Don Meyers!

I thoroughly enjoyed listening to our guest speaker this past week and asking him questions. I am taking this class to fulfill a requirement for my minor, not because I want to be a journalist, but this particular class period sparked my interest in the subject more than ever before. There were many things that Mr. Meyers said that really rung true to me, I want to touch on a few.

One thing he said just before he left when someone asked why he doesn't do sports. He related a story about his friend Tony Loci (not sure if I got that name right) who was a sports journalist. They were at a basketball game together and all the sudden a player was thrown out. Something had obviously happened that had gone right over Meyers' head, but his friend tony was able to explain to him, moment by moment, what had happened. "He knew what he was looking for--I didn't" Meyers said as he explained why he was not a sports journalist. I liked that he recognized that as a journalist, he had strong points and week points. Incidentally I think that sports journalism might be one of the hardest types, at least for me. Not only would you have to know how to write, as all journalists, but you would have to intimately know every sport, players, coaches, leagues, etc. I don't think I could keep up. But there are men (and occasionally women) who do it well and love it. Here is a list compiled by Yahoo of the top 50 TV announcers of all time.

I really enjoyed the discussion we had about sources. Confidential sources specifically. When is it appropriate to use them, who should you disclose them to, what kind of guarantee should you give them? I had never realized what a delicate thing confidential sources can be. As far as using them Meyers said you should only print a confidential source when there is no other way to get the information. He also said that when he used them, he always would share the person's identity with his editor. (But tell the source that he would.) Which makes sense because the editor has to back the article just as much as the writer does. He also talked about disclosing confidential sources. He said that in his experience he has never been threatened with jail time, but there have been times when people wanted his sources. He was unable to give a clear answer on whether he would go to jail before revealing a source saying that it really depends, which I can agree with. But if I ever were in the position that I was using a source that wanted to remain unknown I would use Prof. Campbell's tactic which is to tell a source "I will protect you until the courthouse steps." Which brought us to the discussion of shield laws. Now I thought that it was pretty clear where Meyers and Campbell stood on the issue; the same place I imagine all journalists stand, which is on the side of a shield law. And the argument is pretty compelling. I even found myself, despite the fact that I have no intention on becoming a journalist, feeling very passionate about the need for a federal shield law. Although there is another side of the argument which is demonstrated in this article.

The thing I liked most about Meyers discussion though is the way that he explained the fundamental jobs of a journalist, and how to go about that job. He talked about laying down the facts just as they are, and letting the reader decide where they come down on the issue saying, "If a journalist has a bias, it's for the truth." He also talked about minimizing damages, (when asked about covering the Elder Packer talk given in the most recent conference) but not to eliminate them all together. And to sum it all up I am going to quote my favorite thing that he said which was that a journalist's job is to "comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.

I am going to add one more link here to the website of the Society for Professional Journalism which Meyers referred to a lot.

Group 4

I loved the idea of the wall. But it seems to me that it is just that- an idea. And contrary to the popular belief created by inception, an idea is no the most powerful thing on the planet. No, an actual wall would be much more efficient. In previous years of journalism it seems like they kinda had the concept down. I especially appreciated the example of the Chicago Tribune building where they had separate elevators for the journalists and the business man. I think that shows real integrity on the part of McCormick, the kind of integrity that is scarcely found in big business today. I was researching "the wall" and I came across a book excerpt by Davis Merrit. He was talking about the wall and how the idea is to keep things separate and then made a very clever analogy,

"The great majority of American newspapers today try to walk a slack wire across the abyss -- tricky stuff akin to trying to be a little bit pregnant. It is not certain how long and in what fashion that balancing act can be sustained, if indeed it can be sustained."

Here is a link to the whole excerpt http://www.criticism.com/md/knightfall.html

Merrit makes a very good point, you cannot be a little pit pregnant. You either are, or your not. The same things goes for newspapers. Either their business and journalism is separate, or they are not. And once you start mingling to two, the baby is only going to grow. The really difficult thing is that it is impracticle to tell each individual journalist that they have the responsibility to uphold this wall. Because in truth, these journalists have families, they have bills to pay and the editor is the one who signs the check. If the editor tells a journalist to budge a little on his or her article, no one can say that is wrong, the journalist is just trying to sustain a job in this time of economic hardship. So it is the entire establishment that must build this wall, in order for it to maintain stability, not just the individual journalist.

