Thursday, May 21, 2009
Thanks for a fine semester
Folks, grades are now posted for J201. Thanks for a fine semester! Please keep in touch, if you are so inclined, and keep reading the news!
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
Journalism Today
I just thought this article was interesting since it concerns journalsim, a low barrier of entry, and many other aspects of our J201 class that we were just tested on yesterday...
DUBLIN - When Dublin university student Shane Fitzgerald posted a poetic but phony quote on Wikipedia, he said he was testing how our globalized, increasingly Internet-dependent media was upholding accuracy and accountability in an age of instant news.
His report card: Wikipedia passed. Journalism flunked.
The sociology major's made-up quote — which he added to the Wikipedia page of Maurice Jarre hours after the French composer's death March 28 — flew straight on to dozens of U.S. blogs and newspaper Web sites in Britain, Australia and India.
They used the fabricated material, Fitzgerald said, even though administrators at the free online encyclopedia quickly caught the quote's lack of attribution and removed it, but not quickly enough to keep some journalists from cutting and pasting it first.
A full month went by and nobody noticed the editorial fraud. So Fitzgerald told several media outlets in an e-mail and the corrections began.
"I was really shocked at the results from the experiment," Fitzgerald, 22, said Monday in an interview a week after one newspaper at fault, The Guardian of Britain, became the first to admit its obituarist lifted material straight from Wikipedia.
"I am 100 percent convinced that if I hadn't come forward, that quote would have gone down in history as something Maurice Jarre said, instead of something I made up," he said. "It would have become another example where, once anything is printed enough times in the media without challenge, it becomes fact."
So far, The Guardian is the only publication to make a public mea culpa, while others have eliminated or amended their online obituaries without any reference to the original version — or in a few cases, still are citing Fitzgerald's florid prose weeks after he pointed out its true origin.
"One could say my life itself has been one long soundtrack," Fitzgerald's fake Jarre quote read. "Music was my life, music brought me to life, and music is how I will be remembered long after I leave this life. When I die there will be a final waltz playing in my head that only I can hear."
Fitzgerald said one of his University College Dublin classes was exploring how quickly information was transmitted around the globe. His private concern was that, under pressure to produce news instantly, media outlets were increasingly relying on Internet sources — none more ubiquitous than the publicly edited Wikipedia.
When he saw British 24-hour news channels reporting the death of the triple Oscar-winning composer, Fitzgerald sensed what he called "a golden opportunity" for an experiment on media use of Wikipedia.
He said it took him less than 15 minutes to fabricate and place a quote calculated to appeal to obituary writers without distorting Jarre's actual life experiences.
If anything, Fitzgerald said, he expected newspapers to avoid his quote because it had no link to a source — and even might trigger alarms as "too good to be true." But many blogs and several newspapers used the quotes at the start or finish of their obituaries.
Wikipedia spokesman Jay Walsh said he appreciated the Dublin student's point, and said he agreed it was "distressing so see how quickly journalists would descend on that information without double-checking it."
"We always tell people: If you see that quote on Wikipedia, find it somewhere else too. He's identified a flaw," Walsh said in a telephone interview from Wikipedia's San Francisco base.
But Walsh said there were more responsible ways to measure journalists' use of Wikipedia than through well-timed sabotage of one of the site's 12 million listings. "Our network of volunteer editors do thankless work trying to provide the highest-quality information. They will be rightly perturbed and irritated about this," he said.
Fitzgerald stressed that Wikipedia's system requiring about 1,500 volunteer "administrators" and the wider public to spot bogus additions did its job, removing the quote three times within minutes or hours. It was journalists eager for a quick, pithy quote that was the problem.
He said the Guardian was the only publication to respond to him in detail and with remorse at its own editorial failing. Others, he said, treated him as a vandal.
"The moral of this story is not that journalists should avoid Wikipedia, but that they shouldn't use information they find there if it can't be traced back to a reliable primary source," said the readers' editor at the Guardian, Siobhain Butterworth, in the May 4 column that revealed Fitzgerald as the quote author.
