tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-69402132024-03-23T14:12:48.108-04:00The Wayward Press CriticKevin Lerner--a college journalism professor, freelance writer and media studies doctoral student--comments on journalism, academia, and their intersection.KLernerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02619131705764863787noreply@blogger.comBlogger72125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6940213.post-40384311964298715502009-12-03T10:15:00.001-05:002009-12-03T10:18:09.261-05:00Showing my students how to blogThis is a <span style="font-weight:bold;">blog </span>post. This is how you <a href="http://twitter.com/klerner">link</a>.KLernerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02619131705764863787noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6940213.post-30799874747478936042009-07-21T15:46:00.002-04:002009-07-21T15:50:13.239-04:00We've moved down the blockBlogger was good training wheels for learning how to do this whole blogging thing, but now that I'm re-committed to keeping my blog current, I've moved over to WordPress, which is more powerful and more professional. The WordPress version of this blog is still a work in progress (though that's sort of the definition of a blog anyway) but it's already a better, more readable blog than this one was. And all of the old posts (except for this one) have been ported over there.<br /><br />So meet me and The Wayward Press Critic 2.0 at:<span style="font-weight:bold;"> <a href="http://kevinmlerner.wordpress.com/">http://kevinmlerner.wordpress.com/</a>.</span>KLernerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02619131705764863787noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6940213.post-1004369522554972892009-07-20T17:47:00.001-04:002009-07-20T17:47:36.771-04:00My personal movie criticI <a href="http://twitter.com/klerner">tweeted</a> a few weeks ago about the New York Observer firing my favorite movie critic, Andrew Sarris, and a week ago, the NY Times ran <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/12/movies/12powe.html">an article</a> calling him a "survivor of film criticism's heroic age."<br /><br />But I hardly care about Sarris championing auteur theory or about his rivalry with Pauline Kael (even though I learned all about those things in perhaps the greatest course I've taken at any level of my education, "The Critic as Journalist and Essayist," taught by Mike Janeway at Columbia Journalism). Sarris was more important to me because he somehow seemed to share my movie tastes exactly.<br /><br />I always feel validated when I see that he likes a movie that I desperately want to like before it comes out (say, Kill Bill vol. 1, which made his <a href="http://alumnus.caltech.edu/~ejohnson/critics/sarris.html">top ten list</a> in 2003), and I'm always intrigued when he likes a movie I thought looked like real clunkers (say, A.I.: Artificial Intelligence, which Sarris and I might be alone in liking). And he picks out little-known ones that I wouldn't have known whether to like or not (Croupier, for instance, which introduced us to Clive Owen).<br /><br />It's not foolproof. I find choices like A Beautiful Mind vaguely embarrassing, even if they are critically lauded. And I won't stand by him for putting Dr. T & The Women on a top ten list. But on the whole, we agree. And he surveys the field, without snobbery, but with taste, helping me find movies that I'll like, even if they're not the big box office winners. And even sometimes in <span style="font-style:italic;">spite</span> of being big box office winners.<br /><br />And that's all you can really ask of a critic.<br /><br />By the way, see The Hurt Locker. If you're curious about it. Deserves the hype.KLernerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02619131705764863787noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6940213.post-25719337944929602802009-07-17T16:09:00.002-04:002009-07-17T16:10:57.138-04:00Similar thoughts from Clay Shirky, who is smarter than I amI had <a href="http://www.cato-unbound.org/2009/07/13/clay-shirky/not-an-upgrade-an-upheaval/">this article by Clay Shirky</a> up in my browser while writing that last post, but hadn't yet read it. I think it touches on some of the same idea of "value" as my previous post, though Shirky calls it "leverage."KLernerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02619131705764863787noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6940213.post-41910920665614898352009-07-16T20:20:00.004-04:002009-07-17T15:42:03.511-04:00"The View from Nowhere," intellectual property, and something called "value"I hate to cite Mediaite, both because I dislike the word, and also because it's de rigeur these days to either criticize or mock Dan Abrams and his site.<br /><br />But here goes.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.mediaite.com/print/seymour-cassandra-hersh-4-months-ahead-of-nyt/">This story</a> exemplifies something I started thinking about last night while listening to Jeff Jarvis's <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/series/media-talk-usa">Media Talk USA</a>. In the Mediaite story, Rachel Sklar and Zeke Turner ask why no one gives Sy Hersh credit for breaking the story that the CIA had been running "death squads" and that Dick Cheney had been hiding them from Congress. Hersh had chatted about them in his odd, casual, not-quite-on-the-record way at the University of Minnesota four months ago. Now, when the NY Times "breaks" the story again, they don't give any credit at all to Hersh.<br /><br />What this brings to my mind is something called "value." And I don't think I mean monetary value when I say that. What I'm trying to get at is more along the lines of the value of a piece of news to a culture. Because clearly, Hersh isn't going to be any wealthier if the Times agrees that yes, Hersh got there first.<br /><br />In the Media Talk USA podcast, this came up with regard to judge Richard <a href="http://www.becker-posner-blog.com/archives/2009/06/the_future_of_n.html">Posner's suggestion that copyright protection be extended to newspapers online</a>. Jarvis and his guests, <a href="http://www.gawker.com/">Gawker</a>'s Nick Denton and the <a href="http://wsj.com/">Wall Street Journal</a>'s Alan Murray, summed up Posner's idea this way: put a 24-hour embargo on any piece of news reported in one outlet before any other outlet can pick it up or discuss it.<br /><br />This is obviously ludicrous for several reasons (some of which Jarvis, Murray and Denton point out). Chief for me, though, is the idea that a single piece of news, in its simplest form (i.e., "event x occurred"), has almost no value anymore. They discuss this in regard to who reported Michael Jackson's death first. They all agree that it was the gossip site <a href="http://tmz.com/">TMZ</a> that got there first, but they also note that most "mainstream media" outlets cited the <a href="http://latimes.com/">Los Angeles Times</a> instead. Now, these MSM were wrong to do that in exactly the same way that the NY Times was wrong for neglecting to mention Seymour Hersh. But here is why it <span style="font-style:italic;">doesn't</span> matter at the same time as it matters: I'm not going to start trusting TMZ for most information in the same way I'm going to trust the LA Times. Why not? Well, the LA Times has earned something over time, not just with one scoop. And for me, the LA Times is more likely to have the sort of information that I, as an over-educated slightly snobby urban dweller is going to want to read over time. Both outlets eventually added value to this one tidbit. For TMZ, it was intense, sensational detail. For the LA Times (and the NY Times and NPR and on and on) it was more meta-coverage: a detailed obituary; an analysis of his place in American culture; coverage of the coverage.