Thursday, September 22, 2005

Too much coincidence in with the convergence... a digression This afternoon, I had just shown my friend's online-journalism class a couple of "online editor" job descriptions and talked about some of the "convergence" going on in Tampa... I even fought off my hypertextual tendency to digress into reminiscing about my own trip to the Tampa-St. Pete area a dozen years ago -- particularly my being held up at gunpoint. Colorful, but too much personal absent-minded-professor irrelevance; too much of a digression. Or so I thought. Next on my "new things in online media" link list was Rocketboom.com, where I expected to show the class something like the previous day's content: a special feature about particularly fat cats, an item about a company that makes framed graphics of your very own DNA, a sample of the New York Police Department's first podcast... typical Rocketboom, "not your grandparents' television news." Instead, what we saw was the screen on the right. So best wishes to Amanda... And so much for my Florida stick-up memories being irrelevant. What an odd coincidence with her item about the NYPD podcast the previous day, too. Rocketboom isn't usually a cops-and-robbers kind of site. Anyhow, I gave in and I told the class about talking that kid with the gun into giving back my wallet, just so I could wish Amanda as happy an ending to her story. I didn't bother to finish my true-story the way I usually do: My robber did get a fanny pack containing a bunch of unmailed Christmas cards and my notebook containing a day's worth of notes for a story about a holiday-week sailing school. All that paper, bundled into what looked a little like a night-deposit bag, may have felt like more money than the $5 still in my returned wallet. Coincidentally, I'd moved my traveler's checks and credit cards to another pocket when I realized I was going to be on a strange street alone after dark. So here's hoping for more happy-ending coincidences, and more stories, from Amanda soon. Her Thursday report hasn't shown up yet, six hours after that class of mine. But 80 comments wishing her well are already posted on the site. (FRIDAY UPDATE: If you've followed a Rocketboom link lately, you know Amanda was back at work the next day.) Final coincidences: As usual, I never did finish showing the class all the links I'd planned to use. (I always pack extras.) But until now I'd forgotten about two that were on the list. I was prepared to head back to Tampa to, of all things, compare its http://crimetracker.tbo.com/ with http://www.chicagocrime.org/ ... I also planned to tell the class about an earlier attempt at a crime-and-investigations website. I'd even walked into the classroom wearing a red cap with its logo: APBnews.com. The cap had been hanging on my office wall for a year, and I just grabbed it on impulse as I headed to class. Strange. Sometimes its the web of coincidences that doesn't seem to end. 9:19:26 PM    comment [] Link adds muscle to story I jumped into an Online News mailing list discussion last week when someone asked whether online news sites should create a new position of "link editor." Right away, the thought of creating such a specialized job -- when we could use more reporters -- struck me as extravagant. I think it would be better if the reporters and editors were "thinking about links" from the beginning. Then adding a strong link or two to a story would take just a couple of mouse-clicks. Linking to the reporter's actual sources also would add authority and "transparenty" to the story. Putting online and print newsrooms together should help, as would making better use of talented news librarians or "news research" departments. Hiring younger, Web-comfortable reporters would help, too. To develop a well-researched story -- or even do some quick "backgrounding" for a campus speech -- reporters are already building link lists of items in their own organization's archives and out on the Web via Google. But as long as they and their organizations compartmentalize the jobs of "reporting the story for the paper" and "putting those stories on the Web," opportunities for the readers to benefit from that research can slip by. Part of the problem -- and I don't have a solution -- is that many news organizations are reluctant to link "outside" their own pages, for fear that readers won't come back and be entertained by more of the flickering advertisements that pay the bills. I admit that's a problem. Setting the big financial questions aside, here's a simple example of a story that a link might help. Maybe it was because the website design made the picture too small (I haven't seen the print newspaper yet this morning), but I thought the lead about last night's campus speaker could have used more visual support. (You may have to register with KnoxNews to read that story, but I hope you do read it before you click the next link.) The reporter got a strong story into a morning-after newspaper on deadline; no complaints there. Her mentioning a woman's biceps does make you realize something special is going on. But wouldn't this link to the speaker's home page help a little too? (OK, I admit that I don't have any advertising for you to come back to. But come back anyway.) 11:14:36 AM    comment [] Oops, is that jelly on my Times? Ouch. A few hours after waving around The New York Times in news writing class as a positive example of using "strong verbs" and "specific nouns," I found someone using another page one story as an bad example. Jack Shafer at Slate tears into the article with his review, titled "Weasel-Words Rip My Flesh!" As Shafer points out, reporters are advised to avoid vague words like "some," "few," "often," "seems," "likely," "more" and "many." That last one was used 12 times in the page-one Times story. The second half of Shafer's headline suggests a bigger problem, calling the article "a bogus trend story." Weak words can make readers wonder about the facts behind them. Shafer considers "bogus" different from "false," and explains why: "While bogus, 'Many Women at Elite Colleges Set Career Path to Motherhood' isn't false: It can't be false because it never says anything sturdy enough to be tested." But is Shafer right? OK, class: Where would you look for "sturdiness" in the story? Does it  quote people selectively to support a preconceived notion? What sources did the reporter use? She mentions interviews with "more than a dozen faculty members and administrators at the most exclusive institutions who have been on campus for decades..." She also cites some surveys of Yale and Princeton students. Is that enough to spot a trend? Can you be sure without seeing more of the survey statistics? Would a "sturdy" story require a detailed national poll? Or is the research good enough for a feature about this kind of issue? Does the whole story support this "nut graph"?  "What seems to be changing is that while many women in college two or three decades ago expected to have full-time careers, their daughters, while still in college, say they have already decided to suspend or end their careers when they have children." Suggestion for students: Follow the link to the full story, then see Shafer's critique... Next week we can talk about both as part of a discussion of "hard news," "soft news," "nut grafs" and techniques an old colleague of mine calls "Jell-O journalism." As for "Weasel Words," there's a whole book by that title. Here's a recent interview with its author. 2:27:14 AM    comment []

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