Internship Update

Oh has the last week been a hectic one.

Last Thursday I rolled out of bed around 2:30 pm, after a long night at work. When I instinctively opened my computer to check my email, much to my surprise, I saw an email from Brian Brooks, a professor at the University of Missouri, and a director with the Dow Jones Newspaper Fund.

After giving him a call, I was offered a 10-week paid copy editing internship with The Detroit News.

Later that evening, I received another interesting offer, a 10-week reporting internship with the Columbus Dispatch during the fall.

Now, I don’t want to come across as an ungrateful, arrogant kid — gloating in my good fortunes. I write this brief post as an encouragement to all of the journalism students out there engaged in the endless game of applying for and being rejected from newspaper internships.

This fall, I probably mailed 20-30 applications, in addition to the dozen or so that I submitted via email. And, I know that my efforts are being duplicated by aspiring journalists across the country.

The rejections are always expected, so the most discouraging response to receive from a recruiter is that the paper is in fact cutting it’s internship program.

Unfortunately, I received quite a few of those responses this year.

Newspaper internships still do exist, and though it is a financially, and emotionally taxing process, mailing application after application does pay off in the long run.

The Call and Post vs. Nina Turner

The Call and Post, Cleveland’s 90-year-old black newspaper, took State Sen. Nina Turner to task last week for being the only black politician in the Greater Cleveland area to support ballot Issue 6, a county government reform measure which passed with 66 percent of the vote.

Last week's editorial cartoon

Tomorrow’s edition of the weekly paper will feature a front page editorial defending last week’s front page editorial and cartoon which depicted Turner using an Aunt Jemima caricature.

The editorial sharply criticizes Turner, demanding she stop claiming to have been attacked by other leaders in the black community unless she is willing to give names, and calling her a white-appointed leader for the black community, rather than a legitimate political leader.

Backlash from the cartoon and editorial came swiftly.

As of this morning, a Facebook group titled “We Demand An Apology For Call and Post’s Aunt Jemima Editorial” had close to 600 members, Cleveland columnist Phillip Morris called for the NAACP to reprimand Cleveland President George Forbes (who serves as The Call and Post’s legal counsel and influences editorial decisions) and local black political and religious leaders have condemned the editorial.

The PD reported today:

…prominent black business leader Brian Hall, chairman of Industrial Inventory Solutions, has been calling on Forbes to step down from his NAACP post over his support for the cartoon.”We cannot let a black man publicly denigrate a black woman and in the process destroy the fabric of two great institutions that have served our community for over a century,” Hall wrote in an e-mail to community leaders that was still being passed around Tuesday.

…

At Monday night’s Cleveland City Council meeting, Councilmen Eugene Miller and Kevin Conwell, both black, rose to call out the Call & Post, which has a large black readership.

Miller, who joined the council in May, said its was despicable.

“How do I explain this to my 18-year-old?,” he asked.

Conwell, recently elected to his third term, said he was “very disturbed” by the cartoon. He said that it not only was a slap to blacks, but also to women.

“How do we expect our sons to respect women when the media’s not even doing it?” he said.

The United Pastors in Mission, an influential group of religious leaders condemned the cartoon Tuesday and requested a meeting with the Call & Post.

Nina Turner

The Plain Dealer criticized both Forbes and the Call and Post in an editorial yesterday, however, if there is going to be real change in the old guard politics of Cleveland’s black community the call has to come from within the community, not from the region’s leading news paper.

Area-leaders, regardless of whether they supported or opposed Issue 6 need to take a strong stance and reprimand The Call and Post. While the black community may not back Turner’s views on government reform, it needs to recognize that using century-old caricatures to further an us-vs.-them mentality only further disenfranchises blacks from the county political system.

Cuyahoga county’s black political leaders — Peter Lawson Jones, Marcia Fudge and Frank Jackson, among others — need to make strong statements, saying that this type of mudslinging is not only unproductive but, in fact, unacceptable.

Issue of Award-Winning High School Paper Scrapped

This headline in the Chicago Tribune caught my eye last week.

