I’d share something light-hearted with you in my first post here. My colleague shared this link on Facebook and I just couldn’t help but laugh out loud. I guess all of us with journalism background could relate to the “warnings”.
Out of the 10 “warnings”, I have to admit that I am guilty of at least three. This is a bit embarrassing, but let’s explore some of them:-
#1 This article contains unsourced, unverified information from Wikipedia.
When we are not sure of something, we always turn to Google. And then it always brings us to Wikipedia, which format and formality seem to have made the information appeared quite reliable. We try to check more sites, but more often than not, most of them have the exact lines as Wikipedia. However, if we are really unsure of something, we’d rather stick to an editor’s advice - “When in doubt, leave it out!”
#2 This article is based on an unverified, anonymous tipoff.
Although we are always asked to double check our facts, sometimes we tend to trust our sources too much. It’s of course better to have more than just one contact in a particular organisation, as I always find “talking to just one more person” very useful. I will end up with some new information for my story.
#3 To ensure future interviews with subject, important questions were not asked.
The fear of losing the contact conquers it all!
#4 This article is basically just a press release, copied and pasted.
Well… what can I say? When we can’t seem to find the right words to describe the restaurant that “brings Italian conviviality and contemporary
*just an example taken from a website of a restaurant
#5 Journalist does not understand the subject they are writing about.
#6 Journalist hiding their own opinions by using phrases like "some people claim".
I like this one! It's normally used in commentaries. Journalists tend to believe that our opinions are the same as the people's... since we are also part of the society, right?
Thursday, September 2, 2010
Welcome, students!
In the syllabus are instructions about specific issues you should think about and address, but also feel free to use this blog to post other observations on ideas discussed in class, thoughts on the journalism industry and related stories that interest you or highlight concepts discussed in class. Also comment on others' posts. Let's have a conversation!
To make the most of your posts, when writing about a news article, create a link to the article. Describe or quote enough of the original to give your classmates a sense of the article -- but don't cut and paste the whole thing, or even a long passage -- then highlight a piece of text and use the link button just above the text box. It looks like this:
Please remember that posts and comments should always be respectful. Feel free to challenge the news and what you read, and agree or disagree with your fellow students, but keep it clean and polite. Challenge the position, not the person.
Many students in past classes have gone on to create their own blogs, so don't just look at this as another assignment. Have fun, and explore the possibilities of the blog. This is a place for you to have an ongoing, open conversation, and it should be a place where you can have fun!