Being the subject of a news story

About 2 weeks ago, I was interviewed by a Daily Illini writer for a story about volunteering at the Champaign County Humane Society. This was my first time being interviewed for a story and it was interesting to see how I felt once it was published. I'm used to being the one collecting the quotes and writing a story about a person. It was weird to have the tables turned.

Overall, I think the writer did a great job. My name wasn't spelled wrong, the picture wasn't embarrasing and she wrote the story she said she was going to write. She told me it was a "Dirty Jobs" peice that the DI was planning to do every Tuesday. There was nothing on the DI that said it was a dirty jobs column or anything, but I think it went well anyway.

She definitely just paraphrased my words when I was talking and filled in the quotes with what I basically said because some of the quotes were definitely not exact quotes. But she didn't misquote the basic meaning so I wasn't bummed.

The story did give a wrong fact, however. In a photo caption it said I volunteer one day a week at the shelter, when I actually volunteer twice to three times a week. It's not a very important fact so I wasn't angry, but I do wonder where the writer got that information because she never asked me how many days I volutneer. Did she just assume or what? But again not a big deal. It just makes you think how many small facts you read in papers aren't actually true. I'm sure they check the big important facts, but kind of pass by the small ones.

All in all, I was happy with the story. And it taught me to make sure that even the smallest facts are correct when I am writing or editing a story about a person/place/event. Even though my fact was unimportant to me, a small fact may be important to someone else.

The quote they higlighted and put in big font was:

"Sometimes the dogs will kiss you after they have eaten poo or mud but you learn
to deal with it," Scott said.

Kind of an embarrasing way to go down in DI history, haha.

So did the political endorsements work?

Since I'm not feeling particularly creative today, I thought I would focus on a topic that I wrote about 2 blogs ago. If you can remember, I found an article that claimed political endorsements in newspapers do not influence public opinion. I think the topic of political endorsements and whether or not editors should allow them is particularly interesting.

I found a website that keeps track of all the newspaper political endorsements for the 2008 election (they have 2004 on there too). It's a very interesting website if you are interested in this topic, so check it out! Since I can't spend an hour plus on this blog with two exams coming up tomorrow, I only looked at all the states that McCain won and who their newspapers endorsed. Here is what I found:

MT- 3 papers Obama
SD- 2 papers McCain
ND- 2 papers McCain
NE- 4 papers McCain
KS- 1 McCain, 2 Obama
OK- 2 Obama, 4 McCain
TX- 8 Obama, 13 McCain
LA- 2 Obama, 1 McCain
ID- 1 Obama, 1 McCain
WY- 1 Obama
UT- 1 Obama, 1 McCain
AZ- 1 Obama, 2 McCain
AR- 1 Obama, 2 McCain
MS- 2 Obama
AL- 8 Obama, 6 McCain
GA- 3 Obama, 2 McCain
SC- 1 Obama, 5 McCain
TN- 2 Obama, 4 McCain
KY- 3 Obama, 3 McCain
WV- 3 Obama, 2 McCain
AK- 1 Obama, 1 McCain

McCain did come out on top most of the time, but Obama received a good amount of support from newspapers in red states. So that would make it seem that political endorsements don't work. But a good editor should never just look at that and accept that conclusion. An editor should look at what parts of the states these Obama-endorsing newspapers were from. Because there is a possibility that they are from counties that did vote Obama, but more counties voted McCain. If that was the case, political endorsements could have made a difference.

For the sake of time, I'm not going to look into all 50 plus newspapers and their county. I just wanted all of you to be aware of this website and the fact that political endorsements in newspapers may or may not work. Just remember that just looking at the up front statistics aren't enough, the deeper research could show us a totally different story! Like our class has taught us, always make sure your reporter did ALL the research before coming to his/her conclusion.

Front Pages after the Election

I'm a very, very visual person so large pictures really appeal to me. It doesn't hurt that I'm a HUGE Obama supporter and campaign intern, so being able to see the big picture with the text "Obama Wins" is something I've been waiting for since the primaries. But color always appeals to people's eyes so a big picture of Obama on the front page is going to catch your eye more than a front page with a lot of text.

I really like the Chicago Tribune's front page: There is a huge picture with the text "Obama. Our Next President". But there also is a little bit of text at the bottom, talking about his speech at Grant Park.

But not a fan of the Red Eye, because the picture by itself makes it not look like a newspaper. I think it needs a headline. Same with the Chicago Sun-Times.

I also love large headlines that would stand out if you're walking by a news stand like the Post-Tribune in Indiana or Lawrence Journal-World in Kansas. Where I think papers like The Dodge City Daily Globe in Kansas or Bemidji Pioneer in Minnesota need much larger headlines. I guess the Pulizter/Hearst style journalism appeals to me!

