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Archive for March, 2014

More thoughts on SPJ Code of Ethics revisions: minimizing harm, independence, accountability

Posted in Ethics, tagged , , , , on March 31, 2014| 3 Comments »

This continues my analysis of a draft of a revision to Society of Professional Journalists Code of Ethics. I commented Friday on the changes to the “Seek Truth” section of the code. Here I’ll address the next three sections: Minimize Harm, Act Independently and Be Accountable.

I remain disappointed in the revisions and hopeful that SPJ members will insist on a more thorough update. My primary criticisms from Friday’s post still stand: The Ethics Committee went into this process with most members having already decided that the current Code of Ethics, adopted in 1996, just needed a little tweaking. I argued in 2010 and on various occasions since that the code needs an overhaul. I don’t know if we’re in a majority of journalists, but lots of people have told me privately that they agree (a poll on that 2010 post showed a vote of 138-22 in favor of updating, but I’m under no illusion that my blog readers are a cross-section of journalists.

The committee’s draft just tweaked and didn’t sufficiently address the needs of journalists today or the recommendations of a digital “subcommittee” on which I served (only one member of the subcommittee was an actual member of the Ethics Committee). (more…)

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SPJ’s ethics code ‘update’ proposal: just a few tweaks

Posted in diversity, Ethics, plagiarism, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on March 28, 2014| 25 Comments »

Ethics codes should guide journalists in the world where we live and work, not the world where we wish we worked.

At a discussion at the Excellence in Journalism conference last August, several members of the Society of Professional Journalists Ethics Committee indicated they thought the SPJ Code of Ethics just needed “tweaking,” if it needed anything.

Here’s a surprise: They decided just to tweak it.

The code needs an overhaul and it got a touch-up.

Journalism is changing and journalists make ethical decisions in unfamiliar situations. Journalism ethics codes need to provide helpful guidance for journalists. The SPJ Code of Ethics, last revised in 1996, is perhaps the most-cited code and for many years was the most helpful. Now it’s terribly outdated and needs to reflect the world where journalists work.

The first draft at an update feels more like an effort to resist change than an effort to guide journalists in a time of change. (more…)

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A new title to my blog: ‘Mmm. Smooth Buttry Goodness’

Posted in Personal, tagged , , on March 26, 2014| 12 Comments »

mmm smooth buttry goodnessI struggled to come up with a name for my blog and I’ve changed it several times. But I’ll keep this one for at least a month.

First this blog was “Puttin’ on the Gaz,” back when I was editor of the Cedar Rapids Gazette. Not sure why I settled on that, but I never liked it much. Before long, when I was trying to lead some big changes there, the blog became “Transforming the Gaz.”

When I left Cedar Rapids, I sort of needed to get “Gaz” out of the name, so it became “Pursuing the Complete Community Connection,” a nod to my vision for transforming news organizations but a cumbersome title for a blog.

With the 2010 launch of TBD, I decided on “The Buttry Diary,” working my name into the title as well as the initials of my new organization. Well, Allbritton Communications decided to kill TBD in the cradle, but I kept the name. After all, my name hadn’t changed. And I thought most people wouldn’t notice the initials. And, if they did, I was happy to honor a great news team and a vision that, I’m certain, would have succeeded if we had been given a chance.

I was figuring it would be “The Buttry Diary” indefinitely. Until Gene Weingarten suggested a change:

Well, people with my surname don’t make it through junior high without a thick skin. I was Butthead before anyone thought of Beavis. And I was Buttface and Assbush and any number to plays on the part of my name that reminds people of their rear ends. I played along. In my fantasy baseball days, my team was the Kissmy Buttrys (league champions two out of four years before I decided to take my money and run). Posterior plays on my name are so easy to make that few have thought of playing on the dairy sound to my name.

So I decided to turn Gene’s suggestion into a challenge: If people would donate $500 or more to the American Copy Editors Society Education Fund, which provides scholarships for editing students, I would change the name one month for every $1,000 raised.

(more…)

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Want to rename my blog? It’s gonna cost you!

Posted in Personal on March 21, 2014| 8 Comments »

mmm smooth buttry goodnessFor the right price (donated to a worthy cause), I will rename my blog.

Gene Weingarten initially raised the issue:

I quickly (but only briefly) complied, but Gene wanted more:

I replied with a facetious invitation to bribes:

While I knew no one would pay me to change my blog name, right after I posted that, it occurred to me that maybe I could make this a charity fund-raiser. See whether Gene really has enough sway with his followers to generate some meaningful “entreaties.”