For those of you who didn’t follow the link, the most recent issue of The Statesman, the student-run newspaper at Stevenson High School in Lincolnshire, Ill., was halted after school administrators objected to three stories about honor students drinking and smoking, teen pregnancy and shoplifting.

The Tribune reported:

The ban is the latest rift between administrators and student journalists for the Statesman, regarded as one of the premier student newspapers in Illinois and the nation. Concerns about content last year led to the resignation of the paper’s faculty adviser, Barbara Thill.

In the most recent incident, administrators on the paper’s review board warned editor Pam Selman, a senior, not to submit a front-page story by senior managing editor Evan Ribot about students in the National Honor Society and freshmen mentors program.

In it, two students, quoted anonymously, admitted to drinking and smoking, which are prohibited under the society’s no-use contract.

The administrators warned that they would ask for the students’ names and potentially take disciplinary action against them, Selman said.

Rather than revealing their sources, the paper’s staff decided to submit a blank front page to the board on Tuesday, she said, with a note to readers about why the story wasn’t there.

On Wednesday, the paper’s advisers told staff the administrative review board had problems with the blank front page — plus the pregnancy and shoplifting stories — and would spike the issue. Administrators said the teen pregnancy story lacked balance, Selman said.

This isn’t the first time The Statesman has faced administrative oversight this calender year.

The controversial spread from February

Back in February, I wrote about the previous conflict, which involved administrators adding a new level of censorship and the disappearance of 34,000 copies of the paper after it ran a package subjects including: teen drinking, sex games and one-night stands.

In April, Thill announced she was stepping down as the paper’s advisor, in large part due to the new content restrictions.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem like the paper’s new advisers value journalistic integrity as much as Thill does, at least not according to a statement released by the school which states:

The Statesman’s publication, originally scheduled for Friday, November 20, was delayed because its faculty advisors determined that an article featuring anonymous sources discussing alleged illegal activity was not fit for print.

The advisors gave the student editors an option of holding the article for a future issue so it could be more thoroughly reported, and redesigning the current issue’s layout in order to meet their printing deadline.

The students’ preference, however, was to leave the front cover bare except for a brief note explaining that an article intended for the space was not allowed to run as written. As a result, a collaborative decision was made by the leaders of the journalism program to delay the issue’s publication until the questions about the article’s sourcing could be resolved.

Part of me really hopes this is a cheap attempt by the school district to pass the blame to the faculty advisers. But, if they really did approve the censorship of well-reported stories of sensitive issues based solely on pressure from the administration they need to go back to (or just go to) journalism school.

The most disturbing part of the statement comes later on:

What occurred with the Statesman was no different than what occurs in professional newsrooms around the country every day. Stories are withheld from public view until editors are satisfied that proper levels of reporting have been done. The journalism teachers are simply following long-standing practices of the journalism profession. Rather than rushing an issue into print in order to meet a deadline, the journalism program wisely decided to delay the paper’s publication until all the articles slated to appear have been thoroughly reported and properly sourced.

Yes, articles are subject to editing, revision and oversight in professional newsrooms. However, when it comes to reporting on sensitive subjects, it is ludicrous to suggest that a professional newsroom would refuse to allow a reporter any freedom to use unnamed sources.

When Black-on-White Crime Gets Personal

It’s been a long week.

Christopher Kernich

Multiple outlets reported early this week that 23-year-old Chris Kernich, a student at Kent State University was attacked late last Saturday night by two Akron-area college students. The Cleveland Plain Dealer, among other outlets, reported this Kernich was pronounced dead at 4:30 pm this afternoon.

Kernich is white, his two alleged attackers — Ronald Kelly Nunn, 20, and Adrian Barker, 21 — are black.

In interest of full disclosure I have to clarify something early on. I attended Shaker Heights High School with both Kelly-Nunn and Barker. The former was probably the first person I met on my first day of 8th grade at Shaker Middle School. As for Barker, I played soccer with him, had the pleasure of working with him in the Student Group on Race Relations and, since graduating, have spent a handful of weekend nights hanging out with him.

Both are great guys, an impression that I’ll always have of them, regardless of how this all plays out.

Kernich was also a great guy.