I looked at red state newspapers vs. blue state newspapers and there was no real trend. The only paper that was VERY different from most of the 20-some I looked at was the Christian Science Monitor in Massachusetts. There is no mention of Obama winning on the front page. You'd think that this would be the biggest news on November 5th, so the fact that they didn't mention it is very weird. Why do you guys think they didn't deem it front page news?

J-school cirriculum

The question Amy Gahran posed: Should j-schools be partnering more closely with other academic departments in order to impart to students a more current and relevant skill set and mindset? If so, what are the obstacles to that cooperation, and how can they be overcome?

I would LOVE for our journalism department to work with other academic departments. It would very cool if we could have a class in which we wrote specifically for a topic that different departments focus on. If I had my way, I would write about animals and anything associated with the topic of animals for each story I had to write throughout my entire four years here. So if the Journalism department worked with the Animal Science department, I would have been able to take a class in which I learned more in depth information about animal sciences so I could be a better writer in that field. Same goes for sports lovers (kinesiology) or political mavericks (political science).

To have a class like that would be fantastic for people who wanted to be copy editors. We only have two copy editing classes in the whole journalism curriculum: this one and Magazine editing. And this teaches us very basic editing, so it would be very beneficial if we were able to take a class to learn about the topic we are interested in copy editing for. For example, by learning the veterinary lingo or more information about animals in general, I'd be able to edit stories about it and understand the topic and the "fancy" words.

One of the people whom left a comment said:

"With all due respect, the younger folk aren't really as tech savvy as some assume. Yes, they know email, Facebook, Youtube, IM and Limewire. But... With all due respect, the younger folk aren't really as tech savvy as some assume. Yes, they know email, Facebook, Youtube, IM and Limewire. But most of them don't know, or seem to care, about blogging, twitter, alternative online media, audio and video storytelling, why links matter, etc."

I do agree with him that many of us really don't know a whole lot about the Internet past the normal college websites. But he gives this as a reason that we don't need the classes, where I think this is THE reason we need classes about computer science and business. I know NOTHING about that kind of stuff and if the department required that I took a class like that, I would only be the better for it.

The biggest obstacle is going to be money, like everyone else said. Also, willingness from professors to spend a lot of extra time trying to start the program. If universities could gain the money needed and the passion from their professors for this type of project, I think the improvements they would see in their graduating students would be immense. I know it will never happen in my time here, but we already see it slowly with the online class and the News-Gazette class. Even this class has introduced me to a new medium I've never used: blogging!

Politics and Journalism

Like Missy's blog mentioned last week, quite a few newspapers are endorsing presidential candidates. It's been happening for years (maybe decades I dont know, I haven't been around very long) and it is somewhat controversial. U of I Journalism students are told throughout the four years we study here that we should always take a non-biased stance on the hard news issue we are reporting. So it is weird to me that we allow these things to happen.

I looked up some more information on it and found this article by American Journalism Review. The article researched whether or not newspaper endorsements impact public opinion. Their findings, for the most part, discovered that endorsements usually had no impact on voters. So why do newspaper do it? Here are some reasons:

Editorial writers explain endorsements with words like "conversation," "values" and "credible."

• Doak: "The primary purpose of editorials is to stimulate discussion in the community [and it's]..a vehicle through which the newspaper expresses its values."

• Collins: "The point of doing an endorsement of a president, or even a senator, is to continue that conversation... When you weigh in, what you're really doing is juicing up the conversation, and that's critical before an election."

• Lynell Burkett, editorial page editor at the San Antonio Express-News and president of the 600-member National Conference of Editorial Writers: "We're here to present a credible opinion and to stir conversation and debate."

• Fred Hiatt, editorial page editor of the Washington Post, adds one more: The newspaper as citizen.

* I can't figure how to get out of the quote thing so the rest of my blog is going to be indented*

So it seems that most editors claim that their newspaper endorse canidates so that they could stir up coversation and debate. Do you think they do that? Or do they just make newspapers seem biased?

Also, it causes people to start thinking that they will give skew their stories so that their canidate looks good. We already see that with Fox News and MSNBC. I can honestly say I won't watch Fox News because I think its so biased against my candidate and my brother feels the same about MSNBC. The same could happen for newspapers.

I really think that endorsements are an idea that newspapers need keep away from. What do you think?

Are newspaper headlines and stories too negative?

SIGNS THAT YOU'VE BLOGGED TOO MUCH: A movie quote gives you a good idea for your next blog.

So "The Ring" was on TV Friday night while my roomates and I were getting ready to go out. We got sucked in pretty quickly and ended up watching the whole thing. The last thing on my mind was Journalism or our blog assingment, but a quote from the creepy killer ring girl's father quickly brought it to mind.

When Naomi Watt's character (who is a journalist) brought up the suicide of his wife and his crazy daughter, the father says

"What is it with reporters? You take one person's tragedy and force the world
to experience it... spread it like sickness."

