JOURNALISM

The state of indiscretion: The cover story of this month's American Journalism Review -- "Breaking the Rules: The Fabrication and Plagiarism Outbreak" --offers a painful recitation of journalistic violations since the spring of 1998. That's when The New Republic's Stephen Glass was fired for fabricating an article and The Boston Globe's Patricia Smith resigned after admitting she made up people in some of her columns.

The collective weight of these and subsequent incidents has done nothing to help the tattered image of the news media in the court of public opinion, but a recent report shows the media's prospects in the court of law actually improved last year.

There were only 11 trials against news outlets on libel, privacy and related claims in 2000, and media defendants won five of them, up from one-third of the trials in 1999, according to the New York-based Libel Defense Resource Center.

"The media, as it enters the new millennium, continues to go to trial on libel, privacy and related 1st Amendment issues less frequently than in the 1980s and to win a higher percentage of those trials," said Sandra Baron, executive director of the center. "We believe this suggests a continuation of the trends seen in the 1990s, when media defendants experienced greater success at trial both before juries and judges."

But it is too early to conclude that the downward movement in punitive awards--they were at a record low last year--are part of a trend or are an anomaly, the group said.

Indeed. On March 1, the publisher and editor of the New Observer, a free alternative paper published in Kansas City, Kan., were arrested and charged with criminal defamation under Kansas law. The nature of the criminal charge? They reported that the mayor and her husband, a judge, do not actually live in the county where they work.


Winners and finalists of inaugural Online Journalism Awards
were presented by the Online News Association & Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism: General Excellence in Online Journalism: Original to the Web

-Winner: Salon.com

-Finalists: Central Europe Review, a weekly Web journal of Central and East European politics and society; CNET News.com, a leading technology news site; Insure.com, an independent site covering all aspects of insurance; TheStreet.com, an irreverent financial news publication.

General Excellence in Online Journalism: In Collaboration

-Winner: MSNBC.com

-Finalists: Atlantic Unbound, an expanded version of Atlantic Monthly; Business Week Online, the Web arm of Business Week magazine; FT.com, the Internet site of Britain's Financial Times; WSJ.com, the Online version of the Wall Street Journal newspaper.

Breaking News: Original to the Web

-Winner: CNET News.com, for coverage of the Microsoft case.

-Finalists: Rediff.com, for coverage of a hijacked Indian Airlines flight; Richmond.com, for a story asking: Who's looking out for the homeless during a hurricane?

Breaking News: In Collaboration

-Winner: ABCNews.com, for coverage of Seattle riots during World Trade Organization meeting.

-Finalists: The Albuquerque Tribune, for coverage of a forest fire that threatened Los Alamos, N.M.; Business Week Online, for coverage of Indonesian politics and its impact on the economy; WSJ.com: for coverage of the AOL-Time Warner Deal.

Enterprise Journalism: Original to the Web

-Winner: Salon.com, for a report on how network television shows included anti-drug pitches to cash in on a government advertising subsidy.

-Finalists: APBNews.com, for a report on efforts by former prisoner of war Sen. John McCain to keep secret key portions of the government's POW and missing-in-action files; CNET News.com, for coverage of online piracy through Napster-like technologies; Salon.com, for a report on revelations about the misreporting of the famous story of a Columbine student having been shot for saying she believed in God; TheStreet.com, for exposing a pre-IPO company that provided institutional investors with more detail about its upcoming IPO than individuals could read in public filings.

Enterprise Journalism: In Collaboration.

-Co-winners: Associated Press, for an investigative report about the killing of South Korean civilians by the American military during the Korean War; The New York Times on the Web, for a series on race relations in America.

-Finalists: American Radio Works, for coverage of mass killings and deportations in Kosovo; MSNBC.com, for a series exploring humanity's struggle to survive the impact it is having on the planet; WashingtonPost.com, for coverage of the cruelties against civilians in Sierra Leone's civil war.

Service Journalism: Original to the Web

-Winner: BabyCenter.com, for coverage of health issues for the first year of a newborn baby.

-Finalists: APBNews.com, covering crime and safety issues in college communities around the country; BankRate.com, for a report in the wake of North Carolina's Hurricane Floyd; Women.com, for a year-by-year guide to child development.

Service Journalism: In Collaboration

-Winner: Cleveland Live, for an in-depth report on selecting a nursing home for an older relative.

