Numbers.. Oh my.

I'm not entirely read to have my article ripped apart in class in front of everyone.  Let's face it, we are not very nice when we do it, but it's part of the game.

I am putting myself on the sacrificial alter right now and using my own articles to point out my own misfailings. 

First of all, I've been writing for the DI since freshman year, so we are entering into our third year.  It is amazing to me, looking back, a) how terrible somethings were that got published and b) the lack of substantial information/numerical data I had to back up my claims.

Sad times.

But here are a few oh-so-special mistakes I have made in the past..

Most recently, the Alzheimer Story has numbers that don't match up, making it glaringly obvious that I didn't check out the claims of the people using the numbers to sound smart.  I also used statistics from the Alzheimer Association, which is going to put out the statistics that best serve their own purpose.  Lastly, I made broad claims without putting them into perspective.

Pretty rookie mistakes for a third-year student.

Then, there was a Teach for America story that just.. didn't have substantial facts (or opposing opinions..) to make it seem legitimate.  Throwing in technical terms does not make you sound starter, and it make's the numbers get lost.  It's easier to put things into perspective when you put things in terms people will understand.  See here:  

"Students involved in this study typically fall at the 14th percentile, which means that about 86 percent of students nationwide fall above them. With that in mind, Teach for America participants make significantly more progress in math than expected, raising students from the 14th percentile to the 17th percentile, according to the study. This is roughly the equivalent to an additional month of math instruction."

It just makes it harder to understand what is trying to be said when you start talking  about percentiles and making things better.  How do you do this? In terms of numbers, ratios, percentages, what does it mean?

These are just two examples from stories I've written.  I could go on and on about the terrible things I've written that have glaringly obvious holes in them--we'll leave that for another time.

Fact Checking.. the way of the future

We illustrated in class that fact checking is becoming some what of a lost art.  We didn't even think to consult phonebooks; rather, we were completely lost when we couldn't find something in a google search.

If we can't do these things as students, who's to say that professional journalists can? Who's to say they actually want to?

Enter this article about this Web site .

Basically, it is a Q & A with Brooks Jackson, who is a veteran Washington journalist and member of the AP investigative team during Watergate.  He works on the Web site, checking facts, especially now during the election.  On the Web site, they expose the fallacies in the campaigns.

Read the article and disregard the obvious failings of Jackson's contradictions.  He said he claims to not be bias, but he only exposes a mistake made by Palin in an interview, yet he says nothing about the errors made by Obama's camp.  I know that, I understand that, I am ignoring that.

What this boils down to is responsible journalism dead?  Are we now just writing in a self-serving manner to forward the interests of our employers?

Perhaps one of the most interesting points that Jackson brought up is this: "It ought to be an embarrassment to any news organization that we exist.  Isn't this a core First Amendment responsibility?"

With the internet, it is so easy to circulate falsehoods about political candidates, celebrities, and even average people.  We as journalists need to protect the interests of the general public on matters of public concern.  Screw the market place of ideas if the speech is wrong.  The speech is misleading, and it's sad that it takes a Web site to do the job we as journalists have been trained to do.

Then again, I am a daughter of neoliberal theory.

This Sounds Like A Catch-22 Kiddies.

There is nothing worse than running a story and then having people send letters to the editor or make comments on the Web site about how moronic and uninformed you sound in a story that you put forth hours of time towards.  I should know, I've managed to be the only features writer in the history of features writers to receive not one but two letters to the editors complaining.

(SIDE NOTE: One was a story about the Puppy Store in the Mall, and well.. tempers run high when talking about animal cruelty.. plus it was terribly written.. I'll admit that.  The other was just an article on fashion and apparently the CU community is really averse to running stories that look like they should be in "Cosmo")

A copy editor's job is to check those errant facts to make sure that the publication, not just the writer, looks respectable. Yet, in the shrinking job market, these jobs are being cut out or outsourced..

The article we read for class brings up the bad aspects of outsourcing, which I feel greatly outweigh the good.

Still in a profit driven, capitalistic society, cutting costs and cutting jobs take precedent over accuracy.  In a column that ran in the Washington post, located here, Marc Fisher describes how and why copy editing is declining.

Like every other problem in the world, it seems to boil down to, on the most basic level, the internet.

Damn that internet for providing instantaneous access; for supplying the world with an even bigger marketplace of ideas; for taking away millions of jobs because everyone is their own editors online.

Fisher said his print articles pass through 12 hands, while his blog posts are sent straight online.    12:1, that is a pretty big ratio.  12 people have the opportunity to give their feedback, to find mistakes, to make changes.  Those are 12 people who have local experience, not outsourced.  Which article do you think is more accurate?

