MatthewHenderson

"In times of crisis, we demand the best from the people on the front lines of the story. The cops. The paramedics, doctors and nurses. The teachers. We should expect no less from the people telling these stories, the journalists."
--page 30--Haiman, Best Practices for Newspaper Journalists

I think the above statement is a very important idea to keep in mind when interviewing people about sensitive subjects. The title of my blog implies that being a compassionate human being and being a journalist are separate, but they actually go hand in hand. You can't be an effective journalist if you're not in touch with the emotional impact of an event. If you ask insensitive, probing questions of distraught people, chances are you won't get very accurate, informative answers. Pushing people over the edge may be a way to get attention for your newspaper, but it doesn't adhere to the principles of journalism. You should always want to get the most objective and inclusive information to the public, and interviewing someone who's just experienced a traumatic event in a way that stirs up their emotions will only produce eye-popping sound bites with little substance. Another issue with being insensitive on the reporting of this material is that while it may draw readers in initially, over time these kinds of tactics will really turn readers off the paper. It is obvious from the "What the public says" section on page 32 that people find it really distasteful when journalists try to catch people in vulnerable, unflattering moments. These people will want to switch to a newspaper that is more considerate of people's privacy. While I don't always agree with some of the other "What the public says" sections in the book so far, I think their opinions on this subject do reflect what I imagine the average person's reaction to these kinds of stories is. When journalists try to show people at their most vulnerable, it makes the journalist look much worse than the subject. The newspaper that published the finances of the family whose daughter had been murdered descended to a level that I don't think most people would be comfortable with. So I think it's pretty accurate to say that the most ethical newspapers are often the most successful as well.

"Gay participants in several cities complained of an almost total absence of coverage of gay culture, events and interests...They're mostly good liberals down there (at the newspaper) and they try, but they are still pretty touchy about gay stories."
--Haiman, Best Practices for Newspaper Journalists, pages 43-56

I thought these two quotes were pretty interesting because they reflect some of the difficulties with including diversity in newspapers, particularly with the gay community. Newspapers are supposed to be objective and unbiased, but it's "liberal" to include "gay stories"? The fact that people consider covering the gay community in a positive way is considered "liberal" is something that makes me very angry, but that may just be my politics. I don't believe it should be considered "political" to include stories about gay couples who have normal, monogamous lifestyles, but the fact that some people do may be what hinders newspapers from covering gay people in a comprehensive and fair manner. Because so much of the conservative rhetoric against gay marriage is aimed at inciting fear that gay people publicly acknowledging their relationships will destroy the moral framework of society, depicting the truth of many gay people's lives--happy, well-adjusted, and healthy lifestyles--goes against that rhetoric. Is that political? I would just call it fair and objective reporting. I don't think it should be called "liberal." There's nothing wrong with reporting on more "flamboyant" gay people, as the man from Portland on page 44 says, but when that's all the newspaper is covering, they're conforming to a stereotype that confirms some people's misguided beliefs about the gay community in general. The dilemma is that some people don't want to hear about the full complexity of these people's lives. It's not necessarily pushing one political agenda if you're objectively reporting facts that may change the conversation about a certain issue. As a reporter, you can't ignore them. That's why I think this is an area of reporting where newspapers need to be less afraid of what the readership will think in order to really get the truth out there.

"Investigative journalism is finding, reporting and presenting news which other people try to hide. It is very similar to standard news reporting, except that the people at the centre of the story will usually not help you and may even try to stop you doing your job."
--Sample Investigative Reports