<br /><br />And this is why I think Posner's idea is so laughable. A piece of news isn't copyrightable. If something happened, it happened. Copyright is about creation. And the opinion and analysis that make up the added value of coverage of Michael Jackson's death are more important to me than where the first word of it came from. That layer of news doesn't seem to have much value anymore--and I think news outlets should cede it. Social networks, citizen journalism and other things we don't know about yet are going to continue to tell us about events that occur. Events that occur shouldn't be the stuff of news organizations anymore. Investigative journalism does. Scrabbling, cynical, ask-the-tough-questions journalism does, too.<br /><br />I use the phrase "the view from nowhere" in the title of this post. It's <a href="http://journalism.nyu.edu/pubzone/weblogs/pressthink/">Jay Rosen</a>'s formulation of the attitude of objectivity that has been traditionally favored by the US MSM for 100+ years. And it's the sort of attitude that works really well for event-that-occurred journalism. But wouldn't there be much more value in analytical journalism in the case of events like this? Because while you can steal a fact, or even steal an idea, the act of <span style="font-style:italic;">creation</span>--which is what copyright protects, after all--isn't something that comes from readily-available news. Michael Jackson died. If TMZ didn't get that, someone would have, and it wouldn't have taken 20 minutes longer to do so. Protect investigative reports. Protect opinion and analysis pieces. But don't protect "news."<br /><br />One last thought, as an adjunct to this. Don't protect summaries of other people's work on this, either. For example, I'll tell you this: <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/19/magazine/19bruni-t.html">Frank Bruni was a bulimic when he was a kid</a>. Did I just ruin this Sunday's NY Times Magazine cover story for you? No. For the same reason that story, an excerpt from Bruni's memoir, didn't ruin the memoir. If you don't know who Frank Bruni is, you won't click (unless the phrase "baby bulimic" intrigues you regardless of the author). If you know who he is, but don't care, you've absorbed a tiny piece of information about Bruni, and you probably wouldn't have rushed to your newsstand on Sunday to buy a copy anyway. If you do care, you probably already clicked on the link, and I just brought the Times another reader rather than stole one from them.<br /><br />--<br />And since this post is all about giving credit where credit is due, let me note that my views on intellectual property are strongly influenced by Lawrence Lessig's <span style="font-style:italic;"><a href="http://www.free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a></span>, and my views on the role of media in the national conversation of a representative democracy operate in the shadow of the life work of the late scholar James Carey.KLernerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02619131705764863787noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6940213.post-24167123345644369532009-07-16T01:58:00.002-04:002009-07-16T02:04:41.967-04:00A more reasoned look at j-schoolsC.W. Anderson posted <a href="http://journalismschool.wordpress.com/2009/07/13/crib-notes-from-gelf-talk-on-future-of-j-school/">a version of a talk he gave recently on the future of j-schools</a>. While I don't necessarily agree with every point, this is a person I could have a reasonable discussion with--unlike the boobery of the kill-j-school-now crowd. A brief excerpt of his argument:<br /><br /><blockquote>A paradox of the current media moment is that, while journalism jobs are disappearing, j-school enrollment is up? Why? I believe its because people are curious about the media, practically oriented, and fundamentally want to both understand and contribute meaningfully to the world around them. Over the next decade, fewer people may become “journalists” than ever before, but more people than ever will commit “acts of journalism.” To thrive, j-school must understand this and embrace it. Journalism school will stay relevant by training students to produce publicly meaningful content in a world of rampant media making, DIY content, and fragmentation.</blockquote><br /><br />Anderson gives some of his talk over to the differences between grad school in journalism and undergrad journalism. He suggests turning the basic reporting and writing class (RW1, at Columbia) into a required course for all incoming freshmen, not for journalism master's students. Not a terrible idea, though I think for most of those undergrads, a media <span style="font-style:italic;">consumption</span> course would be much more important than a media production course. Or just give them all a copy of <a href="http://www.journalism.org/node/71">my favorite book</a>.KLernerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02619131705764863787noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6940213.post-23589982078903776302009-07-15T22:05:00.003-04:002009-07-15T22:19:26.685-04:00Two web comments about J-schools (one an editor's choice!)I haven't been blogging much on my own blog, but in the last few months, I've come across two articles/blog posts on other sites that got my dander up enough for me to comment.<br /><br />Herewith, those two responses. First one was a response to an article on New York Magazine's Daily Intel site. The article, by Erica Orden, is called "<a href="http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2009/03/columbia_j-schools_existential.html">Columbia J-School's Existential Crisis</a>," and dealt with Columbia's integration of technology into their curriculum.<br /><br />I can't find a way to link directly to my response, so I'm copying and pasting it here:<br /><br /><br /><blockquote>.... I happen to be in the middle of week devoted to writing my doctoral qualifying exams: a 20-page paper devoted to the "profession" of journalism, and another 20-pager on the history of journalism education. (I'm also a Columbia J-School grad, and a former professor of one of The Local's interns).<br /><br />J-schools have long been too tied to the idea that they are training people for jobs in "the profession," which was a slightly disingenuous premise anyway, since journalism has long been less of a profession and more of an industry. Reporters are, for the most part, employees, with a veneer of professionalism.