The Springfield News Sun reported Thursday:

A 6-foot-3, 185-pound senior, Kernich was a three-sport athlete at Fairborn High School, playing football, baseball and basketball.

Fairborn Mayor elect Joan Dautel, the high school’s former athletic director, said Kernich was a stand-out.

“I remember him more from baseball than anything else,” she said. “He was a pitcher for us. He was an intense kid, a good student. This just boggles me that someone would assault him like that. He was not the type of kid who would have brought anything like that on. It’s tough to hear.”

Kernich’s extensive sports skills were very unusual, she added. “Three-sport athletes are few and far between. He was just a good kid, he was real determined. I’m really shocked.”

Tom Kirsch, senior class adviser at Fairborn High, said, “Chris was a very outgoing young man who was very involved with athletics and his class in general. Our hearts and prayers go out to him and his family.”

The Kernich family has been in my thoughts are prayers all week. Losing someone you love is always heartbreaking, and my heart really goes out to Chris’ family and friends.

Last weekend’s assault and the impending trial has provoked all kinds of online dialogue about both the situation and the media coverage of the situation.

As a member of the media, I get a little defensive when people start in with the typical “don’t trust the media, they’re all full of lies” nonsense — of which there has been plenty in this case. However, I do think initial reports about this crime made a few crucial errors.

Adrian Barker

First and foremost, NO outlet, until the Plain Dealer’s article about Kernich’s death today, reported that Barker and Nunn were themselves college students. This may seem trivial, but I’d argue is a crucial distinction in the public’s perception of this case. What was a fight between two groups of college students was manipulated into an attack by two black “Akron men” on one white college student. That oversight on the part of those covering this crime has turned what should be a dialogue about the effects of alcohol on suburban college students into a tired discussion of black crime by alleged “thugs.”

The fact that Barker and Nunn are black is irrelevant. The fact that Kernich was white is equally irrelevant.

Ronald Kelly Nunn

Another problem I had with the coverage was inconsistency and a lack of clarity about Kernich’s condition. Initial reports said Kernich was taken to Akron City Hospital, although a call to the hospital produced potentially confusing reports because Akron City Hospital said, to me as well as a number of other reporters, that no one named Christopher Kernich had ever been checked in. Where the media failed the public was by not clarifying that, if they so desire, a family can have a patient removed from the hospital’s list in an attempt to control what information gets out to the public.

Rather than clarifying that, multiple outlets reported that Kernich was not listed as a patient and that his body had not been received by the county coroner — adding to speculation that Kernich was already dead.

With all of that said, I don’t think this is a black and white issue.

The fact remains, a man is dead. And, if a jury of their peers finds Barker and Nunn guilty they deserve to serve serious time. No matter what Kernich said to them, nothing justifies taking another person’s life.

This isn’t about race. I repeat, this isn’t about race.

If two white students from Kent State had come to Akron, and — after an argument — gotten in a fight and killed a black college student, there would be outrage, protests and we’d have to listen to the Rev. Jesse Jackson foam at the mouth every time we turned on the news.

The fact of the matter is we’ve yet to see any evidence that race played any factor in this case. And because of that, I have to ask why so many people on both sides of this are so quick to support or defame these young men based solely on race.

The list on blogs, online commenters and Facebook groups calling this an attack by two black thugs is disgusting. (Here are a few: Nation of Cowards, Underprivileged Journalism , Stuff Black People Don’t Like, Latest Blog, Why Blacks Suck)  But with that said, I’m not dumb enough to think we live in a post-racial world. Bigots and racist idiots will always exist. They will always call for racial separation and discrimination every time a black man commits a crime against a white victim. In the four years I spent working with the aforementioned Student Group on Race Relations, one of things we often reinforced was that the only way to handle these people is to defy those stereotypes, and engage in intelligent dialogue. Unfortunately, the actions of these two men have seemingly reinforced a stereotype, but my hope is that the various communities involved will turn this discussion away from the harmful slew of racism it has turned into.

As for those who have jumped to support Adrian and Ronald, I’d ask that you don’t allow emotion and commodore with these two men to cloud your vision. Decrying the media and the judicial system because these two young men happen to be black is as ignorant as it would be to assume they’re guilty because of their race.