This is definitely one of the harder genres to write, I think. This and talking to people who've just experienced traumatic events seem like very hard aspects of newswriting because you're talking to people who may not want to talk to you or may not be giving accurate information. You really need to finesse both situations and have good people skills; you have to know what to say to get the kind of responses you want. It seems like there needs to be a whole other class that trains you for that, because it's certainly not in any way easy. You have to know how to dig without appearing to dig to the people you're investigating, and you have to have the savvy to know which people are really willing to give you the dirt on something. Another part about this genre that's very difficult is--how do you find story ideas? You can't uncover things about a certain situation if it turns out there's nothing to uncover. And if there are good story ideas, the whole point of them being good story ideas is the fact that people are trying to hide or suppress them. So how do you find out about them? I guess you might have suspicions about certain things, and then go interview people to see if your suspicions have any justification. I can see how good contacts are vital to this genre; as a student in a class, I have very few contacts and am having difficulty figuring out who to talk to. You need to know who would give you the "official" story and who would give you the "unofficial" story. And what if there just simply aren't any scandals or shady underhanded dealings going on at the moment? What do you do then, huh? Sometimes I think journalists might just get desperate and try to make situations out of things that aren't that big a deal. You see all the time in TV news about the latest government spending scandal or the latest food that has something nasty in it. But oftentimes the music they use is scarier than the actual story. I can see how investigative reporting has its place and can be very important, but it can also be a cheap gimmick if you're not careful.

This is my third portfolio of blogs I have written for a Newswriting course I am taking. With every week, I'm learning new things about this style of writing that I've never really considered before. It's definitely a more complex style of writing than I realized.

Coverage (all the blogs that I've written on assigned readings)
Editorials
Best Practices for Newspaper Journalists pages 1-16
Best Practices for Newspaper Journalists pages 17-28
Best Practices of Newspaper Journalists pages 29-42
Best Practices of Newspaper Journalists pages 43-56
Sample Investigative Reports

Depth (blogs in which I examine a concept in depth)
Best Practices for Newspaper Journalists pages 17-28
Best Practices of Newspaper Journalists pages 29-42
Best Practices of Newspaper Journalists pages 43-56

Interaction (blogs in which I interact with my peers)
Editorials
Best Practices for Newspaper Journalists pages 17-28

Discussions (blogs that drew comments from my peers)
Editorials
Best Practices of Newspaper Journalists pages 29-42
Best Practices for Newspaper Journalists pages 1-16
Best Practices of Newspaper Journalists pages 43-56

Timeliness (blogs completed before the day of the assigned reading)
All of my blogs were timely during this part of the semester.

Xenoblogging (comments on peers' blogs)
Greta Carroll's blog on Editorials
Jeanine O'Neal's blog on Best Practices for Newspaper Journalists pages 1-16
Wendy Scott's blog on Best Practices for Newspaper Journalists pages 17-28
Richelle Dodaro's blog on Best Practices for Newspaper Journalists pages 29-42

Wildcard
I think my blog on Editorials is the best representation of my blogging from this part of the semester. It drew a lot of comments, and I think that's partly because I was articulating something I really care a lot about--fostering intelligent dialogue about issues. I really don't like when people shut down and refuse to listen to people they don't agree with, because they're missing out on an opportunity to get a broader and more complex understanding of an issue. I'm glad that the blog itself fostered discussion.

"Melissa Gold met Adam Gottlieb when their grandmothers set them up on a blind date. Now the groom is about to discover what it means to marry into the Gold family horseradish legacy."
--NY Times

I found a video about this couple on the video library on the New York times website. What a wonderful way to include positive news! The way this site is set up, you get a much clearer sense of who these people are than you would when just reading a short little blurb about them in an actual newspaper. Here you get the full force of their personalities--complete with them misspeaking (I thought it was hilarious when the woman accidentally said their grandmothers were in a "Yente" club--you have to know Fiddler on the Roof to get it). You get great visuals like them in the horse radish factory and the puzzle that Adam made to propose to Melissa with; you also get great audio like Adam imitating his grandmother telling him to "make sure you keep your pants buttoned." If you look at the actual article that goes with it, it just doesn't have the same vitality. There are some interesting tidbits of course, like Melissa wondering why Adam wanted to hear her voice because she thought it was annoying, but it's just not the same as actually getting to see these people interacting in such a warm and pleasant way. I think stories like this that don't have anything shockingly newsworthy about them are much more effective when you can do videos like this, because people are able to connect with ordinary people much more when they can see their physical and vocal quirks, which often communicate so much more than just quotes they read in a newspaper.