<br /><br />But what [previous commenter] TIFFANYB2 gets exactly right is that the core practices and premises of journalism are much more important than learning about the 21st-century equivalent of the typesetting and stenography courses that the first j-programs taught. <br /><br />The industry seems to be collapsing, but the practice of journalism will survive, and delinking the practitioners from the industry will only be to the benefit of the former and of the public at large. This is a HUGE opportunity for leading J-schools like Columbia and CUNY and NYU to reopen the dialogue between people who actually DO journalism and the people who are paid to think about it. Yes, there are some drunk-with-Didion profs there, but there are also terrifically experienced working journalists (who STILL work) and first-rate scholars like Schudson and Gitlin and the late James Carey. Through conversation, they can help reshape the practice of journalism in the face of these generational changes.<br /><br />And sure, they can Twitter about it as they do--if it helps the conversation; technology is a tool.<br /><br />Read Pulitzer's defense of the J-school in the 1904 North American Review. It's actually quite noble.<br /><br />BY KLERNER on 03/12/2009 at 2:02am</blockquote><br /><br />The second article came this morning, and riled me up enough to sign up for a Huffington Post username so that I could respond. That post was called "<a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/richard-sine/close-the-j-schools_b_232174.html">Close the J-Schools</a>." It rehashed all of the tired arguments against journalism school that I analyzed in a 40+ page paper that I finished recently. I had so much to say in response to it that I had to edit down to exactly the maximum word count for a HuffPo comment. <br /><br />And I'm proud to say that of the 78 (and counting) comments on the original post, mine is the only "HuffPosts's Pick" among them. You can link directly to my comment <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/richard-sine/close-the-j-schools_b_232174.html?show_comment_id=27146634#comment_27146634">here</a> or read it, pasted below.<br /><br /><blockquote>This article--like dozens before it--is ill considered, reactionary, and intellectually lazy. But let me grant you a few points:<br /><br />First, you're right that business schools are more likely to come up with business models than j-schools. But shouldn't that be? J-schools should be more interested in developing models for gathering and distributing information.<br /><br />Second, you're right that *most* j-schools now are overly focused on training students for the *trade* of journalism. If they continue to devote energy to rinkydink news services and classes on how to use current technologies, then they will always be training second-rate journalists and will always be a step behind.<br /><br />But huge enrollments are an opportunity, not a reason to close schools and save ill-advised potential journalists from themselves. Journalism schools need to rethink their mission, which should be just what you dismiss out of hand as obviously useless: "mandatory classes in media history, communications theory or journalism philosophy." These are not courses that justify journalism as an academic subject, but instead are the sort of courses that can turn the most promising aspiring journalists into critical and creative thinkers with an understanding of the foundations and principles of their calling--not just flinty, curmudgeonly cynics.<br /><br />So delink journalism schools from the industry and use the best professors to guide the best students toward new solutions that will advance the cause of journalism without regard to the lumbering and dying industry that has supported it for 180 years.</blockquote>KLernerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02619131705764863787noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6940213.post-14160621314199586062008-08-07T12:04:00.001-04:002008-08-07T12:05:58.652-04:00This article has never appeared in printThe NY Times has started, in the last week or so, to note when an article on <a href="http://nytimes.com">nytimes.com</a> has appeared in print. It gives the date, the section, and the page number.<br /><br />I don't know what prompted this change, or what good it does, unless you're trying to put together a bibliography for an academic paper and still think the print edition holds more authority than the web version.<br /><br />Maybe the Times still thinks that way, too.KLernerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02619131705764863787noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6940213.post-11057566671863395912008-08-06T11:58:00.003-04:002008-08-06T12:04:56.361-04:00Great moments in the intellectual history of journalism?I was working on my PowerPoint for my presentation today at the <a href="http://aejmc.org/">AEJMC</a> convention, trying to find online photos of University of Wisconsin journalism instruction pioneer <a href="http://connection.ebscohost.com/content/article/1032256095.html;jsessionid=E5D4E9361622462A1D02F4E0A716B234.ehctc1">Willard Bleyer</a> and found a Wisconsin page that mentioned that he and First Amendment theorist and philosopher <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Meiklejohn">Alexander Meiklejohn</a> overlapped in their time at Wisconsin, and that both were involved in Wisconsin's <a href="http://www.wisc.edu/wisconsinpress/books/2103.htm">Experimental College</a>, which Meiklejohn founded.<br /><br />Bleyer was one of the most academically-minded early journalism educators (as opposed to the professional-instruction crowd), and Meiklejohn is a 20th-Century bigwig in the First. I wonder if there's a paper in this, one of those meeting-of-the-minds sorts of things like <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Metaphysical-Club-Story-Ideas-America/dp/0374528497">The Metaphysical Club</a>.KLernerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02619131705764863787noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6940213.post-8621660219273343452008-07-31T19:24:00.002-04:002008-07-31T19:28:19.224-04:00ProPublica's daily emailI really like a lot of what <a href="http://www.propublica.org/">ProPublica</a> is doing. I think the not-for-profit model is a good idea, if not the future of professional journalism. And I don't just say this because I met Paul Steiger in his last week at the <a href="http://online.wsj.com/public/us">WSJ</a>.<br /><br />But their daily email is impossible to read. It's like a poorly designed web page, not an email. I'd even rather they email me their whole web page. I've subscribed since they went live, and I still don't understand exactly where to look for what, and what's original material.<br /><br />I'm officially unsubscribing, and just reading their posts in my RSS reader instead.KLernerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02619131705764863787noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6940213.post-24139165388946668572008-07-21T21:11:00.002-04:002008-07-21T21:14:10.013-04:00FCC, see-ya!Proposition, in re <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/22/business/media/22FCC.html">the "wardrobe malfunction" decision</a>:<br /><br />The Federal Communications Commission is at best an out-of-touch relic from an earlier era (that of the "mass media") and at worst is unconstitutional.