The black community needs to police itself. We need to stop letting the dogmatic defense of black criminals ruin our public perception and perpetuate a cycle of violence and hatred.

These two men weren’t arrested because they were black, they were arrested because they are suspected of killing a man. And, personal relationships with the two of them aside, I hope they are granted a speedy and fair trial. And, that doesn’t mean a trial that finds them not guilty.

R.I.P. Chris Kernich

Jayson Blair on Journalism Ethics… No, Really.

Journalism blogs went crazy a few weeks ago after word got out that Jayson Blair, notorious for bamboozling the New York Times with dozens of made up stories, sources and anecdotes, would give the keynote address at Washington and Lee University’s Knight Program in Journalism Ethics.

The speech titled “Lessons Learned,” was the first time Blair has spoken out about the horrendous infractions of basic journalistic ethics, and described his fall from grace as a steady progression.

“If I had been asked one day whether  I wanted to destroy my career, trash my profession and undermine belief in journalism, I would have unambiguously declined regardless of the potential benefits,” said Blair. “But life’s difficult choices rarely present themselves as one dramatic question…”

The Roanoke Times reported:

Blair spoke to about 150 students, journalism professionals and professors at W&L’s Journalism Ethics Institute on Friday night. He had plagiarized and fabricated facts in about half of his 73 stories at one of the nation’s leading newspapers more than six years earlier. He has said that this would be the last time he would speak publicly about his transgressions and 2003 resignation.

…

Upon his resignation, The New York Times published a 7,200-word article in May 2003. “The widespread fabrication and plagiarism represent a profound betrayal of trust and a low point in the 152-year history of the newspaper,” the story began.

He’s since rebuilt his life, now employed as a life coach specializing in substance abuse, mood, developmental and attention deficit disorders in Northern Virginia. He will still be willing to talk in classes and private discussions about his journalism career, he said.

So why should anyone trust Blair now?

“I don’t know,” he said, microphone off, moments before walking onto the stage.

The third time that question was asked, in the final minutes of the presentation, it came from CBS “Sunday Morning” producer Jon Carras.

“People have to decide for themselves what they’re willing to believe,” Blair responded.

Blair’s transgressions did exactly what he said they did: ruined his promising career, trashed journalism as a whole and undermined the public confidence in the media.

But, as reprehensible as many of his actions were, the Jayson Blair scandal forced papers to address the glaring ethical issues in newsrooms across the country.

It is naive to hope that there will never again be a journalist as unethical as Blair, but the knowledge that anyone, myself included, could have a similar fall from grace is the first step to preventing such journalistic tragedy.

Student reporters charged with trespassing while reporting on trespassing

Last February I wrote an article looking at the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, a a nonprofit organization that tracks alleged violations

Foundation for Individual Rights in Education

of free speech at colleges. Today, FIRE posted an interesting link on its Twitter account.

Apparently, two student journalists at The Breeze, the independent student newspaper at James Madison University, are facing charges from university police after they entered a dorm room to interview students about a crime alert.

The Breeze

The Breeze reported:

Judicial Affairs has charged two Breeze journalists for alleged disorderly conduct while reporting, possibly violating their constitutional rights.Tim Chapman, editor-in-chief, and Katie Hibson, a contributing news writer, were notified by e-mail Thursday afternoon of the charges: trespassing, disorderly conduct and non-compliance with an official request.

Judicial Affairs Director Josh Bacon was out of the office Friday and unable to comment. He has previously said that ongoing cases are confidential.

Adam Goldstein, attorney advocate for the Student Press Law Center, said the charges go against the First Amendment rights not just for journalists but for everyone.

“We all have the rights to ask questions if we want to,” Goldstein said. “It’s a pretty straight forward case.”

On Sunday, Hibson, a sophomore media arts and design major, was investigating the Oct. 14 trespassing incident in Hillside Hall, which The Breeze learned about when JMU sent a “Timely Notice” e-mail Sunday morning. Hibson said she was invited into the residence hall Sunday afternoon when she identified herself as a reporter. She said she was invited into the building by resident Ariel Spagnolo, who Hibson said was no more than 15 feet away as she interviewed people. After identifying herself to Resident Adviser Maria Lane, Hibson said she was asked to leave, which she promptly did.

