Compilation of Reactions to Collins' Coming Out

Yesterday was a landmark day in the world of sports, as Jason Collins became the first active professional male athlete to openly admit that he was gay, an announcement the world anticipated, but didn't know from whom or when it would come.  As expected, an issue as polarizing as homosexuality drew quite a reaction from athletes and celebrities alike.  Mother Jones did an awesome job pulling a huge number of these celebrity reactions together, and put them into one document, something I was hoping each news organization would do, because after the announcement, it's the reactions that make the news.  http://www.motherjones.com/mixed-media/2013/04/awesome-tweets-jason-collins-nba-gay-athlete .

Vine shows a halftime speed-portrait

Well, it looks like Vine is starting to catch on, folks.  I suppose this is a more practical use for it.  Last night, during an NBA playoff game between the Nets and the Bulls, a speed painter put together a halftime masterpiece of Brooklyn's all-star guard, Deron Williams.  It is impressive, to say the least, that someone could put something like this together in the 15-ish minutes that he had to do so.  What's more pertinent to the class however is the fact that Vine was used.  Nobody wants to watch a 15-minute video of a guy running around and painting.  Vine took this spectacle and seriously condensed it, making it more appealing to the online audience.  Take a look: http://ftw.usatoday.com/2013/04/amazing-artist-speed-paints-deron-williams-portrait-at-halftime/.  I have a feeling we're gonna see a lot more of Vine in the future of journalism.
- Adam Gutekunst

Media Reaction to the First Active Gay Athlete in Pro Sports

For those who haven't heard, former Wizards center and current free agent Jason Collins came out as gay today, sparking an incredible amount of media discussion on the issue. ESPN has been covering this all day, especially on the radio, and there's an overwhelming amount of support for Collins from just about anyone.

I personally respect Collins' decision, but I'm a little torn on how I feel about the reaction from the media. The word "support" is being used a lot, and it almost seems to be implying that Collins should be getting sympathy for coming out. This was breaking news, and it doesn't seem as though media personnel were diligent enough in figuring out how they wanted to word their analysis.

Another potential issue is the fact that Collins isn't currently on an NBA roster, and if he doesn't get signed this offseason, there may be some speculation that has something to do with this announcement. Collins has actually been a pretty bad player for most of his career, so if he does get signed, people may assume it's solely because he came out.

FTW!

A little over a week ago, USA TODAY Sports created a new site called For the Win (FTW) that is aimed at covering the quirkier side of sports; the smaller stories that have a popular culture twist.  The site features shorter, more blog-gish post.  For example, there is a story about Michael Jordan's weekend wedding, a Chewbacca baseball jersey and a 500-yard, two-minute long golf drive.  Check it out: http://ftw.usatoday.com/ .

- Adam Gutekunst

A Mockery of Mock Drafts

If you're a football fan, you understand how tantalizing the mock draft can be.  The ultimate example of false hope, the mock draft has fans' stomachs in a knot as they anticipate the future of their squad.  The problem with mock drafts, is that there's hundreds of them.  Usually, I don't pay much attention to Bleacher Report, but recently they put together a cool summary of the NFL draft.  They juxtaposed the actual picks made in the draft's first round with the mock picks of some of the league's respected analysts.  Enjoy:  http://bleacherreport.com/articles/1483161-2013-nfl-draft-comparing-mock-drafts-from-around-the-web/page/2

- Adam Gutekunst

Churnalism. Come again?

Much attention has been given to the idea of computer-generated stories and whether or not these stories will supplant stories written by journalists. Technological advancements are now challenging the editing profession. The Sunlight Foundation recently unveiled a tool that detects open-source plagiarism, which scans text and compares it with press releases and Wikipedia entries. It's called Churnalism. 

Sites like turnitin.com have been used in the academic arena for some time, but Churnalism might be the first site designed primarily for journalists. If the site locates similar language, a user will receive notification of a detected "churn" that will allow him or her to be able to examine both sources in a juxtaposition. 

While I think that the tool can be extremely useful, I find myself hesitant to embrace the site.

"Discover the journalism you can trust and what you should question" - the site's tagline - concerns me. I might be an old-school reporter, but I think that if newsrooms make a major transition to use these sorts of sites, then the work of a journalist will slowly become obsolete.

