The Latest Archives

Making sense of media: It’s not time for death knells

As part of his Ender series, author Orson Scott Card titled one book Speaker for the Dead. Ender, a child who had vanquished an alien threat to humanity, left Earth and spent time speaking for the dead, talking of people’s lives, their hopes and fears, their successes and their failures. Although some would currently argue…

Celebrate Constitution Day by seeking answers

Today we celebrate Constitution Day as all schools are mandated to by federal law. To focus this celebration of the Constitution’s 223 birthday, let’s ask ourselves and our school officials a few questions: • If we don’t train our students to practice and believe in our Constitution and Bill of Rights, how can we possibly…

Paul Steiger of Pro Publica on emerging ethical issues

Paul Steiger of Pulitzer Prize winning Pro Publica raised ethical issues generated by the rise of journalists using social and new media today at the Poynter Kent State Media Ethics Workshop. Among the issues Steiger raised (and can easily be discussed in terms of scholastic media): • The blurring of the lines between fact and…

Poynter’s making sense of information

Poynter’s Kelly McBride talked about Poynter’s Making Sense study of media this morning at the Poynter-Kent State Media Ethics Workshop. You can find a lot of usable information from this session at the workshop’s website. Some key points: • 31 percent of people say they want news from outlets with which they share a point…

Ethics workshop available Sept. 16 via streaming video

Kent State’s School of Journalism and Mass Communication will host the Poynter Kent State Media Ethics Workshop Thursday, Sept. 16, available as streaming video as well as live. The event also will be available to viewers on mobile devices. All participants can contribute to the workshop discussions and ask questions of speakers via Twitter. Workshop…

And now for something…untrue

Even though the “Great Roethlisberger Hoax” is history, parallel effects could be long-lasting. What will happen to fact-checking, verification and synthesis in print media – and online – in the future? After all, there are some who would argue that journalism’s use of social media creates a new standards. The need for speed outweighs the…

Noteworthy information 9: Who makes the decisions?

With scholastic journalism’s expansion into social media and use the latest bells and whistles involving multimedia, it is equally, if not more important, to be solid first in journalism basics. Four such basics are: • Leadership. The Center for Scholastic Journalism blog highlights a series of decisions students must make about the roles they perform…

Women have the right to vote

Today, we celebrate the 90th anniversary of the 19th Amendment giving women the right to vote. As a woman and elected public official, I hold this right and my office in high regard. As United State citizens, women have this great privilege to vote because other women in the past century took it upon themselves…

Noteworthy information 8: Check out the new SPLC site

Just in time for the start of classes, the Student Press Law Center unveiled its new website today. “This morning, after a year of groundwork,” SPLC director Frank LoMonte said in a press release, “we flipped the switch on a greatly upgraded site that is designed to be more modern-looking and easier to navigate, with…

Noteworthy information 10: Questions for the new era

To help us prepare for scholastic journalism’s new era, let’s look at the 10 roles exercise recently outlined by the Center for Scholastic Journalism. Instead of thinking of the roles in terms of print media, let’s project the roles into the future and discuss them in terms of scholastic media’s use of social media. And,…

Noteworthy information 7

If it looks and acts like a cheerleader, it shouldn’t end up being a student news outlet. At least that’s the view presented in the Center for Scholastic Journalism’s latest post, one in a series of decision-making choices about possible roles for student media. Writing a mission statement using this process is something students should…

Noteworthy information 6

Essential to the distribution of information that strengthens the credibility of scholastic media and its integrity, whether by legacy media or multimedia, is sound information gathering and attribution. Some interesting resources that can supply needed perspective and depth, build credibility and demonstrate leadership roles through reporting: • Journalist’s Resource from Harvard’s Joan Shorenstein Center on…