The more people you find to read your article with actual experience, the better it will become.  When you start moving the work to foreign countries, it adds nothing but frustration and errors. 

There is nothing more annoying than sitting on the phone with a computer company... oh Dell for instance.. and realizing that you have to put forth more effort to explain the problem that it is to actually have it.  By the end of those conversations, I want to throw my computer out of the window just so I don't have to ever deal with it again.

That is the product of outsourcing-- complete and utter frustration.  It's not because these people are useless, in fact they are probably more intelligent than me.  Rather, it's because it makes it hard to relate to them on a personal level and builds feelings of hostility because they are taking jobs away from Americans and making the unemployment rate skyrocket.

It seems that there is really nothing to be done though.  The internet has forced publications to lay off people, to downsize the need for copyeditors and rely on bloggers to correct their own work.  The product of this will be highly personalized, subjective 'articles' that give little more than personal opinion riddled with warped facts to prove their point.

After all, a pig is still a pig with lipstick.. or is it a bulldog..

Does it even matter anymore?

VMA's

This seems like it is completely irrelevant, but this piece of Broadcast brought up the question of whether media outlets should use their power to broadcast political endorsements and messages.

Here is the link to last nights intro.

Last night, British something Russell Brand made several inappropriate jokes, but that is to be expected on a show on MTV, let alone a "hip" awards show.  After diverging from relevant topics, he went onto endorse Obama as a candidate.  

Firstly, Brand is not an American, so his place critiquing American politics is kind of moot to begin with.  These are decisions that affect the American people, and well as the declaration stated a couple hundred years ago, we are a separate nation from Britain and will operate as that separate entity.

That isn't even the point of my rant, he might be informed or he might not be, the point is that publicly endorsing a candidate, whether in a public or private sphere is still absurd.  They are trying to get the word out by using outlets that will reach a younger demographic.

I get that.

What I don't get is why they need to endorse one candidate and bash another.  They spend ALL the time bashing the republican party, he even at one point said that Bush wouldn't be fit to hold a pair of scissors in England.  That's great, that's an opinion--a joke... hilarious.

But before you start trying to tear down one political party, remember that your party, the democratic party also has it's flaws.  Neither side is perfect, and in a democracy we need to choose the lesser of the two evils.  That might not sound like the perfect solution, but it is reality.

Obama will not be our savior any more than McCain will.  As media outlets, we have a responsibility to inform the general public about the truth of the matter, the heart of things that will actually matter and affect people.

Palin was criticized for leaking the information that her daughter was pregnant, but you better believe that had Obama gotten a hold of that information, he would have used it to his advantage.

I guess I'm just idealistic, but since when has journalism and politics goal to perfectly ruin another reputation.

Where is the truth?

Transforming American Newspapers

I am going to start by describing the second post, because.. well I can.

Part II

I'll be honest.  I took Econ at my community college because I knew it would be easier.  That being said, I never actually learned anything, so when Crosbie started to describe the principles of microeconomics and the importance of supply and demand, he lost me at hello.  Still, I think I was able to grasp some semblance of what he meant.

We live in an age of instant gratification-- we don't have to wait for anything. In world of fast food, text messages, email and other instant forms of necessities, the internet has taken the place of newspapers in the realm of communication.  Crosbie details the difference between the original newspapers and now, stating that the difference is that no one has time to wait for the news, and the news often printed is that of general interest and no one wants that either.  People want things that appeal to them, so in that line of thinking, they can instantly access the news that appeals to them online, rather than have to sift through stories upon stories that hold no interest to them.

Instant gratification, it's the American way.

Crosbie said that one out of six people worldwide use the internet for their source of news, and I can completely see the reasoning behind it.  I myself am lazy, I would rather log onto the Chicago Tribune and see the latest updates than watch the news or wait for the daily edition of the newspaper the next day.  Breaking news is now instantaneous (which in itself is problematic because facts can be wrong and incomplete), but it is the way of the future.

I agree that there is no general interest anymore, there is just a wealth of information that applies to different people.  

Part I

The first part of the series is not as interesting as the first, at least in my opinion.  Crosbie still makes some good points, mainly that the newspaper industry is failing and there is nothing you can do to save it.

The industry seems to think that packaging things, adding multimedia content and other Web things will make the newspaper "hip" again.  The fact of the matter is that it is a failing medium.  It's scary because it's the field that most of us are entering into.  Still, it is not the industries fault, it's the shift in the demand (yes the Econ slowly sunk in) of the general public.  The readers are to blame for the state of American journalism, not the advertisers or the owners.  The readers have the ability to make or break a medium.

The internet is not yet decided as a serious medium for information.  There are reputable sites, but there are equally if not more sites that are not.  The "Gray" age of journalism is upon us, and we have the power to shape it in which ever way we see fit.

Missy