<br /><br />Discuss.KLernerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02619131705764863787noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6940213.post-6765669780880185652008-07-10T17:57:00.004-04:002008-07-10T18:24:30.075-04:00I'm (going to be) Huge in JapanSo sometimes I ride my bike around Central Park. And when I do, I often like to pull off at West 100th Street, which is one of my favorite parts of the Park, and I buy a bottle of water.<br /><br />Today, I did that, and as I was getting off my bike, I was approached by a really friendly Japanese film crew, in a way that told me they wanted to talk. Usually, I'm not into that, and mutter something about being in the media myself, though I don't really know why that would matter. They wanted me to pose <span style="font-style:italic;">on<span style="font-style:italic;"></span></span> my bike, but that wouldn't look so good, so I stood in front of it, and made sure that my helmet was off, since even Lance Armstrong looks stupid in a bike helmet.<br /><br />Anyway, the very bubbly woman who interviewed me told me that it was for a Japanese TV show or documentary (she said both, though I'm not sure which is right, exactly).<br /><br />About raccoons.<br /><br />And strangely enough, I have a good New York raccoon story. Several weeks ago, maybe two months, I was walking back to my apartment from Central Park West, and I heard scuffling on the metal pole of the construction scaffolding I was standing under. I looked to my right, and there, grasping desperately to the vertical pole, right at my eye level, was a 40-pound raccoon. He was having some trouble climbing, since his claws couldn't get a grip on the metal. We stared at each other for a solid few seconds, as if to say to each other, "hey man, I don't want any trouble..." And then he managed to hoist himself up to the crossbar, at which point he had much more mobility. And since he might very well have had rabies, too, I moved on.<br /><br />I was less articulate in my retelling for Japanese TV, but I think I got the gist across. I couldn't tell, as I was talking, if the host was laughing because she thought my story was funny or because she wanted me to look comfortable on camera, but I didn't really mind being patronized, if I was. I asked why they were curious about raccoons, and she told me that, apparently, Tokyo has a raccoon problem. People kept them as pets (really? a raccoon?), then couldn't handle them and released them into the streets.<br /><br />They thanked me and moved on to a little old New York-y woman who passed by and talked in a loud Noo Yawk drawl. She talked longer than the film crew was interested in her, and the camera man took to shooting B-roll of the inside of a trash can instead.<br /><br />So if anyone out there sees a sweaty guy in a gray University of Pennsylvania t-shirt talking about raccoons on a Japanese tv show (and I have a two-week growth of beard, so I probably look a bit like a big rodent myself), let me know. I'd be curious to know what comes of this.KLernerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02619131705764863787noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6940213.post-10245706222891747082008-07-05T15:15:00.002-04:002008-07-05T15:27:31.697-04:00Blogging my qualsMy main task this summer, besides prepping three courses for my new gig, is to begin reading for my qualifying exams. I haven't set a date, but I'm probably going to take them in the spring, likely over spring break at Seton Hall, when I won't have teaching commitments to interfere with writing.<br /><br />Between now and then, I need to do a lot of reading, and a lot of note-taking. I think that in order to keep myself honest and not piddle away the rest of the summer, I'm going to start blogging my reading list. I've set a goal of 150 pages per day. I think it's reasonable on most days to expect that.<br /><br />I don't know what these posts are going to look like. Maybe short summaries combined with commentary, like formal annotated bibliographies or short response papers. Maybe just notes and thoughts on ideas they inspire for my dissertation.<br /><br />But if you happen to read this, and think you might want to follow along, you're likely to see a whole lot of U.S. journalism history covered here, particularly the intellectual history of American journalism (which is a theme I may take up in the dissertation), and the history of journalism education. There will also be a lot of First Amendment reading, which will be the biggest subset of the intellectual history of American journalism reading that I'm doing.<br /><br />First off, I'm going to re-read E.H. Carr's '<a href="http://www.amazon.com/What-History-Edward-Hallet-Carr/dp/039470391X/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1215285875&sr=8-1">What is History?</a>' which I read at the beginning of <a href="http://www.scils.rutgers.edu/~davidgr/">David Greenberg</a>'s media history seminar at Rutgers. I think a good philosophical look at historiography is a good way to start.KLernerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02619131705764863787noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6940213.post-84376391083444101712008-05-05T13:28:00.004-04:002008-05-05T13:47:14.823-04:00Lorber or hate herWe media types seem to be obsessed--not quite to a creepy extent--with MTV's The Paper, a "reality" show about a high school newspaper in Broward County, Florida. And I'll admit to being one of them. I never worked on my high school paper (that was mostly the province of a classmate I barely knew who seriously used the byline--granted, based on his real name--I.P. Lakes), but I did devote 1998 almost entirely to my undergraduate newspaper's weekly entertainment magazine. So I know what the publication obsession is like. Most of my best friends from college were from the <a href="http://www.dailypennsylvanian.com/">Daily Pennsylvanian</a> or <a href="http://www.34st.com/">34th Street</a>, the magazine <a href="http://media.www.dailypennsylvanian.com/media/storage/paper882/news/1998/01/30/Resources/34th-Street.EditorInChief.Kevin.Lerner-2167642.shtml">I edited</a>.<br /><br />I don't see myself in the characters, but I do see some potentially pernicious caricatures. Chuck Barney <a href="http://www.contracostatimes.com/columns/ci_9147699?nclick_check=1">pointed out</a> the fairly obvious "bitch" characterization of Amanda Lorber, the editor of the paper. But I don't think there's much reason to hope that this will drive kids into j-schools. The paper is almost absent in the paper. You could almost substitute the Latin club for <a href="http://cypressbaycircuit.com/">The Circuit</a>, and have the same ambitious, smart, nerdy kids jockeying for control so that it will look good on their college apps.<br /><br />But these kids aren't just smart. They're white. They're wealthy. And what's even more subversive, they're surprisingly Jewish. They're Jewish in a pretty secular way--no one's running around in a skullcap and a prayer shawl--but they toss off casual references to remembering Hebrew school. I'd like to think that this would help show the world (i.e., MTV viewers) that Jewish kids are just like any other, but as a half Jew myself, I can't help but wonder if this will just perpetuate Jews-in-the-media stereotypes instead.