New tracker tallies anonymous sourcing
As reported by Matt J. Duffy on his ever-interesting Anonymous Sources blog:
A Web developer has created a clever anonymous source tracker. It looks for various phrases (e.g., “a source close to” or “a person familiar with”) and posts the offending passage. It also tallies the number of unnamed sourcing in various news outlets. The No. 1 offender? BusinessWeek. That outlet has used unnamed sourcing 100 times in the past few days — fully three times more than the next offender, Reuters, with 31 instances. The numbers update continuously, so it will be interesting to watch them over time. Impressive bit of software coding.
After BusinessWeek and Reuters, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, Associated Press, and the Washington Post led the industry. What surprised me somewhat was the comparatively low ranking of several high-profile organizations, including the Politico.com. The site is run by one Mark Schaver, by day an assistant metro editor at the Louisville Courier-Journal.
I asked Schaver what his motivation for the site was, and he wrote back this email:
I didn’t start out with any special fascination with anonymous sources. I was just looking for a way to exercise my Web development skills and thought this would be an interesting subject to shed some light on. It really is a very simple app. It just leverages Google News and Google Reader to do the searching and parses and displays the results.
Where I work (The Courier-Journal) we aren’t allowed to use anonymous sources except under extremely limited circumstances. I’d say what I find is surprising is how often they’re used and how often they’re used in situations where it’s more a convenience than a necessity.
In just the last 10 days, Schaver’s little app has found (allowing for a few duplicates and false matches) almost 2,000 examples of anonymous sourcing. That’s a lot of news from the great unknown.
Very nice list of journalism blogs…
Thanks to Jeremy Porter for putting us on top of his “91 Journalism blogs and websites you will love” list over at his Journalistics blog.
What a nice way to wrap up our first year!
(He does say that “There is no ranking or secret formula to this list,” but it’s still nice to see our address on top of 90 equals… Makes me glad we have “AEJMC” in front of the name for alphabetical purposes.)
Senate move may hurt ‘citizen journalists,’ bloggers, et al
If this is indeed what the Daily Kos claims it is, this would be huge: bloggers conducting journalism — and speaking strictly personally, and not for AEJMC, I call such writers “journalists” — could stand to lose key legal protections against compelled disclosure.
In proposing a new amendment to developing federal legislation which limits the scope of media shield laws, two senators have included wording for what constitutes — and by implication, what does not constitute — a “journalist,” reports the Daily Kos. The amendment, authored by Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Dick Durbin, essentially says that if you don’t work as a salaried employee or contractor of a media enterprise, you’re something less than a journalist, at least when it comes to enjoying the privilege of shield laws.
Not surprisingly, both lefty and conservative bloggers are outraged. It seems unlikely, however, that the amendment will survive.
The language of the bill, as first reported by the blog Kos — my bolding, for there is much irony since the mainstream media missed this story – will surely strike some journalism educators as worryingly old-fashioned and narrow in its vision of journalism:
AMENDMENT NO.__ Calendar No.__
Purpose: To appropriately limit the protection from compelled disclosure.
IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES—111th Cong., 1st Sess.
S. 448
To maintain the free flow of information to the public by providing conditions for the federally compelled disclo-sure of information by certain persons connected with the news media.
Referred to the Committee on ___ and ordered to be printed Ordered to lie on the table and to be printed
AMENDMENTS intended to be proposed by Mrs. F EINSTEIN (for herself and Mr. D URBIN )
Viz:
In section 10(2)(A), strike clause (iii) and insert the following:
(iii) obtains the information sought while working as a salaried employee of, or independent contractor for, an entity—
(I) that disseminates information by print, broadcast, cable, satellite, mechanical, photographic, electronic, 1or other means; and
(II) that—
(aa) publishes a newspaper, book, magazine, or other periodical;
(bb) operates a radio or television broadcast station, network, cable system, or satellite carrier, or a channel or programming service for any such station, network, system, or carrier;
(cc) operates a programming service; or
(dd) operates a news agency or wire service;
In section 10(2)(B), strike ‘‘and’’ at the end.
In section 10(2)(C), strike the period at the end and insert ‘‘; and’’.
In section 10(2), add at the end the following:
(D) does not include an individual who gathers or disseminates the protected information sought to be compelled anonymously or under a pseudonym.
Problem is, so far, I can’t find the amended bill anywhere. Perhaps it’s already been quashed by an outcry from the “netroots.” I’ll report back when I learn more.
UPDATE:
Here’s the amendment:
The save-journalism and save-newspapers debate
The ‘save journalism’ and ‘save newspapers’ debate
Is this a ‘dying industry’ or not?
by Bob Stepno… A Summer 2009 collection of news and blog pieces on the “future of news” and “newspaper bailout” debates and related issues… Originally posted in Bob’s old AEJMC Newspaper Division blog.
