Transparency

People don't like to admit they are wrong.
That they don't know the answer to something.
That, because some very human issue intervened, they didn't finish the job.

Yet, transparency has become one of the most important aspects of doing quality journalism.
And journalists are just as guilty as everyone else of glossing over mistakes, holes in information, and how real life can side-rail their work.

I was irritated today by a New York Times article about allegations that Herman Cain, an interesting and appealing GOP candidate for president in 2012, had been accused at least twice in the 1990s of sexual harassment by colleagues.

In the interest of transparency, the Times does a number of things right. It clearly states that some of these allegations were dug up by a news competitor, the Associated Press. It openly stated that one of its sources, Chris Wilson, who worked as a pollster at the National Restaurant Association when Cain led that trade group, would not say what Cain said to one of the allegedly harassed women, and that Wilson couldn't shed much light on any such instance. It identifies Wilson today as being a pollster for the Rick Perry campaign for president.

But the Times story also contains this passage, supposedly outlining the sweep of its interviews to try to get to the bottom of this Clarence Thomas/Anita Hill-like mess:

While Mr. Cain’s accusations briefly turned the attention away from him, interviews with more than a dozen people over the last three days paint a picture of his 1996-99 tenure at the National Restaurant Association that is at odds with his insistence that he never harassed anyone. Several people who worked at the association said they knew of episodes that women said had made them uncomfortable dealing with Mr. Cain. 

If you keep reading though, very little info "at odds" with Cain's story is revealed. Many people are quoted anonymously. The story leaves me feeling unsettled, unconvinced. Why was this story on Page One of the nation's most influential newspaper?

And, in fact, this is how I want my journalism students at Miami University of Ohio to feel whenever they consume some news that doesn't quite fit nicely in a transparent box.

I want them to be skeptical. To challenge assertions. To go seek out other info, other viewpoints.

And, ultimately, I want my students to be MORE transparent when they must write an article in which the stakes are high, the answers obscured by muck and the audience ravenous.

The Artifice of Anniversaries

Ten years ago today, I spent a 14-hour day as an editor in the Cincinnati Enquirer's newsroom.

The day started out doing my civic duty - voting. Many people, in fact, have forgotten that Sept. 11, 2001, was also a day to vote on (mainly) municipal issues across the country.
The day ended also doing my civic duty - informing the public at length about the horrors of terrorism on our own soil.

In-between, I insisted that my husband leave work, pick up our two young children who were in school near Cincinnati's downtown, and take them home to protect them should more deadly planes come calling on tall buildings in America's heartland.

Spencer Platt, photojournalist

The special edition we at the Enquirer published on 9/11 featured on its cover a photo by my former Elmira, N.Y. Star-Gazette colleague, Spencer Platt, at right, who has gone on to be an international photojournalist extraordinaire.
Read his account in Life magazine of how he did his civic duty that day - leaping out of bed in NYC and racing into the unknown with a lens pointed skyward.

Most of 9/11 and the days that followed I spent coordinating with two Cincinnati Enquirer journalists - Robert Anglen and Karen Samples Gutierrez - who just happened to be vacationing separately in NYC.  They left their loved ones to jump into the reporting fray - Robert by talking his way into the Ground Zero area and Karen by befriending a group of rescuers at their home base on the water.

To call this civic duty would be the understatement of an industry - it was sheer journalistic heroism, and I am still humbled by their work.

Today, for hours I read 10-year anniversary accounts of 9/11. How could you NOT want to acknowledge, on the 10th anniversary, how this terrorist attack changed America's history, its people, the things we fear the most?

And yet.
There is something to be said for setting aside anniversaries.
Instead of wallowing in memories of pain and heroism, danger and loss, why not live each day building on what you have learned from an event - and concentrating on the here and now?

We went hiking in the woods today, too, this 10th anniversary of 9/11. I gardened, cleaned a bathroom, talked with my 16-year-old son about football, wrote, made turkey burritos for dinner. And it felt good, even noteworthy for its ordinariness. An American ordinariness.

The 9/11 reporting the Cincinnati Enquirer did was extraordinary, and I would not take back those days. Many, many other stories we did that year were also noteworthy in their civic significance - particularly our investigative and social service work after race riots, which I was integrally involved in.

But embattled American journalism is a civic trust, meant to serve citizens every day as a watchdog, as a reliable source of information, as storytellers, as empower-ers so people can take action.
Anniversaries come and go.
Civic responsibility does not.

Raising Questions

My teenagers always accuse me of asking 20 questions about things they'd rather not share at all.

My reply always runs along the same line as Jack Sparrow gave in "Pirates of the Caribbean," when Will Turner indignantly said in the midst of a sword duel: "You cheated!"
Sparrow's reply: "Pirate."
My reply to my kids: "Journalist."

As a new Journalism 101 semester begins at Miami University, my students will be exploring what it means to be a journalist today -- and back to America's roots as a democracy.
Their first assignment: Check facts and look for bias while comparing the same news story across several different news sources.

The exercise cuts to the heart of the question: Whom do you trust for reliable news?

