Clash of media cultures

Take a look at this story and photo in the New York Times. The photograph, taken by Reuters, shows a Palestinian infant who was killed in a rocket attack being buried. It's tragic, but it's also an illustration of clashing media cultures. In the Arab world, images of death are routine. In the United States, they are unusual. Yet the Times, by publishing such an image, finds itself straddling both cultures.

Photojournalism ethics

For Thursday's class, please make sure you've done the reading for Week 8. I have some news in that regard. The university is in the process of moving the server on which our Syllabus and Online Reading List are located. You will now find it here. This is supposedly being done for security purposes, and it is not anything over which I have any control.

I also found that Dana Milbank's Washington Post story was no longer where it was when I put the list together. I've discovered a new link, and it should work just fine.

Attribution and citation

Almost the same thing. But not quite. I've gotten enough questions about this that I want to go over it one more time before you hand in your research papers on Thursday. This is a formal research paper — it's not a news story, and it's not a personal essay, although I know that a few of you are writing about a personal experience you've had.

The confusion that seems to arise is when you want to quote someone who was interviewed in an article. For instance, let's say Montana Republican-Democrat editor Melanie Cooper is quoted in an article in the American Journalism Review as saying the following: "Ever since the Stephen Glass scandal, we've made it a policy to run photos with any story where there might be questions about whether the people we portray actually exist."

Now, hold that thought. At the end of your paper you will include a bibliography that will list your primary and secondary sources. One of those sources will be the article in which Cooper's quote originally appeared. Your citation — keeping in mind that this is a fictional example — should look something like this:

Stevens, Peter. "After Glass, Editors Seek New Tools for Credibility." American Journalism Review, May/June 2004. http://www.ajr.org/credibility.html

(I'd do a hanging indent, but I don't know how in Blogger.)

All right, then. Let's return to your paper. Here's a paragraph that you might write:

Aficionados of the movie "Shattered Glass" may recall the moment when the office secretary tells New Republic editor Charles Lane that Glass never would have been able to get away with as much as he did if the magazine ran photographs with its stories. Sure enough, that's exactly what Melanie Cooper, editor of the Montana Republican-Democrat, is doing. "Ever since the Stephen Glass scandal, we've made it a policy to run photos with any story where there might be questions about whether the people we portray actually exist," Cooper said (Stevens).

As you can see, the paragraph contains both an attribution, to Cooper, and a citation, to Stevens. And we know what you mean by "Stevens" because, when we turn to the bibliography, we see the full citation for his article in the AJR.

You may use traditional footnoting if you wish, but in-text citations seem to be the way most research papers are formatted these days. As I have told you, I am not hung up on format; but I insist on thoroughness.

Some of you who have more experience writing research papers may wonder why I do not italicize the titles of magazines and newspapers (and books and movies). The reason is simple: I'm trying to follow AP style as much as possible. As you know (or as you should know), there are no italics in AP style. This is a holdover from the days when teletype machines literally couldn't transmit italic type. Even though that has long since ceased to be the case, AP style still hasn't caught up.

Because this is not a newswriting course, I will not mind if you choose to follow the more formal style of using italics for magazine, newspaper, book, television-show and movie titles. But please try to be consistent.

The New York Times' McCain story

We'll be devoting our entire class on Monday to the New York Times story on John McCain, which suggests, on the basis of suspicions voiced by two anonymous sources, that McCain may have had a sexual affair with a lobbyist during the 2000 presidential campaign.

There are three pieces that you need to read for Monday's class. Please print them out, make notes on them and bring them to class. Here they are, with links:

• The Times story
• A Washington Post story on the same subject, but handled very differently
• A New Republic article giving the background on the Times story

There may be other materials, including (I'm sure) some video. But we'll deal with that in class. I do not want to take the time for everyone to read these three articles. Please come prepared and ready to talk.

We'll deal with the ethics of photojournalism next Thursday.

What would you do?

Roger Darrigrand, a photographer for The Eagle-Tribune of Lawrence, poses a dilemma. If you're taking pictures and someone gets hurt, should you keep shooting? Or should you drop your cameras and help out? Please read how he answered that question. We'll talk about it a bit at the beginning of class on Thursday.

Tweaks to our schedule

If you're one of those students who likes to print out the syllabus and carry it around for the rest of the semester, then I want to let you know that you should do it again. I have made a few tweaks to reflect some changes in our schedule.

The most important is that your 750-word news story is now due on April 7 rather than April 3. This is to accommodate the fact that former Boston Globe ombudsman Richard Chacón will be our guest speaker on April 3. It makes sense that it is he whom you would make the subject of that story.

Media-concentration slides

You can download my PowerPoint presentation on media concentration by clicking here. I've also added it to the course documents, at right. I didn't get all the way through my presentation today, so I'll give it another go on Thursday. The I.S. people tell me that they thought we were in 39 Snell rather than 31, and thus couldn't find us.

Please make sure you are caught up in your reading by Thursday. I would like to try a classroom exercise during the last half-hour or so.