Hibson returned to Hillside later in the afternoon with Chapman, a senior media arts and design major, while accompanied by a resident who also works on The Breeze staff. After trying to interview residents, Hibson said Hall Director Sarah Woody and Lane asked them to leave the building, and Woody then called police.

The fact that judicial officials not only had the audacity to kick these reporters out of the dorm, but also have a legal view so skewed as to believe they can justify pressing charges is truly mind-boggling. As student reporters, both Chapman and Hibson have ever right to enter any dormitory on campus, especially when accompanied by a student who resides in that dorm.

In my time at The Post, I’ve had to enter unfamiliar dorms on numerous occasions, but, at least for now, the residence life officials haven’t made an issue of it. There is nothing wrong with a reporter, who has identified themselves as a reporter, asking questions. In fact, it’s our job. The funny thing is, in far to many cases, universities try to stifle the First Amendment freedoms that our tuition dollars are paying them to teach us about.

The case at James Madison seems pretty open and shut. The school’s Student Handbook, disorderly conduct is any disturbance “that interrupts the orderly operation of the university and/or infringes on the rights of community members.” The student reporters did nothing to violate this policy, and left when they were asked.

Part of me really hopes James Madison’s administrators continue to pursue this case so a judge can set the public precedent that blatant violations of student journalists by colleges and universities are not acceptable. Whether that happens or not, these journalists should be both supported and commended.

French government hands out free newspapers

I wish I lived in France.

For the record: France is still lame, but the "My Free Newspaper" program is pretty boss

That may seem like a strange but fairly irrelevant statement, so for context, I’ll clarify that I hate France and all things French. I can’t stand the French language, French movies, French food…I can’t even stand most people who study French.

But with that said, this headline on NYTimes.com caught my eye yesterday, and I must admit, the French have gotten something right, in a major way.

Basically, the French government has started a program in which they give out subscriptions to any newspaper to people ages 18 to 24-years-old.

Let me just go on the record now and say, this is the coolest thing I’ve ever heard of.

Newspapers have tried many things to stave off a seemingly relentless decline in readers. Now France is pushing forward with a novel approach: giving away papers to young readers in an effort to turn them into regular customers.The government Tuesday detailed plans of a project called “My Free Newspaper,” under which 18- to 24-year-olds will be offered a free, yearlong subscription to a newspaper of their choice.

“Winning back young readers is essential for the financial survival of the press, and for its civic dimension,” the culture minister, Frédéric Mitterrand, said.

About 60 publications are participating in the new project. In addition to papers like Le Monde and Le Figaro, they include a variety of local publications, as well as the Paris-based International Herald Tribune, the global edition of The New York Times. Even L’Équipe, a popular sports daily, is taking part.

Costs of the project are being shared by the newspapers and the state, with the government allocating €15 million, or $22.5 million, over three years.

The government said 30,000 people had already signed up for free subscriptions under a preregistration program with individual newspapers; a special Web site will be available soon to speed the process.

I repeat, this is awesome.

Now, I won’t argue that this program will successfully stall the slow and painful death of newspapers as we know and love them. I firmly believe that the newspaper industry has become bloated and is currently undergoing a necessary purge partnered with a re-prioritization. If newspapers are going to survive, it is going to be due to their ability to innovate in the areas of multimedia and social media, as well as their ability to break news in ways no other medium can offer.

With that said, the French government’s institutional support for the newspaper industry is something I can only pray the U.S. government will copy. This industry needs all the backing it can get, and winning over young readers by incentivizing reading a newspaper is a pretty solid way to provide that support.

Major Daily Newspapers See Big Drop in Circulation

Well, it’s that time of year. The most depressing, humbling and upsetting day of the year: the release of the Audit Report of Circulations —which so kindly details how many people have stopped picking up newspapers over the last six months.

The Wall Street Journal

Editor and Publisher released circulation numbers for March-Sept. 2009, and as could be expected, numbers are way down for the country’s top 25.