A Gleam in Her Eye

Maria Figueroa wiped her dirt-streaked brow with a cloth and then rubbed her equally grimy hands down her jeans. Despite her middle-age girth, she leaped gracefully down from the scaffolding on the side of the building. She had been cleaning its marble walls and sculptured pediments laced with 14-carat gold for eight hours now. Soon the bells would ring for Mass.

She shrugged her shoulders to loosen the cramps, then turned her head upward, eyes playing across the facade. 

Slowly the smile spread across her shiny face. The jewel of her small Arizona town it was, she thought to herself. St. George Church. And she got to polish its crown.

"Jewel" has been my favorite word for many years. I remember when I used it for the first time in a news article about a luxury housing development planned for a downtown that sorely needed it.

"God, that is a pretentious word," I thought to myself, and almost deleted it.

But the next day after the story published, the mayor called to compliment my description. A friend called to ask about the condos for sale. The developer later bought an ad in my small-town paper and offered me seats at a local ballpark. Decline.

Jewel is one of those words that promises and winks. And sometimes it overpromises. I like that complexity.

Sam Adams (Old Fezziwig)

Today's discussion in Journalism 101 was about truth and transparency.
I love Sam Adams, but his Journal of Occurrences in 1768 was political spin sans a shred of fact (see if you can say that fast three times).
Yet Adams' published lies about "indecencies" that British soldiers inficted on Boston's women, old men and business people helped drive the occupying British forces out of Boston and jumpstart a revolution.

Spin with purpose?
Ends that justify the means?
So Machiavellian.

But not journalism.
And a great conversation starter to get at the essence of journalism.

Here's a novel concept I tried to convey to journalism students:
Be transparent in your writing, your blogging, your communication spin. Unveil those "gray" areas: biases, viewpoints, agendas.

I love it when I see statements like this in news articles today:
"Full disclosure: This Ford Foundation director also sits on the Gazette's Board of Directors."
"Full disclosure: I am the mother of two young children and I worry about pedophiles all the time."
"Full disclosure: My dad invested his life's savings in Enron and today is destitute. I"m trying not to be bitter."

Full disclosure: I may never write openly about my political viewpoints or my religious philosophy.
But when I write, I'm never going to lie.
That's what's called being a journalist.

All the News That's Fit to Pay For

The New York Times today said it will begin charging in 2011 for repeated use of its news content.
Bravo!

Those of us who still get home delivery of the print edition will get free, unfettered access.
But all you slackers who have come to see quality news and info as a service, rather than a product with intrinsic value, will have to pony up an as-yet-to-be-disclosed monthly fee for regular use of the site.

It takes balls to monetize an entire news site.

Actually, it takes a reputation like the Times'. Or the Wall Street Journal, which already does it.
What will the Times' online advertisers say, do? I'm guessing the Times has talked to them ad nauseam, and has spreadsheets out the wazoo laying out the plan.

Can The Cincinnati Enquirers and Dayton Daily Newses of the world take the leap?
Doubt it.

But it's a VERY SMART step forward. SOMEONE's gotta do it.
All the News That's Fit to Print... on your debit card's monthly statement.

A New Year, a New Outlook

Today's class discussions - in all three journalism courses I teach at Miami University of Ohio - are about news media trends.
It's a hard lesson, both for me and for students.
The fun part for students was doing their own news media surveys of family, friends and fellow students. How often do you seek out community news? U.S. news? World news? Where do you go to find it? Do you usually read a story to the end, or just the headline, or just look at the photos or video?

It's a great discussion to have with young people. Some were shocked by how little some classmates know or care about news these days. Some were surprised at how much family members - even younger siblings - stick with newspaper reading, or the nightly network news broadcast.

But then comes the hard part: Looking through the annual "State of the News Media" report from the Pew Project for Excellence in Journalism.
A sobering moment, even when I emphasize that studies show demand for 24/7 news is growing, but that the business model to support that newsgathering is on life support.

It's a hard lesson for me, too. After 30 years of calling myself a "journalist" (since I was a teen, editing the Echo student newspaper at Webster Groves High School in St. Louis), I often today marvel at what that term means.
How many times can you say to a young person: "Well, 30 (or 20, or 10) years ago, journalists blah blah blah..." Many get their "news" from Jon Stewart, or Colbert.

I was struck yesterday by Technorati's annual "State of the Blogosphere," so similar to Pew's "State of the News Media." Three out of every four bloggers today is a "hobbiest," the study found. Three quarters are college grads. Two of out every three are male (where are all of us chatty women? Facebook?).

I haven't had much time to do real journalism in the past year because of my teaching and web design load. The conservative Cincinnati columnist Peter Bronson was just named editor of the magazine I previously had written boatloads of business articles for. I won't be working for Cincy again.

But I HAVE blogged. Blogged during my 2009 summer in Italy often, and loved it, and always reported and wrote like a journalist. Technorati's studies show that a large chunk of bloggers feel they are doing journalism. So maybe I should feel better about my blog work, and even my Facebook posts of "news," like the Bronson bit, which my Cincinnati media colleagues will buzz about.

But for writing students, I know blogging is a blast. They have fun, they work on their writing, their journalism. And, best of all, they contribute to the global conversation while doing it. Democracy - the Fourth Estate, if you will - at work at Miami University.

Go Redhawk writers!