Walsh said this was the first time to his knowledge that an academic researcher had placed false information on a Wikipedia listing specifically to test how the media would handle it.
DUBLIN - When Dublin university student Shane Fitzgerald posted a poetic but phony quote on Wikipedia, he said he was testing how our globalized, increasingly Internet-dependent media was upholding accuracy and accountability in an age of instant news.
His report card: Wikipedia passed. Journalism flunked.
The sociology major's made-up quote — which he added to the Wikipedia page of Maurice Jarre hours after the French composer's death March 28 — flew straight on to dozens of U.S. blogs and newspaper Web sites in Britain, Australia and India.
They used the fabricated material, Fitzgerald said, even though administrators at the free online encyclopedia quickly caught the quote's lack of attribution and removed it, but not quickly enough to keep some journalists from cutting and pasting it first.
A full month went by and nobody noticed the editorial fraud. So Fitzgerald told several media outlets in an e-mail and the corrections began.
"I was really shocked at the results from the experiment," Fitzgerald, 22, said Monday in an interview a week after one newspaper at fault, The Guardian of Britain, became the first to admit its obituarist lifted material straight from Wikipedia.
"I am 100 percent convinced that if I hadn't come forward, that quote would have gone down in history as something Maurice Jarre said, instead of something I made up," he said. "It would have become another example where, once anything is printed enough times in the media without challenge, it becomes fact."
So far, The Guardian is the only publication to make a public mea culpa, while others have eliminated or amended their online obituaries without any reference to the original version — or in a few cases, still are citing Fitzgerald's florid prose weeks after he pointed out its true origin.
"One could say my life itself has been one long soundtrack," Fitzgerald's fake Jarre quote read. "Music was my life, music brought me to life, and music is how I will be remembered long after I leave this life. When I die there will be a final waltz playing in my head that only I can hear."
Fitzgerald said one of his University College Dublin classes was exploring how quickly information was transmitted around the globe. His private concern was that, under pressure to produce news instantly, media outlets were increasingly relying on Internet sources — none more ubiquitous than the publicly edited Wikipedia.
When he saw British 24-hour news channels reporting the death of the triple Oscar-winning composer, Fitzgerald sensed what he called "a golden opportunity" for an experiment on media use of Wikipedia.
He said it took him less than 15 minutes to fabricate and place a quote calculated to appeal to obituary writers without distorting Jarre's actual life experiences.
If anything, Fitzgerald said, he expected newspapers to avoid his quote because it had no link to a source — and even might trigger alarms as "too good to be true." But many blogs and several newspapers used the quotes at the start or finish of their obituaries.
Wikipedia spokesman Jay Walsh said he appreciated the Dublin student's point, and said he agreed it was "distressing so see how quickly journalists would descend on that information without double-checking it."
"We always tell people: If you see that quote on Wikipedia, find it somewhere else too. He's identified a flaw," Walsh said in a telephone interview from Wikipedia's San Francisco base.
But Walsh said there were more responsible ways to measure journalists' use of Wikipedia than through well-timed sabotage of one of the site's 12 million listings. "Our network of volunteer editors do thankless work trying to provide the highest-quality information. They will be rightly perturbed and irritated about this," he said.
Fitzgerald stressed that Wikipedia's system requiring about 1,500 volunteer "administrators" and the wider public to spot bogus additions did its job, removing the quote three times within minutes or hours. It was journalists eager for a quick, pithy quote that was the problem.
He said the Guardian was the only publication to respond to him in detail and with remorse at its own editorial failing. Others, he said, treated him as a vandal.
"The moral of this story is not that journalists should avoid Wikipedia, but that they shouldn't use information they find there if it can't be traced back to a reliable primary source," said the readers' editor at the Guardian, Siobhain Butterworth, in the May 4 column that revealed Fitzgerald as the quote author.
Walsh said this was the first time to his knowledge that an academic researcher had placed false information on a Wikipedia listing specifically to test how the media would handle it.
Monday, May 04, 2009
What is your News IQ?
How up-to-date are you on current affairs? I gave this quiz to my section to see how they compared to the general public.Thought I would pass it along, if anyone else is interested in taking the quiz.