That quote not only had me running to get some pen and paper to write it down, but it reminded me of the countless stories and polls we've seen in our classes about readers beleiving we are too biased or too negative, ect.

I decided to look at the headlines for The News Gazette, The New York Tiimes and U.S.A. Today on this past Friday. Here's some of the headlines on the front page of each:

USA TODAY: "Bailout pushes mortgage rates up", "Sports also paying a price amid the struggling economy", and "Police agencies fear more crime caused by financial meltdown".

NEW YORK TIMES: "Oil price drops, aiding economy and consumers", "In a downturn, college straings family budgets", "Rivals' visions differ on unleasing innovation" and "Courts compound pain of China's tainted milk".

NEWS GAZETTE (from 16th): "Appeals court: Closed session was OK", "Economy takes turn back toward basement", "time to get personal" (about debate) and "recession now coudl evoke that of late '70s".

*** Now this might be a little unfair since we are in a huge economic crisis right now so it is going to reported on quite a bit but the number of negative headlines compared to positive headlines in each newspaper is quite drastic and common no matter what is happening in our economy at the moment. By just looking at the front page of each newspaper in the morning, one could only conclude that our lives suck. As a side note, have you noticed that local papers usually have more "happy" headlines than national papers? I wonder why?

Negative stories sell. People want to hear about the murder in Florida or the kipnapping in Chicago. In the movie, the people wanted to know about the wife's suicide and their creepy daughter. But it is our job as reporters and editors to decide what IS news and what is just sensationalism. Those two lines get crossed more in news than they should, and by looking at the polls from readers: people notice.

So before this becomes a essay instead of a blog, I'll just leave you with a couple of questions. Do you think we should edit for how much negativity we are putting in a paper? Is good news hardly ever news? Why do we seem to focus on the negative?

Numbers in Dog Bite Statistics

**My Pit Bull (Floyd) and me! According to some statistics, I shouldn't let his mouth near my face because at any moment he might bite my face off.

After our discussion about college rape/sexual assault statistics in the media on Wednesday, I started to think about the most annoying statistics to me personally: dog bite statistics.

In Journalism 415, my beat was animals. I specifically focused on one of the most popular dog breeds in the country (and Champaign County): pit bulls. We all hear the horrible stories of pit bulls attacking and killing people. So when looking to see if this was just another sensationalized media circus story or a true fact, I looked up bite statistics. And they were exactly like rape statistics: different according to what Web site you found.

This Web site: http://www.pbrc.net/misc/PBRC_stats.pdf, says that there are no documented fatal attacks from 1965-2002 from American Pit Bull terriers.

This Web site: http://www.dogbitelaw.com/PAGES/statistics.html, says that pit bulls, Rottwielers, Presa Canarios and their mixes are responsible for 74% of attacks included in studies. But also warns:

If almost any other dog has a bad moment, someone may get bitten, but will not be maimed for life or killed, and the actuarial risk is accordingly reasonable. If a pit bull terrier or a Rottweiler has a bad moment, often someone is maimed or killed--and that has now created off-the-chart actuarial risk, for which the dogs as well as their victims are paying the price.

This Web site: http://www.dogexpert.com/Dog%20Bite%20Statistics/DogBiteStatistics.html, says that Rotts and pit bulls were involved in 50% of reported dog bite statistics.

There are more and more Web sites as you look further. Some say Pits are homicidal dogs that are involved in 75% of all attacks and should never be pets and there are some that say that, on average, dogs like Golden Retrievers and Labradors have higher bite rates than Pits. The statistics are just so mixed that I don't think it is responsible for any journalist to use any of the statistics listed online.

A reporter needs to look at what sites are down-playing Pit bites (Pit bull or animal activist sites usually) and which one's are up-playing it (usually legislators or town council people who don't know much about dogs). They also need to remember the type of people who are raising Pit Bulls, that Pit Bulls are the second most popular dog breed in America and therefore there are more Pits in the U.S. so there will obviously be more dog bites by them and remember that Pits are the most common wrongly identified breed.

They must also remember that many have dog fighting genes from earlier generations (so could be more likely to attack) and are more powerful than most breeds so when they attack, the injuries will be worse than a Chihuahua attack (which makes them more dangerous).

As a person who volunteers at a humane society, I have come across A LOT of Pit Bulls. I was scared because of their reputation in the media, but once I met them, I found out their reputation (at least in Lake County and Champaign County) couldn't be further from the truth. Most I have met are fantastic with people and great with other dogs. It really is how you raise them in my opinion.

I remember talking to a Chicago police man and him telling me that his station will get calls from reporters when a dog attack is called in and the reporters will be very interested until they find out that the dog bite wasn't caused by a Pit Bull, then most go "Oh, nevermind". Don't be one of those reporters.

Pit bulls may be the most dangerous dog in America. But, before you go claiming it, remember to think about each of the contributing factors and how inconsistent the statistics for and against the breed are.