Two years at the Philip Merrill College of Journalism have taught me that at the very heart of a journalists' role is to question everything. If we suddenly put all of our faith into a site so that it can tell us what to question, then what are we really doing?

Then again, I bet someone like me was questioning Spell Check when it first arrived on the scene, wondering if it would make journalists lazy by placing complete trust in a proofreading application.

The Power of Social Media

Earlier today, the Associated Press Twitter account was hacked. Typically Twitter hacking of large organizations are meant to be funny, but this one actually had some impact. The hacker tweeted that there had been two explosions at the White House. The biggest effect of this was actually felt in the stock market, as stocks briefly plummeted. The Dow Jones Industrial average fell more than 150 points before it quickly recovered.

If anyone doubted the impact of Twitter before, it would be hard to continue to make that argument now. This event shows just how seriously people take tweets from news organizations and other companies. Although there isn't typically a face attached to tweets that come from media companies, people still consider them as fact until they are told otherwise.

Another issue that stems from this is how easy it is for Twitter accounts to get hacked. Twitter clearly has drastic effects on people, and you'd think these accounts would be a little more secure. Twitter hackings seem to happen far too often.

What some of your fellow journalism students are doing

Students Determined To Do Serious Reporting

By Diana Marszalek

TVNewsCheck, April 22, 2013 2:41 PM EDT

There’s a student revolution underway at Kent State University – and, no, you’re not having a flashback.
Journalism students at the Ohio school — indelibly linked to Vietnam-era unrest — are taking on a new incarnation of The Man: TV news.
Gearing up to rock the business by doing the kind of work “people pay attention to,” the students are rising up against local TV news they consider “pretty sad,” with reporting that only scratches the surface of issues and an abundance of fluff.
“I care about the weather, but I don’t care about it for 15 minutes like I saw the other day,” says Andrew Jardy, a graduating senior and part-time production assistant at Fox-owned SportsTime Ohio.
Jardy says he’s not discouraged by studies showing TV news viewing is on the decline. “I feel like if people started doing investigative reporting that maybe those numbers would change,” he says. “I could do work that would make a difference and people would pay attention to.”
Jardy and his cohorts are already hard at work at accomplishing their goal, producing investigative reports on subjects they say have been “ignored” by commercial media, which they hope will be models for the work they will soon do as professionals.
Many of the investigations focus on college athletics, although they take on the local media, too. “It's reporting that's not being done by the local newspapers or TV stations,” says journalism professor Karl Idsvoog.
Take a look at:

• Grad student Shanice Dunning’s investigation into who receives full-ride scholarships from Kent State. She found the university awarded 122 such scholarships — which cover everything from tuition to room and board — to athletes and just two to academics.

• Megan Closser and Dunning’s visits to local TV stations to uncover data behind the political ads they run. One thing the students found: “Cleveland television stations don’t like television cameras.” That story was done in a response to a challenge from newsman Bill Moyers.

• A computer-assisted reporting class’s Cars for Coaches project examining the car policies of each Mid-American Conference athletic department and several other NCAA Division One universities in the region.

• Students also found that the largest portion of the Kent State athletic department's budget comes from the same place: fees charged to the academic students.

• Idsvoog’s contribution, saying local reporters contribute to scandals in college athletics by cheerleading instead of doing their jobs.

• Jardy’s story showing that it’s the families of college athletes, and not the schools they play for, who are largely responsible for paying for sports-related medical costs.

This article can be found online at: http://www.tvnewscheck.com/article/66993/students-determined-to-do-serious-reporting.

Marathon Survivors Interactive

While a lot of talk and coverage surrounding the Boston Marathon bombings has come from The Boston Globe, as would be expected, The New York Times put out a really cool, interesting interactive piece of the first-hand-accounts of a handful of people who were crossing the finish line at the time of the explosions.  The first thing you see on the page is a still shot of runners crossing the line.  Many of the people pictured are labeled and if you click on their name it will send you to a short write-up about their experience, often accompanied by an audio interview.

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2013/04/22/sports/boston-moment.html?smid=go-share&_r=0

- Adam Gutekunst

Worst Ad Placement Ever!