As part of the Pew Knowledge Project, people are invited to test their own news IQ by taking an interactive knowledge quiz available on the Pew Research Center website. The short quiz includes the same questions that were included in the national poll. Participants will instantly learn how they did in comparison with the general public as well as with people like them.
http://pewresearch.org/newsiq/
As part of the Pew Knowledge Project, people are invited to test their own news IQ by taking an interactive knowledge quiz available on the Pew Research Center website. The short quiz includes the same questions that were included in the national poll. Participants will instantly learn how they did in comparison with the general public as well as with people like them.
http://pewresearch.org/newsiq/
Friday, May 01, 2009
Essays for final exam
Essay questions to study for the Spring 2009 final exam:
Self-proclaimed media watchdogs from all sides of the political spectrum regularly charge the news media with "bias." Using specific examples, describe three techniques that a reader might use to judge quality in journalism. What is the greatest single threat to trust in journalism today, and what should journalists do about this?
Today it is commonplace to hear that national, regional, and local newspapers are in “crisis.” Using specific examples, describe three different challenges facing newspapers today. Does our society still need newspapers? If so, what should newspapers do in order to survive and prosper? If not, what form of mass communication should replace newspapers?
Even with the availability of global online media, television remains a major source of news for the US public. Describe the most important challenge facing television news at each of the three different scales of local news programs, national nightly news programs, and international 24-hour cable news channels. What is the greatest single effect of television news today, and how should other outlets for journalism (radio, print and/or online) respond to this?
Recently many voices from outside mainstream journalism have offered alternative visions of how the “truth telling and community building” purposes of journalism might be upheld through new social and technological means. Using specific examples, describe three different visions of this “new journalism”. What is the greatest single challenge to “old journalism” and how should a university-based School of Journalism and Mass Communication respond to this challenge?
Please note: There will also be a second essay question on the final exam which will cover the whole course. You will not receive a preview of this essay question. However, you might want to ponder some of the broad themes of the course, such as: (1) the relations between entertainment, persuasion, and journalism; (2) contradictions between private profit and public interest in the mass media; (3) how “new media” has or hasn’t impacted mass communication; and (4) the social purposes of mass communication and whether they are currently being met in our society.
Self-proclaimed media watchdogs from all sides of the political spectrum regularly charge the news media with "bias." Using specific examples, describe three techniques that a reader might use to judge quality in journalism. What is the greatest single threat to trust in journalism today, and what should journalists do about this?
Today it is commonplace to hear that national, regional, and local newspapers are in “crisis.” Using specific examples, describe three different challenges facing newspapers today. Does our society still need newspapers? If so, what should newspapers do in order to survive and prosper? If not, what form of mass communication should replace newspapers?
Even with the availability of global online media, television remains a major source of news for the US public. Describe the most important challenge facing television news at each of the three different scales of local news programs, national nightly news programs, and international 24-hour cable news channels. What is the greatest single effect of television news today, and how should other outlets for journalism (radio, print and/or online) respond to this?
Recently many voices from outside mainstream journalism have offered alternative visions of how the “truth telling and community building” purposes of journalism might be upheld through new social and technological means. Using specific examples, describe three different visions of this “new journalism”. What is the greatest single challenge to “old journalism” and how should a university-based School of Journalism and Mass Communication respond to this challenge?
Please note: There will also be a second essay question on the final exam which will cover the whole course. You will not receive a preview of this essay question. However, you might want to ponder some of the broad themes of the course, such as: (1) the relations between entertainment, persuasion, and journalism; (2) contradictions between private profit and public interest in the mass media; (3) how “new media” has or hasn’t impacted mass communication; and (4) the social purposes of mass communication and whether they are currently being met in our society.
