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Thursday, November 10, 2011
31 comments:
Jim says: "Proceed with caution; this is a free-for-all comment zone. I try to correct or clarify incorrect information. But I can't catch everything. Please keep your posts focused on Gannett and media-related subjects. Note that I occasionally review comments in advance, to reject inappropriate ones. And I ignore hostile posters, and recommend you do, too."
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If you call Circulation at the Home News Tribune, the recording is still telling people to visit the Central Jersey Mom's site. Certainly not the worst thing going on over there. They didn't endorse many local races this year because they didn't have the staff.
ReplyDeleteBoy, there's a bigger story brewing at Penn State. As I post this, here's what I've just read on the Philadelphia Inquirer's website, under the headline, Bedlam erupts on Penn State campus:
ReplyDeleteMore than 1,000 students rioted and rallied at Old Main and on frat-house-lined Beaver Avenue. Riot cops, fire trucks and ambulances were on hand after midnight, amid reports that tear gas was being used to disperse the crowd.
I'm seeing nothing about this on USA Today's website; just a few graphs at the NYT's; and nothing at the Wall Street Journal.
USAT has just now posted a full story, which includes lots of detail on student protests that the campus newspaper is describing as a "riot."
ReplyDeleteIs there any news about the December layoffs.
ReplyDeleteWe haven't heard anything since the terrible 3rd quarter financial report.
Jim -- don't you mean "another story" is brewing? Not "a bigger story." Right?
ReplyDeleteRe: Penn State. An interesting side issue is town/gown. If those students had read the grand jury report, they would want to burn down the stadium, not turn over a TV news truck and blame the media. Meanwhile, people who live year round and raise their families in State College, Pa. are furious at the athletic department/university.
ReplyDeleteBunch of frickin' idiots. Rioting in defense of Paterno -- a man who failed to protect 10-year-old boys from being anally raped in the shower of his team's locker room.
ReplyDeleteWow, the Courier-Post is actually hiring a reporter. That's the first job opening I've seen at any of the NJ papers in a long time.
ReplyDelete9:51 I should have said "even bigger."
ReplyDeleteWhat was interesting was seeing and then watching student-produced video uploaded to YouTube within minutes of the riots. Given our recent discussion about web videos, these were raw news videos that actually worked.
Also, USAT was smart to have published the Grand Jury's report early in the news cycle. I read the whole thing, and found that it really hammered home the gravity of the criminal charges in ways that news stories did not. I noticed that many readers posting comments on news stories kept referring to having read the Grand Jury report, too.
Hey GCI brass, check out this survey report from an organization we're sure you'd find credible.
ReplyDeleteIt demonstrates clearly that companies with fully engaged employees deliver far, far better on ROI. When you "lose the room" like CD did (let's not kid ourselves on that one, OK gang?), you make less profit. When you have them engaged, you make more. That means a bigger bonus for you. Sounds like a win-win, right? Happy reading:
http://www.aon.com/attachments/thought-leadership/Trends_Global_Employee_Engagement_Final.pdf
11:39 -- don't believe it until Cherry Hill actually hires someone. Posting a position doesn't mean they'll actually hire.
ReplyDeleteAnd then don't expect anyone to stay long. Once they catch a whiff of the leadership there, they'll be sure to bolt.
Things just got a lot uglier in Happy Valley:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.nesn.com/2011/11/jerry-sandusky-rumored-to-have-been-pimping-out-young-boys-to-rich-donors-says-mark-madden.html
Jim, where can the grand jury indictment be found. I'm interested in reading it, though I'm afraid it will make me puke!
ReplyDelete1:16 This is the version I read on USA Today's website; it's 24 pages long, including the "warning" cover page that USAT added.
ReplyDeleteWhat's with Poynter's broadside against Romanesko? Those folks lost their way several years ago and Poynter has been on the skids since, just like most journalism groups. Shells of their former selves, just like newsrooms.
ReplyDelete2:45 Agreed! Here's the comment I posted to Poynter's article today:
ReplyDeleteWhat a high-falutin' note, Julie.
This says at least as much -- if not more -- about Poynter's back reading as it does about Jim's posts. And I'm writing as someone whose work has been frequently summarized by Jim over the years.
I love this part: "A centerpiece of our editorial work has been the Romenesko blog."
A "centerpiece?" Exactly how many people would be coming to Poynter without Romenesko's excellent work over the years? Sheesh.
Didn't Poynter *recruit* Romenesko a few years back? Presumably when he was using the same aggregation technique as he is now?
ReplyDeleteI've read hundreds, if not thousands, of his postings, and at least hundreds of the stories he's linked to, and never noticed that he wasn't putting quote marks in. I guess the Poynter people didn't, either.
I for one would not visit Poynter's site without the draw of Romenesko (and, once upon a time, Dr. Ink and Al's Morning Meeting). Today, the entire center produces a kind of pontificating self-righteous think-tank approach to the news that really puts me off. (I'd like to see Kelly McBride actually spend some time in a real newsroom these days and see if she could hack it.) The training and conferences they offer are only good for those big-city newsrooms that still have a training budget; I'm sure not spending $1,150 for a week-long seminar ($230 a day).
I've found the posts by Moos and others - as Jim R. has eased his way into semi-retirement - to be simultaneously overly snobby and cloying. I also think they've majorly dropped the ball on several stories - they never mentioned Dubow's leave of absence, for example.