<br /><br />Am I really concerned? Probably not. Will I still watch Amanda scheme and the rest of them scheme against Amanda? Yeah, I will. In the end, will it matter much one way or the other? Again, probably not.<br /><br />But media types love nothing more than to watch and write about media types. Just look at me.<br /><br />But frankly, I think they should move The Circuit completely online. It would more accurately reflect the world they're going to go into--if they go into journalism at all.KLernerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02619131705764863787noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6940213.post-91498948789250995052008-03-26T00:05:00.005-04:002008-03-26T00:28:12.613-04:00Professionalization Without Standardization: Journalism Education, Voice, and DemocracyI attended two conferences a week ago on a sort of crazy schedule: Auburn, Alabama on Friday afternoon; back in New York City for conference number two on Saturday morning. But I presented two papers I care quite strongly about.<br /><br />Friday's paper was the first in what I hope will be a series developing a theory of the First Amendment based on one of my media theory heroes, the late Jim Carey. I call it a "Conversation Model" of the First Amendment, one that is rooted in the cultural studies idea that conversation constitutes culture--or the idea that we are a product of our interactions with each other, our environment, and with various media. It's a theory that I think encourages individual voices.<br /><br />Saturday morning, I presented my history of American journalism schools from the end of the Civil War to the founding of Columbia's J-school in 1912. My thesis there is that journalism didn't take up the opportunity to solidify itself as a professional school when others (law, medicine, education, and on and on) did, fusing Progressivism, German universities' ideas of research and the burgeoning middle-class professionalism.<br /><br />Bt as I was gathering material for yet another paper that I plan to write (this one analyzing the robust history of anti-J-school rants), I had the idea that the real problem with journalism school is that it doesn't teach ideals; that it teaches standards. And standardization is the enemy of voice. And voice is the primary component of conversation. And conversation is essential to Democracy. And a free press is the great bulwark of liberty.<br /><br />(The impetus for this link was <a href="http://128.122.253.148/pubzone/debate/forum.1.essay.rosenbaum.html">an essay by Ron Rosenbaum</a> on a wonderful <a href="http://128.122.253.148/pubzone/debate/forum.1.index.html">NYU compilation of essays about J-school</a>.)<br /><br />So here is the challenge to myself. Three things I need to write now:<br /><br />1. That analysis of the anti-J-school rant.<br />2. An essay (or maybe a reported article, even for the mainstream media?) about how the Columbia J-school revitalization (which spawned that NYU online colloquium) got derailed--telling the story from Lee Bollinger's halting of the dean search in 2002 until Nick Lemann's (accidental?) release of his self-evaluation a couple of months ago.<br />3. My dissertation, fully exploring the links between democracy and the education of journalists.<br /><br />Maybe that last one is too ambitious. But I like ambitious.<br /><br />Anyway, the implications of this for journalism instructors: teach the democratic implications. Don't stifle the voice with "technique."<br /><br />It's not a fully-formed idea. Feel free to pick it apart.KLernerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02619131705764863787noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6940213.post-19160224770038938412007-10-13T20:16:00.000-04:002007-10-31T11:19:14.435-04:00Discovering the SchudsonGiving the keynote address today was MacArthur "genius" and author of <span style="font-style:italic;">Discovering the News</span> (which is probably the one book I cite in everything I've ever written), Michael Schudson. He gave props to my professor <a href="http://www.scils.rutgers.edu/~davidgr/">David Greenberg</a> in addressing his topic--the history of frankness (Greenberg is writing a history of spin. That's the joke).<br /><br />He started off with some amusingly disparaging talk about theory. In short, theories are always wrong. If we, as researchers, do our jobs, we will eventually prove every theory--wrong. And yet, theories are useful to us as a way of organizing, as a way of figuring out what the "story" is. I scribbled down this thought of his:<br /><br />"We want a simple world. But it's not clear that simpler is better."<br /><br />The actual thesis of his talk was interesting, as was a comment raised by my professor Deepa Kumar, but for me, that quote was the takeaway.KLernerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02619131705764863787noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6940213.post-5575233104544298202007-10-13T14:47:00.001-04:002007-10-13T15:13:35.825-04:00The return of rewriteI just attended the first half (of what I plan to attend) of an <a href="http://www.scils.rutgers.edu/events/scils-at-25-silver-anniversary-celebration.html">anniversary conference</a> for my graduate school, <a href="http://scils.rutgers.edu">SCILS at Rutgers</a>. The panel was "Journalism Education at Rutgers: Past, Present, Future, ad the Challenges for Journalists in the Digital Age."<br /><br />Doesn't sound thrilling, but for someone like me who find journalism education fascinating and frustrating, it is--well, OK, not thrilling, but at least worth a Saturday train ride out to New Brunswick. I was particularly taken with two panelists:<br /><br />Patti Domm, <a href="http://www.cnbc.com">CNBC</a>'s Executive News Editor, Markets and Economy<br />and<br />Dave Pettit, Deputy Managing Editor of the <a href="http://www.wsj.com">Wall Street Journal Online</a>.<br /><br />They got into a bit of a discussion about journalism education's dependence on "silos," meaning that students choose print, or broadcast or "new media" as a sort of major when they study journalism. They seem to agree that silos are bad since the skills of a modern journalist cross all of these categories. I wonder (and asked) if it is the journalism school's job to teach technology at all. Technically, I was a "magazine" concentrator in grad school, and while I worked for a magazine for a few years, I edited their web site, and any html I know, I picked up somewhere other than J-school. The answer seems to be that student journalists need to learn the core of the profession first--news gathering, analysis, storytelling techniques. But that given a choice between hiring a good journalist without the tech skills and with the tech skills--well, it's obvious who would get the job. Train for the tech skills of the present, they say, but warn students that the present isn't going to last very long.