Well, it so happens that I was already feeling a little bad that in my downsized condo life I couldn’t think of anything of value I have (and am willing to part with) to contribute to the silent auction at the American Copy Editors Society silent auction tonight to raise money for the ACES Education Fund. So …

I’ve started a Crowdrise campaign to change the name of my blog to “Mmm. Smooth Buttry Goodness.” (In reading the rules, I learned that Kickstarter isn’t for fundraising for causes.) Update: When I first posted this, I didn’t yet have the fund’s taxpayer ID number, so the campaign wasn’t live yet. It is live now. Grab your credit card and donate.

I’ll change the name for one full month for every $1,000 raised with a starting threshold of $500. If we raise at least $500 in the next week, I’ll change the name for a month. If we raise one dollar more than $1,000, then I change for two months. If you give $2,001 I change the title for three months, etc.

I need a suitable blog header. If someone will design a blog header incorporating the title, my photo (contact me for some possibilities you could use) and some sort of butter imagery, I’ll contribute $100 in your name. Update: we have blog header (Ivan has adjusted it slightly from what you see here to fit the dimensions of the header):

And, if I can’t even raise $500 to change the name of my blog, that might be a little humbling. And that would probably be OK with Gene, too.

So go ahead. Get your credit card and click the link above. I welcome your “entreaties.”

Smooth Buttry Goodness

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By request, a new name for my blog

Posted in Personal on March 21, 2014| 4 Comments »

Just for one quick screenshot for Gene Weingarten, I have renamed my blog:

In case you missed it:

Smooth Buttry GoodnessEarly reaction is mostly positive:

 

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#twutorial for copy editors: Links, slides and tweets

Posted in #twutorial series on March 21, 2014| 5 Comments »

I led a workshop at the American Copy Editors Society on how Twitter can be useful for copy editors. (No, I did not ask them to stand and sing, contrary to the appearance of the photo above.)

I made points covered in these previous #twutorial posts:

Step one for using Twitter as a reporter: Master advanced search

Hashtags help journalists find relevant tweets and reach more people

Hashtags considered #harmful by Daniel Victor

@bydanielvictor challenges the overuse of #hashtags

Use lists, TweetDeck, HootSuite, saved searches, alerts to organize Twitter’s chaos

How to verify information from tweets: Check it out

Ben Garvin’s advice: Illustrate your tweets

Updated Twitter time management tips

If a tweet looks too good to be true, grab a screenshot NOW

I probably make other points used elsewhere in my #twutorial series.

I also discussed curation.

Here are the slides for my workshop, followed by some tweets from workshop attendees (I may update later with more tweets):

That’s a tip from Andy Carvin, by the way.

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Workshop on training and presentation skills

Posted in Training on March 19, 2014| 1 Comment »

I led a workshop Wednesday on presentation skills for board members of the American Copy Editors Society.

Many of the workshop’s tips are reflected in my 2010 post on preparing and delivering workshops and presentations.

These were slides for the workshop:

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Upholding and updating journalism ethics: My Colorado keynote

Posted in Ethics, plagiarism on March 15, 2014| 13 Comments »

This is my keynote address for the Digital Journalism Ethics Symposium Friday at the University of Colorado. Slides are at the end, though I’ve inserted some of the images in the text below. I ad-libbed occasionally, so this was not my exact address, but the prepared text. This is most of what I said. April Nowicki covered my speech and Aimee Heckel Storified some of the tweets from my talk.

Journalists who wish life were simple like to say that ethical standards should not change over time. They seem to want ethics to be a rock we can cling to in difficult times. Our business is changing and the job market is changing and expectations of journalists and the public are changing. Can’t we at least anchor ourselves to these timeless ethical principles? Well, yes, but no.

My view is that we uphold these timeless values of journalism ethics only by updating and upgrading them. Technology and changing markets present new situations where journalists face ethical choices, and we need to update our advice to apply to those tools and circumstances. At the same time, some unethical practices have undermined our cherished principles and we need to strengthen our guidance for journalists if we want to uphold our values. And we cannot let loyalty to long-held principles keep us from following the wise voices calling on us to do better.

Our sense of what is right and wrong changes in other aspects of life. Why would we expect journalism to be insulated from how life changes? (more…)

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Why does Facebook keep ignoring my choice of ‘most recent’ posts?