Last Thursday, the Minneapolis Star Tribune's tablet version ran a Macy's pressure cooker advertisement right next to the tragic Boston Marathon Bombing story, that was reported to be caused by pressure cookers filled with explosives. To make matters worse, the paper also ran the same exact ad for their print version. I was personally shocked that no one on staff picked up on the mistake before the printed version was released. The Cape Cod Times, also printed the same the thing but they actually apologized for it. Even Macy's sent out an apology for the "bad timing" of the ad. However, the Minneapolis Star Tribune did not make a comment or an apology. I even check on their twitter page and I still found nothing.

Do you think that they should own up to their mistakes and apologize to their readers?

Boston Marathon Bombing - Social Media

I am from the Boston area.  I stood on the Boston Marathon route every year till I was an eighteen-year-old senior in high school, five times standing at the finish line waiting for people I knew to cross.  I was rocked by what happened Monday at the iconic race but now that I have had time to step back I noticed the power of both social media and handheld devices.

Anyone who watched the coverage of the Boston bombings knows that most on the video and pictures that CNN, NBC, and ABC were looping came from people on the scene with iphones or other small cameras.  The news networks were actually clamoring on twitter to have anyone who had pictures to send them in.  Deadspin.com had an excellent running feed with news and videos from the scene.  While some anchors jumbled through segments I was checking twitter and Deadspin to get the real story (http://deadspin.com/explosions-reported-at-the-boston-marathon-473008941).

Social media also connected people with there loved ones.  Cell phone coverage was shut off after the explosions for fear that cellular activity would set off other devices, so people were tweeting at each other what was happening at the crime scene. 

Such a horrific event was thoroughly covered by utilizing social media and eyewitness video.  Video (and pictures) that not only showed the terrible explosions but the quick and courageous response from police, medical personnel, and civilians. 

Sometimes I think tweets, things like CNN’s iReport, and crude iphone video are over used but Mondays coverage showed how they have a place in a world of journalism that lives on being as up to date as possible.

Boston Marathon Coverage

There's been two explosions at the finish line of the Boston Marathon. The marathon released a statement on their Facebook page, stating just now that they were investigating with law enforcement. It's obviously interesting that they would release it there, as opposed to each news network. Something that also intrigued me was the disparity of reporting. I had always heard about media slant in network television, but this is the first time that I've watched an event unfold, fully cognizant of the impact of the images I was watrching. Fox News was the most overt. I was flipping between channels, sifting through the flow of information for a nugget of new truth, and I heard the anchor on Fox speculate that it was a terrorist attack. The next channel over added that today was a holiday, Patriot's Day in Boston, but they had not postulated that the incident was a terrorist attack. Counterterrorism officials are saying that there were multiple explosive devices, just as tourists are being corralled in LaFayette Square, the White House taking extra security measures. Having settled on MSNBC, I started checking my social media streams. All Facebook was giving me was re-postes of existing articles, while Twitter was giving me a few glimmers of truth: 2 I.E.D.s, 28 injured, 2 dead. At this point, I'm regretting follwing so many niche accounts on Twitter. I really felt pigeonholed by my own choices. User's bias, I guess. How have you all been using online journalism to follw this event?

Inappropriate Promo?

WITI, the FOX affliate in Milwaukee, is taking some heat for what was supossed to be a friendly promo for its morning news.

http://www.mediabistro.com/tvspy/witi-criticized-for-promo-showing-reporter-dancing-at-scene-of-fatal-fire_b87164

"The promo, which is of WITI‘s morning anchors and reporters doing the “Dougie,” includes one clip of reporter Angelica Duria dancing at the scene of her live shot Friday. The problem? She was reporting from the scene of a fire that resulted in the death of three children. (Watch the promo online here; WITI’s video player does not allow embedding.)"

“We have been working to make parts of FOX 6 Wake Up more fun and spontaneous — especially near the end of the show as we transition into ‘Real Milwaukee.’ We have tried to involve all of the crew and staff,” WITI general manager Chuck Steinmetz said in a statement. “While I personally received multiple positive comments from viewers about the segment — one person specifically thanking us for getting their day off to a fun start before going to work — we never intended to offend anyone. If we did we certainly apologize.”

How does this happen? Not enough communication between new and promo departments? Or worse, no one asked the question about the circumstances.  Any lessons for journalism students as you embark on a career? The camera is always rolling.