<br /><br />Pettit also said something in passing that I think would make for a great <a href="http://www.cjr.org">CJR</a> article, and if I can figure out how to pitch it, I will. He was talking about new job categories, and he mentioned that WSJ.com is hiring rewrite people. Just like the 1920's urban newspapers, where the reporter would run out of the courtroom, duck into a phone booth, and yell "get me rewrite!" Apart from the interesting historical pendulum swing, and the fact that I'd LOVE to be a rewrite man (all the thrill of deadline newswriting without any of the pesky reporting!), this speaks to the separation in skills that I've always seen at the heart of journalism: reporting and writing are different things, and there's no reason to believe that any one person will be blessed with talent in both.<br /><br />If Mike Hoyt (a former adjunct professor of mine, actually) sees this, he can feel free to offer me a freelance contract.<br /><br />I'll end with notes on some points John Pavlik, another one of the panelists, and the chair of the Rutgers Journalism and Media Studies Department (my home department) made:<br /><br />Four trends in the effect of technology on news (Pavlik, 2007):<br /><br />1. New tools are changing the way journalism gets done. cf. the reporting out of Myanmar, done by cell phone cameras.<br />2. Relationships between media and their audiences are changing, in that things are much less authoritarian, and much more participatory.<br />3. The kinds of stories we tell are changing: look at <a href="http://chicagocrime.org/">ChicagoCrime.org</a>, which turns the old idea of a police blotter into something decidedly 21st Century.<br />4. The management and culture of news organizations are changing. Less hierarchy. Less division between web and print. New financial systems.<br /><br />AND, Four implications of this for journalism schools (ibid):<br /><br />1. Move away from silos into more integration of technology into all classes.<br />2. More collaboration with press associations and the media industries.<br />3. Facilitation of life-long learning for graduates.<br />4. Teaching and encouragement of innovation and entrepreneurship to students (teach them how to run their own self-sustaining blog, f'rinstance).<br /><br />All of this could work quite well as a final chapter of my dissertation. I'll get back to you on that, I suppose.KLernerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02619131705764863787noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6940213.post-1153100245476056292006-07-16T21:29:00.000-04:002006-07-16T21:37:25.496-04:00CelebrityI tried to think of a way to make this post have something to do with the media or with education--maybe something about how the media make a celebrity a culture or somesuch. But really, I just thought it was cool that I saw Alex Rodriguez at 61st and Madison today. I regret not stopping to ask for an autograph, but he was with a woman, and obviously on his way to dinner. It seemed gauche.<br /><br />It does make me at least momentarily regret also not taking <a href="http://klerner.blogspot.com/2004/10/curse-of-bamb-me-no.html">my job with the Yankees</a>. Alas, I guess I'll just stick with academia.<br /><br />I saw Keanu Reeves last week, actually. I don't regret not getting his autograph nearly as much.KLernerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02619131705764863787noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6940213.post-1152585282721485792006-07-10T22:10:00.000-04:002007-10-31T11:20:02.616-04:00The Applied Liberal ArtsAs I sat in my qualitative research methods class this Spring, I thought a lot about the intersection between various ways of gathering and creating knowledge in the world. It's not the first time I've thought about these overlaps, either. What a journalist does when gathering information is not necessarily all that different from what a doctor does, in some ways, for instance. Asking questions, putting together narratives, et cetera. And when I'm teaching the research paper in my intro classes at LaGuardia Community College, I make some of the same connections. Adding up the collective knowledge of the world, shaking it around a little bit, adding your own insights... Voila, a new contribution to that collective knowledge. <br /><br />But then this started to become a little bit more solid as <a href="http://www.scils.rutgers.edu/~mokros/">Harty Mokros</a>'s qualitative class. We started discussing ethnography--the research tool of the anthropolgist. The researcher immerses herself in a culture, and makes her research breakthroughs by writing down her experiences. This isn't really any different than some of the best journalism. You go to a place where news is happening. You experience. You describe. Maybe there are no footnotes, but it's the same approach to information gathering.<br /><br />When I was an undergraduate, I took a sociology course. It was my freshman year, and I was attracted to the idea of a course about deviance and social control. I did OK, but I didn't really <span style="font-style:italic;">get</span> it. The same thing happened--I forget if it was freshman or sophomore year--when I took cultural anthropology. For one thing, I didn't understand the fundamental difference between sociology and anthro--aren't they studying the same subject matter? Why are they different departments? At the time, I didn't think about it enough to figure it out. But the difference isn't in <span style="font-style:italic;">what</span> sociologists and anthropologists study; it's in <span style="font-style:italic;">how</span> they study it. Anthropologists do what I outlined above. Sociologists rely more on surveys and statistics.<br /><br />This all may sound simple to people who figured this out long ago, but it's all apropos to finding a place in academia for journalism. Journalists can learn quite a bit from all of these research methods. The nature of journalism doesn't require quite the same rigor that academe does, however. At the same time, academics can learn from journalists, too. There's a grittiness that they bring, and a voice that allows journalists to translate complex ideas for a general audience.<br /><br />I've come up with a nascent theory that journalism could function in the academy as a sort of applied liberal arts, in the same way that doctors practice applied chemistry and biology and anatomy and engineers practice applied physics and accountants practice applied mathematics, in a way. A liberal arts education provides the sort of broad knowledge base that journalists work with every day. There's a natural connection there, and it's one I intend to continue to pursue at least through graduate school, and quite probably beyond, thoughout my career.KLernerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02619131705764863787noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6940213.post-1152163912887738402006-07-06T01:25:00.000-04:002006-07-06T01:31:52.973-04:00Six months laterThe blogging impulse nags at me again. <br /><br />I searched "Press Critic" on Google, and found myself on the first page with <a href="http://img.slate.com/id/2105627/">Jack Shafer</a>, <a href="http://journalism.nyu.edu/pubzone/weblogs/pressthink/">Jay Rosen</a>, and <a href="http://www.poynter.org/column.asp?id=45">Jim Romenesko</a>. And searching for "The Wayward Press" puts me ahead of Liebling himself.<br /><br />If the Google algorithm is going to reward me with such comparisons, I feel I need to do a better job with the blog. It's a duty, somehow.