One thing that didn't strike me quite right was the idea that the first allegiance of a journalist is to the citizen, not the truth. How is it that this could be right? Does that mean that a journalist tells the citizens what they want to hear, or does the journalist write what he or she thinks the citizens need to hear? No, I would dare say that the only way to be loyal to the citizen is to be loyal to the truth first. The Society of Professional Journalists have put together a Code of Ethics that is posted on their website. http://www.spj.org/ethicscode.asp I think that this really sums everything up well, it only has five major points but it talks about acting independently which represents "the wall" and its very first point it "Find the truth and report it" Nowhere does it talk about "be loyal to the citizen"

Group 3 Presentation

The presentation given by group three definitely got me thinking. While doing the reading I was, frankly, quite bored and uninterested in the subject of journalism around the world. But the questions asked and the scenarios proposed really provoked a response out of me. So here are my thoughts.

Will every country end up with the liberal model of journalism? I really hope not! The book claims that more and more other countries' journalism style is becoming more like that in america. That may be true but it is upsetting! When the presentation first started I put up a twitter that said "I'm glad we had the liberal model" but by the end of the presentation I was thinking how stupid that was! Here are some of my reasons:

In the United States we are starting to see a lot more political parallelism. For example the very clear distinctions we can see between fox and msnbc. The latter is obviously very liberal based and it is even more clear how conservative fox is! For those of us who really believe in the liberal model this could be very upsetting. But to me is encouraging! It encourages me to do a little more searching than just accept that of one source. It also encourages me to really find my own opinions by comparing those of people with obviously opposing views. Further more, its just fun to hear the extreme political commentators rant and rave about their convictions and accuse and poke at those on the other networks.

Another reason the I don't believe in the liberal model as the best thing is the dispute about what truth exactly is. Group three pointed out that News and Truth are not necessarily the same thing. One of my favorite things said in the presentation was the mere accuracy can be a kind of distortion to the truth. Besides that, no one is going to write something with absolute mere accuracy. Every journalist is a human and all humans have their own beliefs, agendas, and biases that are going to appear in their writing one way or another. The only difference is that in the liberal model they claim that is not true. So if we are going to get biases either way isn't it safer for the writers and readers alike to acknowledge that that bias is there?

So although the world is heading in the direction of the Liberal model, the U. S. in many ways is heading the opposite direction and I like it. I'm not saying that the liberal is the worst model, I just don't think its the best, and I am a firm believer in the benefits of trying new things.

Group 1 Presentation.

Good Job group 1! I enjoyed your presentation. I appreciated that you brought in lots of valid information, especially about why journalism is important. Loved playing heads up 7 up! It was fun to kick it old school but more importantly it demonstrated your point -- journalism is here to help people make informed decisions that they would otherwise be making blindly.

What I think that applies to the most, or at least the first thing that comes to mind, is political journalism. Honestly with out CNN or MSNBC I don't think I would even be interested in voting for public officials because I would have no background information and I would feel like I was just playing eenie meenie miney mo.

Your presentation covered many different subjects, and I could tell you were really trying to tackle the who issue. You even talked about the future of journalism which I appreciated because it leads right into my groups presentation :).

Thank you for keeping us well informed

Chapters 1

First things first, I really enjoyed the very first story told in Elements of Journalism. It really puts journalism in perspective for me, and it does it in a way that makes it real and relevant to someone I can relate with. Not because I have ever been in a situation like that, but I am a teenage girl, like the one in the story.

And I agree with the message the story was trying to convey about what journalism is. It is a way of getting relevant information out to those who need it. I am sure that we could discuss this question for days and still never come up with the absolute, hands down answer that everyone agrees with, and as a class we have had pretty lengthy discussions about it, but this is the one way of defining it that really resonated with me.

Also, I really dislike the discussion all together. Because I know there is no answer! We should throw out some ideas and then we should just leave it up to individuals to decide what journalism means to them. All this ideological talk makes me dizzy.

Moving on to Mind of a Journalist. I enjoyed this reading more, mostly because it was shorter but also because it brought up a topic I had never thought about before. Why DO people decide to become journalists? And then, it answered the question for me without having to go through all these maybes and what ifs. It is interesting to point out that in a lot of ways being a journalist doesn't seem like a rational occupation, and what better way to start out a book about journalists thinking than to explain how one becomes a journalist in the first place!

So those are my thoughts on the reading. Not very deep, I know.

Test

Here is my test run for my journalism blog, since I have never done this before.