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What is going on in this photo that briefly appeared on the website of The New Hampshire Union-Leader? Thanks to a screenshot grabbed by Jason Linkins of The Huffington Post, we know that the caption read:
Firefighters wrap up the scene at a fire at 15 M. St. in Hampton this morning, where a home was gutted by two fires this morning. Right, Wayne McGowen, who was sleeping in the basement of the house when it caught fire, watches firefighters at the scene along with neighbor Kali Burns, who was dressed a a gorilla.
Linkins refers to this image and its caption by reporter Jason Shreiber as a great moment in photojournalism. I couldn’t agree more.
Link -via The Agitator
You laughed at the correction we posted yesterday, but now we have the full story. The author of the New York Times article, Amy Harmon, explained how it all came about.
The Times’ rule is, we correct anything that is wrong, no matter how small or seemingly silly. And I don’t know any of my colleagues who would want to do differently. I hate to get any detail wrong, and when I do, I often have a moment of fantasizing about just letting it slip. But as I sat there that morning, kicking myself for a relatively small mistake that marred a story I had poured my heart into, it seemed so much worse to let it stand. Not correcting it would have undermined the credibility of the other 5,011 words of the story – at least for “My Little Pony” fans. And I think we have seen now that they are not an obsessive subculture to be taken lightly.
Another part of the Times’ corrections policy, which arose after the awfulness of Jayson Blair, is that each correction is entered in a tracking system that includes who was responsible, and an explanation of how the error came to be.
She tells how the error came to the newspaper’s attention, how important it turned out to be in the context of the article, and her explanation for it. Link -via Metafilter
Simon Eroro, an Australian journalist, really wanted to talk a group of rebels in Papua New Guinea. He crossed many miles of wild, dangerous territory to find them, only to be told that he must be circumcised to meet with them. And they do circumcision the old fashioned way.
No, not a scalpel. Not even a knife. Slivers of bamboo.
In recognition of the extreme efforts that he went to to get the story, Eroro won a local journalism award:
In his subsequent reporting for the Post-Courier newspaper, Mr Eroro exposed the cross-border movements of Free West Papua militants from Indonesia into Papua New Guinea. The judges of News Ltd’s Scoop of the Year prize said the reports had led to a major police operation to tighten the borders.
“The impact of Simon’s scoop was enormous; the police commissioner launched a major operation to tighten the borders and close down the [Free West Papua] refugee camps,” the judges said.
Link -via Dave Barry | Photo: Flickr user CIFOR
This headline shows why it is so important for journalists to read their work before submitting it in order to make sure it comes out right. That or else these really were some incredibly hip microbes.
The following is an article from Uncle John’s Giant 10th Anniversary Bathroom Reader.
The media’s power to “create” news has become a hot topic in recent years. But it’s nothing new. This true story, from a book called The Fabulous Rogues, by Alexander Klein, is an example of what’s been going on for at least a century. It was sent to us by BRI reader Jim Morton.
Most journalistic hoaxes, no matter how ingenious, create only temporary excitement. But in 1899 four reporters in Denver, Colorado, concocted a fake story that, within a relatively short time, made news history -violent history at that. Here’s how it happened.
THE DENVER FOUR
One Saturday night the four reporters -from Denver’s four newspaper, the Times, Post, Republican, and Rocky Mountain News- met by chance in the railroad station where they had each come hoping to spot an arriving celebrity around whom they could write a feature. Disgustedly, they confessed to one another that they hadn’t picked up a newsworthy item all evening.
“I hate to go back to the city desk without something,” one of the reporters, Jack Toumay, said.
“Me, too,” agreed Al Stevens. “I don’t know what you guys are going to do, but I’m going to fake. It won’t hurt anybody, so what the devil.”