<br /><br />Perhaps an update will be coming soon.KLernerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02619131705764863787noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6940213.post-1135225562297685072005-12-21T23:17:00.000-05:002005-12-21T23:27:04.046-05:00We interrupt this serial......to bring you an important message from <a href="http://www.cjrdaily.org/">CJR Daily</a>. I referred to the then-unpublished study "<a href="http://www.polisci.ucla.edu/faculty/groseclose/Media.Bias.pdf">A Measure of Media Bias</a>" in my 602 term paper, "<a href="http://klerner.blogspot.com/2005/12/enterprising-journalists-empirical.html">Enterprising journalists: An empirical search for the source of bias in the media</a>." In the paper, I am dismissive of it, as I am of all content analysis of journalism because it seems so entirely subjective. In fact, I have a hard time with all quantitative studies that try to take complex, subtle interactions and ideas and reduce them to numbers (see also <a href="http://klerner.blogspot.com/2005/11/end-of-reading-summaries.html">the first paragraph of this post about Infromation Science research</a>).<br /><br />I think that in general, the worlds of academic media studies and journalism need to learn how the other works so that they can actually help each other. In this case, I side with CJR. So here, for your reading pleasure, and to save myself from having to write the rant: <a href="http://www.cjrdaily.org/behind_the_news/bias_study_falls_43_7_perce.php?">the CJR Daily article ripping into Groseclose and Milyo</a>.KLernerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02619131705764863787noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6940213.post-1134976009909472562005-12-19T02:03:00.000-05:002007-10-31T11:20:02.616-04:00The idea of professionalismNote: This is part three of the serialization of my term papers. This section of "Journalism education, democracy, and the possibility of a more perfect professionalism" follows directly from <a href="http://klerner.blogspot.com/2005/12/journalism-education-democracy-and.html">this first post in the series</a>.<br /><br />--<br /><br />Eliot Freidson (1994) dates the organization of professions to the post-industrial era, when work became less focused on the performance of tasks, and more on the acquisition and application of specialized knowledge (pp. 95–96). He defines a profession as an occupation so well organized that its members can realistically envisage a career over most of their working years, a career during which they retain a particular occupational identity and continue to practice the same skills no matter in what institution they work. A similar form of organization is to be found in the skilled trade or craft, though the craft cannot claim the same kind of knowledge-based skill as can the profession (p. 101).<br /><br />Journalism certainly fits this idea of a profession, as opposed to a craft. Aside perhaps from academic researchers, what profession could be said to be more knowledge-based that journalism? While it is true that journalism’s knowledge base is not specialized nor even permanent, journalists must gather, digest and transmit huge amounts of knowledge in the course of their daily working lives. The work of journalists can be more clearly compared to that of researchers (though with a different intended audience) than to that of, say, woodworkers. Information, to coin a phrase, is not wood.<br /><br />In an earlier book, Freidson (Freidson, 1986) suggested the relationship between professions and the power that they wield. “Professional groups, including scientists and academics, are often represented as the creators and proponents of particular bodies of knowledge that play important roles in shaping both social policy and the institutions of everyday life” (p. ix). This knowledge brings power and responsibility, and as the arbiters of general knowledge—as opposed to the specific knowledge of the professions Freidson mentions by name—this power and responsibility is amplified. Though he is perhaps the leading writer on professionalism (see also Abbott, 1988; Larson, 1977), Freidson does not mention journalists in either of his general books on the topic. Banning (1998) notes that “Discussion of the professionalization of journalism in the literature on professionalism is conspicuous by its absence” (p. 159).<br /><br />Banning argues that professionalization is not a cluster of attributes, but rather a process, best expressed as a scale. This particular historical study does not even take a stance on whether or not journalism is a profession, but instead traces the changing attitudes of nineteenth and twentieth century journalists toward themselves.<br /><br />In another examination specifically of journalism professionalism (Soloski, 1989), one researcher offers up a similar definition of professionalism that, on its face, actually seems less applicable to journalism:<br />For a profession to exist, it must secure control over the cognitive base of the profession. To do this a profession requires (1) that a body of esoteric and fairly stable knowledge about the professional task be mastered by all practitioners, and (2) that the public accepts the professionals as being the only individuals capable of delivering the professional services. (p. 210)<br /><br />While there are some skills that a journalist needs that seem esoteric (use of editing and page-layout computer software, database manipulation, interviewing skills), the most clearly esoteric are the technical skills, and those are the most volatile. And as for point (2), journalism as a profession seems to have the highest propensity for an “I could do that” reaction from the general public. Laypeople don’t feel that way about surgeons or structural engineers, but many—if not most—people with solid general educations are capable of asking questions and turning the resulting information into a coherent story.KLernerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02619131705764863787noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6940213.post-1134885369342746322005-12-18T00:54:00.000-05:002007-10-31T11:20:02.617-04:00Enterprising journalists: An empirical search for the source of bias in the mediaNote: This is part 2 of a multi-part series of my term papers from the fall. In this installment, the abstract from my Research Foundations final project (This is unconnected to the previous post.):<br /><br />Abstract<br /><br />Observers and critics of American journalism argue about the nature of bias in newspapers, magazines, and television journalism. They agree, however, that bias of some kind is rampant. Accusations of bias in news reporting have risen at almost the same time as the ideal of objectivity has taken hold within the profession, coming to a head in the early 2000’s with a flurry of books by pundits, humorists, and serious critics from both sides of the ideological aisle. While the debate raged in the popular press, academic inquiry into the nature of bias in American journalism took three paths. Political economists of the media focus on the incentives for journalists to produce biased reporting—either to feed a desire for biased reporting, or to please corporate parents of media companies. Other scholars perform content analysis of journalism, trying to determine whether or not the news is actually as biased as partisan critics would have it. A third group looks at the effects of bias in the media on audiences, through the lens of audience studies.