Fact Checking Gone Wrong

A recent article by iMediaEthics.com covered an ethical issue where Philadelphia Magazine posted an entirely fabricated story about a former Marine.  Yet, the magazine did not do this on purpose - the source, John P. Boudreau, admitted that he "embellished or flat-out fabricated" the entire story that he told Philadelphia Magazine.

Although the magazine "unpublished" its story and apologized to its readers, there is still an ethical issue as far as fact checking goes.  The magazine said that they only checked over the article with Boudreau before publishing it - mistakingly not checking the story with another source.

Writer Anthony Gargano said that he felt like "a fool" for letting a source feed him lies.  Though, as I sit here putting myself in Gargano's shoes, I wonder if I would have done the same thing.  We are always taught in journalism classes that double checking a source is key for accurate reporting, yet when we tell the story of a source's life, is it common to let "double checking" fall through the cracks? I feel that, even if I were to have double checked Boudreau's story with another source, I still may have believed some of Boudreau's word over somebody else's.

What do you think?  What would you do if you were Gargano's editor or boss?


http://www.imediaethics.org/News/3859/we_blew_it_says_philadelphia_magazine__journalist_admits_duped_by_liar_in_fact_check_fail.php

April Fools' Day in the media

I was reading an article on Poynter that rounded up April Fools' jokes in the media, including Google Nose, Gmail Blue, The Washington Post's tour of abandoned subway stations, YouTube shutting down,  Twitter vowels costing extra, and etc.

Firstly, this led me to think about how long April Fools' jokes in the media has been going on. Obviously, the jokes could not be that extensive because Google, Twitter and YouTube did not always exist. The online world has expanded so much, that it has allowed for more creativity when it comes to things like April Fools' jokes. It's not just the traditional, satirical news story anymore.

Secondly, this led me to question whether publications should even partake in the holiday. Is that part of a journalist's job? This further led me to a post on Jim Romenesko's blog about previous mishaps in April Fools' editions of college newspapers, such as the Missouri Maneater, who called their April Fools' edition The Carpeteater (whoops), the Fordham University Ram headlining an article "Jesuits gone Jewish," and the Boston University Daily Free Press writing a "tasteless" article on Cinderella being caught up in a prostitution ring. All three of these publications didn't run April Fools' issues this year because of these previous editions that came off as offensive.

Outside of college newspapers, The Ontario (Wis.) County Line -- a 2,000 circulation weekly paper -- posted an annual April Fool's column last year about Disney buying a beloved state trail. This resulted in an extreme public uproar, where the public was planning protests, and a press release had to refute the false column.

Sure, it sounds funny, but I'm curious to see what our class thinks. Was the April Fools' joke worth upsetting that much of the public? Will the angry portion of the public continue to read the paper that fooled them? In relation to college newspapers, should they keep up with the tradition of their joke-filled front pages, or should they continue to  fulfill their traditional duty and report on the news? Are college newspapers held to different standards than local or national newspapers in regards to April Fools? What do you think of UMD's April Fools' edition?

Here is an interesting Storify that collects tweets and Facebook posts about college newspapers and their April Fools' editions.

To see or not to see?

Michael Moore is a controversial person with a public stage.  He often presents radical viewpoints. He recently was blasted for this viewpoint America, You Must Not Look Away (How to Finish Off the NRA)

http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/mike-friends-blog/america-you-must-not-look-away-how-finish-nra

It is a troubling premise, but I wonder how many people read past the headline to his main point. "Because the real truth is this: We do not want to be confronted with what the actual results of a violent society looks like. Of what a society that starts illegal wars, that executes criminals (or supposed criminals), that strikes or beats one of its women every 15 seconds, and shoots 30 of its own citizens every single day looks like. Oh, no, please – DO NOT MAKE US LOOK AT THAT!"
It's human nature to avoid the unpleasant. But sometimes it takes a startling image of real life to make people pay attention.

As a journalist you will be confronted with decisions on whether to publish or not on many occasions. It is important to think about these issues when you are not on deadline. The rush of a breaking news situation is not the time to figure out where you stand.

It is our job to report around our bias. No matter your views on guns, Michael Moore, politicians or other controversial viewpoints you must ask yourself, "what does the public need to know?"

Two of the mothers referred to in this essay chose to use their tragedy to try to make people pay attention and change. That was their decision.

As a journalist, what would be yours?