[Fall 2009 revisions to this July list will be highlighted in green next to the original item, such as the note from Jeff Jarvis below, or they can be added as comments.]
Don’t let the title fool you… There’s inspiration and a hint of optimism in Barbara Ehrenreich’s 2009 commencement address at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism: Welcome to a dying industry, journalism grads
Next, from Jane Singer, in an AEJMC discussion of the future of journalism & mass communication: one blue-sky scenario of how the not-too-distant future might look for our graduates. (Updated link & info: Since my original post, Jane’s essay has won an AEJMC prize.)
Save the separation of press and state, by David Carr, NY Times
In Congress, no love lost for newspapers, Dana Milbank column in Washington Post
Laws That Could Save Journalism by Bruce W. Sanford and Bruce D. Brown in The Washington Post
“A Newspaper Bailout” by Adam Ross in the Post back in February, describing President Nicholas Sarkozy’s plan to aid the French press.
They Pay for Cable, Music and Extra Bags. How about News? by Richard Perez-Pena and Tim Arango, NYTimes.
Sen. John Kerry’s opening remarks as chairman of Senate Commerce Subcommittee on Communications, Technology and the Internet’s hearing on “The Future of Journalism.” Also from hearing, Arianna Huffington‘s testimony.
Video and transcripts from the “Free Press Summit” sponsored by the Knight Foundation.
Duke University’s non-profit media conference, including Penelope Muse Abernathy’s paper, “A Nonprofit Model for The New York Times?” — which inspired this follow-up in the New Yorker. And more about the conference at The Nonprofit Road.
“Life after newspapers,” by Michael Kinsley.
“The American Press on Suicide Watch,” by Frank Rich.
“State of the News Media 2009” C-Span interview with Tom Rosentiel, an annual report of the Pew Project for Excellence in Journalism
“Do newspapers matter?” from the NYTimes economix blog, citing a Princeton study of the impact of the closing of The Cincinnati Post.
The newspaper crisis discussed at Princeton event, from NewJerseyNewsroom.com, a site founded when a bunch of journalists got together at a public library and decided to “create a news site — unlike any other — to address the growing journalism void.”
“Clinging to a dead business model for dear life” and “The Biggest Threat to Newspapers is Newspapers” by Daily Kos
Scott Rosenberg, “How charging for articles could hobble the future of journalism.”
“First, stop the lawyers,” by Jeff Jarvis, Buzz Machine.
“What Crisis?” — A September update from Jeff and the the New Business Models for News Project, funded by the Knight Foundation:
I now say that there isn’t a crisis. That’s not what I used to say. Indeed, one of my mistakes in this debate has been accepting the assumption that there was one and allowing the debate to start there: “How are you going to save journalism from the scourge of your damned internet?”
Instead, the discussion should start here: “Look at all the new opportunities there are to gather and share news in new ways, to expand and improve it, to change journalism’s relationship with its public and make it collaborative, to find new efficiencies and lower costs and thus to return to profitability and sustainability.”
(Back to the earlier list…)
Two big ones, saved for the end:
From “Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable” by Clay Shirky
special cases. Many of these models will rely on amateurs as
researchers and writers. Many of these models will rely on sponsorship
or grants or endowments instead of revenues. Many of these models will
rely on excitable 14 year olds distributing the results. Many of these
models will fail. No one experiment is going to replace what we are now
losing with the demise of news on paper, but over time, the collection
of new experiments that do work might give us the journalism we need.”
From The Elite Newspaper of the Future by Philip Meyer, last fall in American Journalism Review.
The now-emeritus UNC professor suggests it’s o.k. for newspapers to give up on “selling everything to everybody.” Instead, he says they should focus on being trusted, responsible sources of evidence-based public affairs news and analysis, aimed at what the sociologists call “opinion leaders” — what Phil calls “well-educated news junkies.”
hybrid content: analysis, interpretation and investigative reporting in
a print product that appears less than daily, combined with constant
updating and reader interaction on the Web.”
Here we go again…
Searching for a theme…. I did like the simplicity of http://aejmcnewspaper.wordpress.com, but not the lack of author names or CSS control… but it will be the weekend before I even peek at others.
Bob
Teaching an old blog new tricks?
A possible new home for the AEJMC Newspaper Division web editor’s blog.
This is just a trial balloon at the moment, but the server that housed my AEJMC Newspaper Division weblog for years is going offline in December. Its archives are still here.
Actually a subsection of my original “Other Journalism” blog, that collection of postings was linked to and from the more static (and more official) website I edit for the organization, http://aejmc.net/newspaper
Lost newcomers: AEJMC is the Association for Education in Journalism & Mass Communication, publisher of various journals and convener of various conventions for journalism school professors and students In short, it’s where we publish, so as not to perish.
My other Web stuff is linked to my personal hub: http://stepno.com
I’m also @bobstep on Twitter