<br /><br />This study takes a new approach, trying to determine whether or not the people who become journalists are prone to become opinion leaders because of their innate psychological makeup. Disregarding the contentious issue of defining political liberals and conservatives, this study adopts the theory of John L. Holland, a psychologist who developed a career interest inventory. In Holland’s theory, each person fits into three of his categories, and he predicts that journalists fit into the category he calls “enterprising.” Enterprisers are people who seek opportunities to persuade and influence. If journalists are, as Holland classifies them, “enterprisers,” then those who seek to limit bias in journalism may be fighting a losing battle.KLernerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02619131705764863787noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6940213.post-1134885062759042612005-12-18T00:48:00.000-05:002007-10-31T11:20:02.617-04:00Journalism education, democracy, and the possibility of a more perfect professionalismIntroduction (Note: This is the first part of a multiple-part series that I am tentatively calling "My Fall 2005 term papers")<br /><br />A.J. Liebling, the journalist, press critic and general bon vivant, attended the School of Journalism at Columbia University before starting his career. His assessment of his education was famously less than sanguine. He once wrote that “the program had ‘all the intellectual status of a training school for future employees of the A & P’” (qtd. in Remnick, 2004). His comment, while probably unduly harsh, represents an undeniable strain of anti-intellectualism in American journalism. (Liebling, of course, was complaining that Columbia’s journalism program was anti-intellectual, not that the practice of journalism should be.) Michael Lewis, in his scathing essay on journalism schools in The New Republic (Lewis, 1993), quoted one columnist who said, “All we do is ask questions and type and occasionally turn a phrase. Why do you need to go to school for that?” Nevertheless, journalism schools have continued to exist in more than one form for over a century—though the form that they should take is far from settled.<br /><br />For about the same period, journalists have debated—both actively and passively—whether or not their line of work constitutes a profession (though the first stirrings of professionalism can be dated even earlier). Many prefer to see themselves as practitioners of a craft or a trade. Others believe that as collectors and disseminators of information for a mass audience, monitors of power, protectors of democracy, and an unofficial fourth branch of the government, they deserve the same professional prestige as lawyers, engineers, or architects. Journalists enjoy special protections in the United States, owing to their specific mention in the Bill of Rights; however, it is this special protection that may be preventing them from coalescing into a formal, coherent profession. Journalists cannot control entry into their own body because in the United States, anyone can be a journalist. Therefore, the professionalization of journalism must take place as a socialization process—a process in which journalism schools can play in instrumental part.KLernerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02619131705764863787noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6940213.post-1133338331743494092005-11-30T03:10:00.000-05:002007-10-31T11:20:02.617-04:00"NPR Activists and Classical Monks"Bailey, G. (2004). NPR activists and classical monks: Differentiating public radio formats. Journal of Radio Studies, 11(2), 184–193.<br /> <br />Theory and background: Bailey’s study was funded by a group of radio broadcasters who wanted to understand their audiences. Non-commercial radio stations in major markets have shifted away from their previous “crazy-quilt” programming to adopt a single format. In markets that supported a commercial classical music station, the public radio station usually abandoned music to concentrate on news. In other markets, two public stations would usually each take one of the classical or news formats. The stations wanted to know why, despite their similar demographics, there is little or no crossover between the audiences of classical music radio stations and National Public Radio news stations. Bailey discusses the “uses and gratifications” paradigm, which many researchers had abandoned because of methodological questions—namely that “uses” require quantitative data, and “gratifications” demand more exploratory research. Since surveys had already quantitatively established that there was little crossover between news and classical listeners, the researchers set up focus groups to explore gratifications.<br /><br />Design: The research team identified four NPR stations, four noncommercial classical music stations, and two commercial classical stations that met strict criteria of broadcasting and audience service. The researchers deliberately chose disparate markets in several different American cities. The researchers aggregated their funding so that they could conduct 20 focus groups in their eight chosen markets, thus increasing their study’s external validity. Respondents were chosen for the focus groups by random interval samples from two sampling frames: a list of current and lapsed subscribers; and a telephone list of college graduates in target ZIP codes. This dual frame ensured that each focus group would involve both radio subscribers and non-subscribers. In the telephone screening, respondents were asked to describe their radio listening by unaided recall. <br /><br />The 20 focus groups each consisted of 12 listeners. For the first 45 minutes of each session, the moderator asked what stations the respondents listened to and why. Bailey reports one particularly effective question that asked respondents how they would feel if a particular station were to go off the air. The remainder of each focus group session asked respondents to respond to brief samples of radio play from unfamiliar stations in order to get at “deeper, and more grounded expressions of how listener needs may or may not be fulfilled by radio programming” (p. 189).<br /><br />Alternatives: In a world of infinite funding, the validity of the study might have been improved by conducting individual interviews with respondents, rather than focus groups, since social pressures might influence responses. A mailed survey could have reached a larger population, though that would not have allowed the researchers to play snippets of the radio programming to respondents, and would probably have resulted in less detailed responses, and given the stated qualitative nature of this study, a survey would have been less appropriate.KLernerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02619131705764863787noreply@blogger.com0