The Wall Street Journal was the ONLY member of the top 25 to register an increase in circulation, up .61 percent from last year. The biggest registered loss in circulation came from The San Francisco Chronicle, which lost 25.82 percent of circulation, followed closely by the Newark Star-Ledger, down 22.22 percent.

My hometown paper, The Cleveland Plain Dealer came in at a -11.24 percent change.

The papers which gained the most in circulation, (yes, there really are papers that had an increase in circulation), were the York Daily Record (+16.45), Women’s Wear Daily (+14.31), The Oakland Press (+7.26), Las Vegas Review-Journal (+6.56), and The Chattanooga Times Free Press (+2.18).

Overall, daily newspaper circulation dipped 10.6 percent, to 30,395,652.

Responding to Readers: Is it worth it?

This morning I saw an interesting article via Twitter from the Romenesko blog: WP ombud: It’s “suicidal” for reporters to ignore e-mails from readers.

In interest of full disclosure I need to clarify two things. The first, is that I tend to read most if not all articles I see from newspaper ombudsmen because this year the editors at The Post have discussed the possibility of hiring an ombudsman. The second, is that I ALWAYS read articles by Washington Post ombudsman Andy Alexander, because he is a former editor of The Post and I had the pleasure of interviewing him last spring.

Andy Alexander

In his column yesterday, Alexander discussed a new policy at The Washington Post that lists each reporter’s email address at the bottom of each of their articles. The inclusion of reporter contact info was a small change when compared to the massive redesign the paper underwent this week, but Alexander noted that he’s already gotten feedback on the move.

Adding reporters’ e-mail addresses at the bottom of stories responds to frequent reader exasperation over not knowing how to contact Post journalists. But already, several readers have complained to me that reporters haven’t responded to their e-mails. It’s a chronic problem in newsrooms. Many busy reporters are overwhelmed by e-mails. But too many simply refuse, or are too lazy, to respond. With newspaper survival at stake, that’s suicidal.

That’s a stong statement, but it’s an accurate statement. Journalists need to prioritize correspondence with their readership, because in any market, maintaining and nurturing the relationship with your readership is vital to your credibility —and your survival. In an ever-changing industry, newspaper reporters have to be open and receptive to feedback from readers, both good and bad.

Job-stealing Celebrities?

Jenna Bush Hager

The Associated Press reported today that Jenna Bush Hager, daughter of former-President George W. Bush, has been hired as a correspondent by NBC’s “Today” show, and will contribute monthly pieces to the show.

Hager, a 27-year-old teacher in Baltimore, said she has always wanted to be a teacher and a writer, and has already authored two books. But she was intrigued by the idea of getting into television when (Executive Producer Jim )Bell contacted her.

“It wasn’t something I’d always dreamed to do,” she said. “But I think one of the most important things in life is to be open-minded and to be open-minded for change.”

Steve Harvey

Hager’s new employment comes one week after “Good Morning America” announced that comedian Steve Harvey will join the show, contributing a series of reports covering a variety of issues.

These two celebrities join the ranks of broadcast journalism as the profession hopes to climb it’s way out of it’s darkest hour –marked by layoffs, buyouts and unemployment.

Reaction on the members-only forum of the National Association of Black Journalists was mixed.

Many argued that by taking these positions as correspondents celebrities are stealing jobs from unemployed journalists.

“It’s disheartening to read knowing that spot should’ve been taken by one of the many unemployed journalists, said Kathy Chaney,  a staff writer for the Chicago Defender. “Does Steve really need this on his resume?”

Eugene Kane, a columnist for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, argued that there is no need being upset when celebrities like Harvey become correspondents, because the jobs wouldn’t have been filled by journalists anyway.

“There’s no need decrying the hiring of Harvey or Hughley or any other entertainment figure who gets a gig on one of these ‘news show’. They know what they want, and it’s a star correspondent who will attract ratings.” He said.

“Clearly, they weren’t going to hire a real journalist anyway; he’s not taking work away from anybody in NABJ.”

I’ve yet to decided how I feel about this issue, so I’m going to leave it open to you. Should networks hire celebrities to fill correspondent positions while thousands of professional journalists remain unemployed?

Let me know what you think