They other three fell in with the idea and they all walked up Seventeenth Street to the Oxford Hotel, where, over beers, they began to cast about for four possible fabrications. John Lewis, who was known as “King” because of his tall, dignified bearing, interrupted one of the preliminary gambits for a point of strategy. Why dream up four lukewarm fakes, he asked. Why not concoct a sizzler which they would all use, and make it stick better by their solidarity.
more …
In the days before the internet (actually 1912-1963), Bostonians could get news headlines at a glance by dropping by the storefront office of The Boston Globe. Handwritten signs and blackboards had the top stories, breaking news, and even sports stats in big print as fast as they were available. And of course, if you wanted to read more, you could buy a paper. Shown here is the big map of Europe installed for the D-Day invasion in 1944. See more pictures of the hand-lettered “homepage” at The Boston Globe. Link -via Metafilter
TopTenz has a list of ten (of course) photojournalists whose names you might not know, but they brought us pictures you will always remember. Many of them risked their lives for those photographs -David Seymour, for example.
In 1933 he landed his first job as a freelance journalist and from there his career took off. He was able to capture moments during the Spanish Civil War as well as during unrest in Czechoslovakia. In 1939 he took photographs of Loyalist Spanish refugees who journeyed to Mexico. When WWII began, Seymour was in New York but enlisted in the army in 1940 where he worked as a photo interpreter in Europe. In 1942 his parents were killed by Nazis, which lead him to help UNICEF document the plight of refugees, especially children.
Even though he was well known for his war photographs of orphans, he later got into photographing celebrities. While covering the 1956 Suez War, Seymour and fellow photographer Jean Roy were killed by machine-gun fire.
This video shows a terrible and rather odd gaffe by newscaster Cynthia Izaguirre of KOAT-7 of Albuquerque. It dates back to at least 2006.
via reddit
Opportunity + Instinct = Profit. A good journalist can sense the moment that a story is developing and seize the moment. That’s why when White House correspondent Tony Christopher started having a heart attack, he immediately logged into Twitter and started covering it:
Approximately at 6pm on Sunday afternoon Christopher wrote, “I gotta be me. Livetweeting my heart attack. Beat that!” Presumably a few minutes later the paramedics arrived to tell Christopher he will be stable after his crisis.
An hour later Christopher joked about needing to own a cardiac cat, referencing a viral video in which a cat is trying to revive his dead feline friend. He also updated his followers about the pain he was feeling, “even after the morphine.”
Link and Link via Jammie Wearing Fool | Screenshot: Mediaite
Intelligent Systems Informatics Lab at Tokyo University has developed a robot that performs basic journalistic functions:
The robot detects changes in its surroundings, decides if they are relevant, and then takes pictures with its on board camera. It can query nearby people for information, and it uses internet searches to further round out its understanding. If something appears newsworthy, the robot will even write a short article and publish it to the web.
Link via Gizmodo | Photo: Charlie Catlett
Michael R. Barrick created a graphic last summer using the Vancouver Olympics mascots and the internet cartoon character Pedobear. The image shows up in a Google image search for the mascots, so it was only a matter of time before someone used it without knowing that Pedobear is not an Olympic mascot. The graphic showed up this weekend in the Polish newspaper Gazeta Olsztyn. Link
Veteran journalist and news anchorman Walter Cronkite died today. Often called “the most trusted man in America”, Cronkite set a high standard for television journalism in the 20th century. He was 92 years old.
Mr. Cronkite anchored the “CBS Evening News” from 1962 to 1981, at a time when television became the dominant medium of the United States. He figuratively held the hand of the American public during the civil-rights movement, the space race, the Vietnam war and the impeachment of Richard Nixon. During his tenure, network newscasts were expanded to 30 minutes from 15.
And that’s the way it is, July 17, 2009.
Link -via YesButNoButYes
See also: A collection of memorable reports from Walter Cronkite.
In a busy life, it can be hard to find the time to peruse news sources for the latest things that journalists want us to be panicked about. That’s why you can save time by using Doomwatch, which indexes terms used in the UK newspaper The Daily Mail and tells you what to freak out about. Content warning: strong language.
Link via The Presurfer