Posted in Facebook, tagged on March 10, 2014| 3 Comments »

Most of my Facebook updates get zero likes. That’s fine. My updates aren’t that interesting, and I do a better job of engaging on Twitter.

But this update yesterday got more than 70 likes and 15 comments:

Facebook algorithm postFacebook is enormously successful and powerful. And I don’t for a minute think that my friends and my friends’ friends are representative of Facebook users.

But I do sense (and feel) a growing dissatisfaction with the Facebook user experience. I think this giant might be ripe for disruption.

Facebook, don’t assume you’ll thrive forever just because you’re so damned important to people’s lives. That’s what newspapers did.

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Questions to help newsrooms unbolt enterprise reporting from the ‘Sunday story’

Posted in Project Unbolt on March 5, 2014| 16 Comments »

Project Unbolt logoA leading challenge in unbolting newsrooms will be to help enterprise reporting break free of the “Sunday story.”

For decades, most newsrooms with Sunday papers target their best enterprise for that day, when space is generous and daily news is usually light and readers are likely to spend more time with the newspaper. But Sunday is an awful day for web traffic. Our digital audience is more engaged during the work week.

The Digital First approach to enterprise reporting has largely been to publish our Sunday stories online Saturday or Friday (if the reporter turns them in on time and we finish the editing early enough). But our best enterprise still gets muted impact with the digital audience, publishing on the weekend or late in the work week. And the content still generally revolves around a long text story that was planned for print.

Planning for enterprise stories needs to focus on how and when we tell the story digitally. Presentation of some of that content as a Sunday print story should be an afterthought (like digital planning often tends to be now). We might not develop a single approach that we use for all enterprise stories, but through experimentation develop a handful of approaches that work for different types of enterprise stories.

As I help Digital First Media newsrooms “unbolt” from our print workflow and culture in Project Unbolt, I have suggested that we develop some questions to consider in planning enterprise stories. I’m not suggesting that all these questions be considered for every story (it’s quite a long list), but some of them (and most or all of the umbrella topics below) should be considered for every story. (more…)

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Project Unbolt: Changing the newspaper-factory culture

Posted in Project Unbolt, tagged , , , , , on March 4, 2014| 2 Comments »

Photo linked from Wikimedia

I’ve written about Project Unbolt for the new Culture Change blog of the International Newsmedia Marketing Association.

Some of the content will be familiar to readers of this blog, because it’s essentially an overview of Project Unbolt, which I announced here in January.

I took a new approach in this post, though, noting how deeply our corporate culture is rooted in being a newspaper factory:

I always loved working in a newspaper factory.

I worked in the newsroom, far away from the fast-moving machinery — unless you counted my typewriter keys as deadline approached. But I was well aware my building was a factory and my company a manufacturer.

You smelled ink when you walked into the building. You heard and felt the rumble when the press started. In the hallways and lunchrooms, the inky smears on clothing and skin identified the factory workers who turned my words and my colleagues’ work into the daily miracle.

Once, as editor of the Minot Daily News in 1992, I got to yell, “Stop the presses!” (You had to yell, by the way, or you wouldn’t be heard.)

Much as I loved the factories I’ve worked in, I also embrace my current professional challenge: “Unbolting” my company’s newsroom from the factory’s deadlines, culture, and processes. …

I hope you’ll read the whole post and become a regular reader of the Culture Change blog, where I’ll contribute every couple of months.

In the context of that blog, I needed to move on to the topic rather than elaborating on an old memory from the factory, but I’ll tell here briefly about the time I got to yell “Stop the presses!” (I’m operating from memory here, but I think I remember the details well.) (more…)

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Christopher James: Excellent journalism is still our product

Posted in Project Unbolt, tagged , on March 3, 2014| 4 Comments »

Christopher James

Christopher James

An email from Christopher James brought an interesting perspective to Project Unbolt.

Chris is a former sports writer at the Berkshire Eagle, one of our Project Unbolt pilot newsrooms. He won a DFMie last year for sports writing, then took a job as sports editor at the Mountain Press in Sevier County, Tenn.

Here’s what Chris said in his email (which I’m using here with his permission):

I haven’t had the time to read all your unbolt posts, but they touch on a lot of themes I’m trying to emphasize here as well. So forgive me if you’ve spelled this out, but it seems to be the obvious, perhaps unsaid idea here is that the newspaper (or Tout or video or photograph or social networks) aren’t the products. They’re delivery services for the product which is good storytelling, journalism, etc. (more…)

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