Tag Archives: journalism

Zotero makes research, screen caps easy

Posted on February 23, 2009 | Leave a comment

If you don’t know about Zotero, your life is about to become easier.

Zotero is free software that helps you do research. It is a Firefox extension that allows you to keep PDFs, screen caps and citations. If you are doing academic work, it will even keep the citations in your preferred style (APA, for example).

Want to collect screen caps (images of web sites on your screen)? Zotero makes it easy. Press the Zotero button and it’s done. And, better than some other ways of screen capping I’ve tried, Zotero captures the full page. I can scroll down to the end.

The only negative to Zotero is it stays with your browser on your computer, so if you work on multiple computers, you’ll need to transfer work on a flash drive.

I’m working on a paper on college newspaper web sites and Zotero has already helped me do screen caps and get organized. If it can help me get organized, it can help anyone. :-)

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Posted in teaching, tools

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Education official uses own typos for good

Posted on February 6, 2009 | Leave a comment

What a great idea for a news story.

The BBC reports that England’s Schools Minister is now asking students to pay more attention to proofreading and using his own error-ridden blog as an example of why you should be careful.

I bet if education reporters in the United States looked at communication from school officials it wouldn’t be too hard to find typos and errors. Why not do a story about it?

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Posted in great stories, teaching

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Name 14-year-old accused of shooting cop?

Posted on February 5, 2009 | Leave a comment

A police officer in Rochester, NY, was shot in the head while walking away from a group that police had questioned but not arrested.  Three days later, a 14-year-old turns himself into police, according to police and judicial officials at a press conference. They did not name him during the press conference.

The child (and to me, a 14-year-old is a child, not a man) pleaded not guilty to first-degree assault and second-degree attempted murder. Although charged as a juvenile, his case is in adult court and his name was in The Democrat & Chronicle’s news story Feb. 4 and his photo was on the web site. His face and name were also all over R-News, WHEC-TV,  WOKR-TV and WROC-TV.

The child had been in trouble with the law before this and had not reported to the people supervising him since April 2008, according to the D&C. The D&C’s editorial board is right to ask, “How is it that a 14-year-old can go for nearly a year without reporting for adult supervision as required?”

I’m not sure, however, that the D&C and other Rochester area news media are right to use this child’s name and image. He is innocent until proven guilty and he is 14. Just because journalists have the name and image does not mean they should use them.

The shooting has been an emotional story that has gripped the Rochester, NY, region. Prayers, donations and messages of support for the police officer and his family rightfully abound.

My concern is that, after the media coverage, this child, regardless of the verdict, will never be seen as anything but an attempted cop killer. Some of the people posting reactions to today’s D&C story are already calling for the death penalty and talking as if he has been convicted. This child has already been sentenced for life.

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Posted in Ethics, Media Law, technology

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Dear President Obama …

Posted on January 5, 2009 | Leave a comment

The Buffalo News features a nice editorial on why President-elect Obama should make a federal shield law a priority. (A shield law is a law that protects journalists from having to reveal confidential sources. Currently, some states have shield laws, but there is no federal shield law. Check here to see if your state has one.)

The Society of Professional Journalists has also recently called upon Obama to support a federal shield law as he indicated he would do during the campaign.

With the economy and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, it’s safe to say that gathering support for a federal shield law is not one of Obama’s top priorities. However, it should be. If we are going to get this country back on track, we need journalists to hold people in power accountable. To do that, they need to know they are not going to face prison for reporting an accurate story with an anonymous source whom they refuse to reveal. Journalists want “change we can believe in,” too.

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Posted in Media Law, newspapers

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Female newscasters face same old battles?

Posted on December 19, 2008 | Leave a comment

WIVB-TV, Buffalo’s top-rated news station, fired a long-time morning news anchor this week. By all accounts, she was liked and had a good reputation. She was, however, not your typical female TV news anchor. Although attractive, she was not a young, slender, model-like woman. (See an older clip of Lisa here.)

My first thought was she was fired because of her weight. I was not alone. Posts to The Buffalo News’s Talkin’ TV blog echoed my thought. For example, one poster writes:

I don’t care if the person reading the news weighs 250 or 85, is 4″2″ or 6’6″. All I care about, is that they know how to read, and do it in a professional manner. Lisa Scott did so, for many years for Ch 4, and to get rid of her is stupid, stupid, stupid.

I realize these are hard economic times and journalists everywhere are losing their jobs. WIVB says Scott’s firing was part of a restructuring of the station. (Lisa wasn’t the only one to lose her job. Reporter Ellen Maxwell, who had worked for WIVB for eight years, and an internet manager lost theirs, too.) I also realize that salaries for new reporters are a helluva lot less than for experienced ones.

However, I can’t help but think about Christine Craft and whether things have really changed much for female TV anchors and journalists. More than 25 years ago Craft was fired from her job as a TV anchor following a consultant’s report that said viewers thought she was too old, not attractive enough and not deferential enough to men. She sued and initially won her sex discrimination case, although that judgment was overturned eventually on appeal.

For Lisa Scott and others like her, I can’t help but think that things have not changed as much as we would like.

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Posted in women in journalism

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NYT columnist just NOW starts Twittering?!

Posted on December 4, 2008 | Leave a comment

I got tweet from Romensko today about the fact that Times columnist Nicholas Kristof is now on Twitter. Romensko wonders if other Times columnists will follow.

You are kidding me, right? Just NOW getting on Twitter? I don’t blame Kristof. He’s actually doing it. I do blame the New York Times. Writers at local papers are on Twitter. Reporters at TV stations are on Twitter. Thanks for joining the crowd, NYT. I can’t imagine why newspapers are in trouble. (And believe me, I love newspapers and want them to survive!)

Let’s hope this is a case of it’s better late than never.

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Posted in newspapers, technology

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