Terms for final exam
Terms to study for the Spring 2009 J201 final exam:
anonymous source
balanced journalism
Bill O'Reilly
blogging
Capital Times
CNN
cross-ownership
crowdsourcing
culture wars
digital convergence
digital gold
downsizing
enterprise reporting
ethics
Fairness Doctrine
FAM score
fear appeals
FNC
Fourth Estate
global village
Googlezon
halo effect
happy talk
inverted pyramid
Jon Stewart
Kindle
layered journalism
lede
loss leader
mature industry
news agenda
news aggregator
news hole
news trigger
news frame
partisan journalism
percentage of US adults who are online
photo illustration
pro-active vs. restraining principles
profit center
reality TV
spike in viewership
stenographers to power
studio in a suitcase
underlying message
VNR
wall between reporting, opinion, and advertising
watchdog journalism
yellow journalism
Please note: I have been known to offer a small amount of extra credit on the final exam dealing with a current news event. (Once I even asked students to locate the countries of Iraq and Afghanistan on a map.) So you might want to watch, read, or listen to the news during the week before the exam.
anonymous source
balanced journalism
Bill O'Reilly
blogging
Capital Times
CNN
cross-ownership
crowdsourcing
culture wars
digital convergence
digital gold
downsizing
enterprise reporting
ethics
Fairness Doctrine
FAM score
fear appeals
FNC
Fourth Estate
global village
Googlezon
halo effect
happy talk
inverted pyramid
Jon Stewart
Kindle
layered journalism
lede
loss leader
mature industry
news agenda
news aggregator
news hole
news trigger
news frame
partisan journalism
percentage of US adults who are online
photo illustration
pro-active vs. restraining principles
profit center
reality TV
spike in viewership
stenographers to power
studio in a suitcase
underlying message
VNR
wall between reporting, opinion, and advertising
watchdog journalism
yellow journalism
Please note: I have been known to offer a small amount of extra credit on the final exam dealing with a current news event. (Once I even asked students to locate the countries of Iraq and Afghanistan on a map.) So you might want to watch, read, or listen to the news during the week before the exam.
Announcement: Daily Cardinal Advertising Recruitment Meeting
The Daily Cardinal will be holding a recruitment meeting for all students interested in selling print and online advertising for the 2009-10 Academic Year. All majors are encouraged and no experience is necessary. The Daily Cardinal is looking for highly motivated individuals to fill its Advertising Account Executive positions. As an Advertising Executive you will gain intangible knowledge and experience that will carry through to any career after graduation. All attendees will receive a free first-round interview!
WHO:
The Daily Cardinal Media Corporation
821 University Ave
Madison, WI 53706
WHERE:
Room 2195, Vilas Communications Hall
WHEN:
6:00 PM
Monday, May 4th, 2009
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
Extra credit #13
Dear Students:
You are invited to participate in a "media message evaluation" study.
The study will take place during the period of Monday, May 4 through Thursday, May 7. This study will require you to come to our lab. It will take no more than 20 minutes.
To participate in the study, you need to do two things: (1) complete an online signup, and (2) show up at the designated lab at the time of your session.
Please use the following url address to complete the online signup (You should do so ASAP):
http://mediastudy.ucdavis.edu/signup/
Please note the following:
1) All online registration will be closed by midnight on Sunday, May 3. Please complete sign-up on or prior to that day.
2) If you run into technical problem, please switch to using a different machine. The sign-up page might not work well with all computer setups or setups of different web browsers.
If you have questions or run into difficulties, please contact Sun Young Lee via email (sunyounglee@wisc.edu).
Thank you.
--
Sun Young Lee
Ph.D. Candidate
School of Journalism and Mass Communication
University of Wisconsin-Madison
Gawker picks up Cap Times story
The Cap Times story on the J school was picked up by Gawker ... showing up in one of my Google Reader feeds this afternoon.
They also touch on an interesting story from UW-Whitewater.
For a quick read, go here.
They also touch on an interesting story from UW-Whitewater.
For a quick read, go here.
CapTimes article on the future of journalism and education (comment challenge!)
Here's a link to the Cap Times article I mentioned in lecture today, "Students flock to journalism school despite tanking news industry". I hereby issue a friendly challenge J201 students to read it, reflect on it, and then comment on it. (And you might want to spend some time reading and rating the other reader comments as well.)
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