Seton Hill's web page devoted to alumni

Post-Gazette article about the controversy over "Pipe Theme in Red Orange"

Tribune Review article on the same subject

Setonian article about the controversy

another Setonian article about the controversy

"Save Pipe Theme in Red Orange"--Causes on Facebook

Seton Hill Alumni Facebook page

I thought this multimedia presentation had its good points and bad points. While part of me likes the fact that you have to click multiple times to see each step of the process for collecting garbage and collecting recyclables, part of me realizes that if I hadn't been assigned to look at this presentation for a class I wouldn't have had as much patience with it and might not have gone through the whole thing. Breaking each step down with both diagrams and videos makes it very clear just how the journeys for garbage and recyclables are different; this is very informative. However, unless you have a lot of time on your hands you probably won't click on each step and only get a partial understanding of the process; if all this information was streamlined and put into one place it would be more convenient for people to learn about. Also, unless you're really examining the site it's not that obvious that there are multiple steps to click on. The multiple steps are easy to miss because there are no graphics that call attention to them; you have to move your cursor in the white area at the bottom in order for the titles to pop up. Another problem I had with this presentation was that part of the graphics on the side are cut off, and there was no way to scroll sideways so as to be able to see the full diagram. Overall, I like the methodical structure of this presentation, but a lot more work could have been done to make the information in its entirety more accessible to someone who would just be casually browsing through the website.

Link back to course website

"Reporters become convinced the story line emerging from their investigation is the only one. And even the emergence of new facts or different dimensions or a broader context fails to enable them to open their minds to the possibility that the story has changed or that there may be no story at all."
--Haiman, Best Practices for Newspaper Journalists, page 57

I thought this chapter was particularly relevant for our investigative articles we're working on now. I can understand the impulse to want to make a story out of something that's not really a story, because that's sort of the nature of the assignment--investigative stories aren't supposed to obviously be stories on the surface, but there's something hidden or unconsidered that makes them newsworthy. But if you don't find the thing that makes them newsworthy, you can't just make it up, or pretend like it's there when it's not. Brace yourselves for another theatre analogy--it's like when we say in acting that you can't ignore anything that happens onstage; you have to be fully present in the moment. Even if something happens that's not "supposed" to happen, it ends up looking really stupid if you just pretend like it didn't happen. Take, for instance, this nightmare production of Peter Pan; when Wendy just continues with her line even though her house has been demolished, it looks ridiculous. There's no way to keep up the illusion that Peter did not just crash into the window. You have to do the same thing in newswriting! You can't just act like there's still a story even when your story comes crashing down. The only problem is when you've got a deadline and you don't think you can come up with a different story idea in time. But you still need to be truthful; perhaps the hidden part of this story is the surprising fact that there is no hidden or undiscovered aspect. Audiences love when stuff goes wrong, anyhow.

"As a companion piece, the auteur behind fantastical spectacles Mars Attacks!, The Nightmare Before Christmas, Batman and a host of other morbidly twisted movies is publishing The Art of Tim Burton, a 434-page tome packed with drawings, doodles, paintings and evocative concept art dating back to Burton’s teen years in Burbank, California."
--Wired, "Concept Art Offers Peek at Tim Burton’s Twisted Mind"

I confess I'm not really so into the technology, so many of the articles on this website confused me and made me short-circuit. I decided to focus on the Tim Burton article, since it was the one I felt I could understand best. There weren't that many links in the article; the quote above used a link to imdb's information about Tim Burton, which can be helpful for someone who may have seen one or two of Burton's movies but doesn't associate the movie with him as a director. It also links to a search engine with the name of the publisher of the book they're talking about typed in; this seemed a bit lazy, because they could have just linked right to the publisher's website. They also link to a Wikipedia article on Bozo the Clown when talking about some of Tim Burton's influences, which once again can be a helpful starting point for someone who's never heard of Bozo the Clown and just wants some basic general information. However, I thought none of the links were particularly helpful or necessary, especially because the people interested enough to peruse this article are probably already familiar with Burton's movies and if so inclined will type in the name of the book themselves to order it. The main attraction of this article are the sketches, which are so colorful and bizarre they speak volumes more than any of the text possibly could. I think the most helpful link is the link to a related story (also featuring mostly pictures) about Burton's remake of Alice in Wonderland, because the audience for this article is very likely to be interested in his next film project. I think this article is an example where the visuals dominate the story so much, that unless the links all took the reader to more predominantly visual web pages, there really is no reason to navigate away from the page in the course of reading it.

Link to course website