I don't blame Poynter for calling Romenesko ut like that - it really couldn't do anything else, given its record of calling for newsroom transparency. Nor do I think they made the wrong call. What he did was plagiarism, plain and simple. You don't take someone else's words and present them as yours. Quotation marks are a very simple solution to a not-very-complicated problem.
But what I most disliked was the lack of comment from Jim Romenesko himself, or an explanation of why they refused his offer to resign. That deserves to be fleshed out in more detail, and Romenesko deserves a chance to offer his side.
3:59 Indeed, Poynter recruited him and paid him very well because administrators there knew he would pull in beaucoups traffic by making that dull-as-dishwater site interesting. And it worked.
ReplyDeleteBut where oh where have they been these past 12 years while Jim was using the same attribution style he's always used? Enjoying three-martini lunches? They certainly haven't been working in actual newsrooms as the industry has been in free fall.
And I totally disagree about this being anything like plagiarism, our industry's capital offense.
Here's how Merriam defines plagiarizing: "To steal and pass off the ideas or words of another as one's own without crediting the source."
Jim always, always credited the source -- and provided a link, no less. How is that plagiarizing?
What Poynter has done to that blog is a shame -- a fact described perfectly today by Choire Sicha at The Awl.
That's a crock of shit. I had Jim Romenesko as a teacher for my news reporting class at UWM in the early 90s, and I have to say as a working journalist I learned much more from his anecdotes than I picked up from any other class.
ReplyDeleteIf his role was defined as aggregator, by definition he was pulling material from other sites. Sites that had the original attribution, style, and for goodness sakes, quote marks - and that he provided links back to.
The entire Moos article comes off as a scold. I get that CJR has time on its hands to worry about quote marks. They're right. And perhaps the format of aggregate blogs still requires that precision that we've used in print. No problem. But as I'm scrolling and scrolling through this navel-gazing finger-shaking - I gotta think, who cares?
Yaay, they are transparent. But it's not like Jim did anything to lose a Pulitzer over, and he didn't do it without supervision - at a huge benefit to Poynter over the years. It's a site by and for working journalists - there's no need to beat him to death over format issues.
In the forum section, both Moos and Fry are (rightfully so) taking a lot of hits because both of them apparently have far, far too much time on their hands. Fry especially comes across as a particularly self-righteous type who thrives on coming up with contrived "gotchas" to make herself feel superior. Moos comes across as the self-important, out-of-touch manager who doesn't have the perspective and/or brass ones to tell Fry to find something more substantial to worry about.
ReplyDeleteI love the one guy's comment that ends with, no wonder so many people hate journalist.
Oh, I'm sorry! I should have put quotation marks around that comment, right Julie and Erika?
Until this year, Romenesko's posts and headlines were brief and would link directly to the source of his memo, story, etc.
ReplyDeletePoynter brass, in an effort to keep people on the site, started long paraphrases and summaries to keep people from clicking away from the site to the source material. Like HuffingtonPost.
In short, the Poynter people who contribute to "Romenesko+" started this practice and are now blaming Romenesko. It's just silly. The man gets paid well, and deserves every cent. He is a pioneer and I can't wait to follow him to his new site and drop Poynter from my bookmarks. I have never met the man, but respect his work. BTW, Jim, you should take a look at Poynter's 990s to see how they are drying up financially. A lot of the people who were most respected, like Bob Steele, are long gone.
Pretty soon it's gonna be "This story about personal finance is sponsored by American Express" or "This story about the auto industry is sponsored by Ford"...the more desperate they get, the more it creeps in
ReplyDeleteRomenesko resigns:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.poynter.org/latest-news/romenesko/152838/romenesko-resigns-after-12-years-at-poynter
This type of smear campaign can happen equally suddenly to any of us.
It's about time to say "Who the (bleep) is Julie Moos and who the (bleep) is Erika Fry and why the (bleep) are these two members of the 'entitled generation' allowed to attempt to tarnish the reputation of a great journalist?" The explanation by Moos is a crock. To even use the phrase, "questionable attribution," as observed by the "sharp eye" of Fry is absurd.
ReplyDeleteWhere are the grown-ups when this sort of lunacy unfolds in a once-great institution?
9:51 likes many of us knows that just about all of the grown-ups fled top editorships, journalism groups and associations as the profits or assets dried up. Most "leaders" these days are third stringers and it shows.
ReplyDeleteWhen are the Bahamas crew due back in town?
ReplyDeleteIt could have been handled in one sentence by Romenesko himself: "Hey, the Poynter folks have asked that all direct material I use in my posts should have quote marks to avoid any chance of confusion. Will do." This long, somewhat-pompous explanation of what is a minor concern, at worst, given the total of context of the Romenesko column, is an embarrassment to Poynter. It is hard not to believe there is a back story in the Poynter-Romenesko relationship. The friction is obvious. What's the real story here?
ReplyDeleteRe 12:34 PM comment on Courier Post possibly hiring a reporter, there must have been a typo. You referred to their leadership. Should be their losers. The so called management at this paper is stinking rotten and incompetent.
ReplyDeleteSad thing about the Courier Post hiring is that there are plenty of journos toiling away at weeklies all over NJ who would love to work for a daily.
ReplyDeleteMoos has an amazing background as a "journalist." a decade at a trade org. And several years at a local tv station, with little to no actual reporting experience. So typical someone of her I'll is casting stones. Over this? she would fit perfectly with Gannett. The petty culture and second guessing is rampant.
ReplyDeleteI would call Jim Romenesko a curator rather than an aggregator, because he culled relevance from the vast tide of information that washes over the interwebs daily.
ReplyDelete