-Finalists: ConsumerReports.org, for an exclusive rating system for online shopping sites; Weather.com, for an extensive look at tornadoes

Creative Use of the Medium: Original to the Web

-Winner: APBNews.com, for coverage of the unsolved murders of nine women whose bodies were found in Nevada, Utah, Idaho and Wyoming.

-Finalists: APBNews.com, for a package on the 10 crimes that most changed America; Beliefnet.com, for a package about the wars fought by Americans and the lives lost; DigitalJournalist.org, for a package about Vietnam done primarily through photographs and audio.

Creative Use of the Medium: In Collaboration

-Winner: TimesUnion.com, of Albany, N.Y., for coverage of the trial of four New York City police officers found innocent of murder in the shooting death of an unarmed black man.

-Finalists: BayArea.com, for coverage of the opening of a new ballpark in the San Francisco Bay area; Business Week Online, for a package on selecting a business school; ChicagoTribune.com, for an audio-visual special about jazz musician Jelly Roll Morton; SmartMoney.com, for a presentation of daily stock-market action.

Online Commentary

-Winner: Emily Prager, Oxygen.com, for commentary on topics ranging from the presidential election to getting accepted to private school.

-Finalist: Diane Lynch, ABCNews.com, for "Wired Women."

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OJA Judges: Tom Goldstein, dean of Columbia Graduate School of Journalism; Rich Jaroslovsky, president of Online News Association and managing editor of The Wall Street Journal Online; Kurt Andersen, co-founder and contributor to Inside.com and Inside Magazine; Merrill Brown, editor-in-chief of MSNBC.com; Red Burns, chairman of Interactive Telecommunications Program at the Tisch School of the Arts, New York University; Bill Kovach, chairman of Committee of Concerned Journalists; David Laventhol, publisher of Columbia Journalism Review; Jacqueline Leo, vice president and editorial director of Meredith Interactive; Walt Mossberg, personal technology columnist at The Wall Street Journal; Stephen Shepard, editor-in-chief of Business Week; E.R. Shipp, Columbia journalism professor and columnist at the New York Daily News.

Net Election: The Web Is In, TV Is Out By Ronna Abramson The Supreme Court will post to its Web site all legal briefings in the Florida election case. And audiotapes will be given to the media on an 'expedited basis.' But TV cameras are barred.

RTNDA: For Journalists, The Times They Are A-Changin'

By Kevin Featherly, Newsbytes MINNEAPOLIS, MINNESOTA, U.S.A., As recently as two or three years ago, many US news executives at print, radio and TV operations viewed the Internet as an interesting development in communications, but little more than an unwelcome budgetary constraint on their own companies. Many put up Web sites; few put much thought or effort into developing them.

"It seems like a toy to me," one Southern Minnesota daily newspaper publisher was heard to say in 1997. "I prefer to get my entertainment away from my computer."

If discussions during the past few days at the Radio and Television News Directors Association (RTNDA) 2000 convention in Minneapolis are any indication, such attitudes have changed with a vengeance. The Internet now, to use the vernacular, is in the media's face and it can't be ignored.

Mark Thalhimer, project director at RTNDA and an event organizer, indicated that the new attitudes he is detecting among participants at this year's conference, which started Wednesday and ends Saturday, have been a long time in coming. "The bottom-line message," he said, "is you've got to take this seriously. And too many ... have not."

Thalhimer said the price of past negligence among many in the news business is the fear they are experiencing now that the promise of the Web for the news business is becoming more clear. "Fear and greed," he said. "Those two words, I think are a big part of what you are seeing." Thalhimer said it's hard to know if all that is a product of the Internet's two-year winning streak on the NASDAQ or if it's because news executives themselves have teen-aged children who are ignoring their newspapers and broadcasts in favor of getting news from the Net. But the attitude among participants, he said, has changed significantly from previous years at the 2000 conference, the 55th annual RTNDA convention.

Panelists, many of whom Thalhimer labeled "pioneering types," gave numerous examples of news convergence during various talks. One was especially illustrative: A Tampa, Fla., TV reporter recently was dispatched to work day and night during a murder trial, putting stories on TV, writing stories for the station's Internet site and even composing front-page pieces for the local morning paper, all of which are owned by the same company. The idea of blending news media in the information age was a common, recurring theme.

"The line between radio and television is about to disappear," said Dan Potter, news director at WBAP-AM in Dallas-Fort Worth, Texas, who moderated a panel discussion about online radio news later on Friday. "We are all going to be just 'media journalists.'"

It was clear from another panel earlier in the day, "Looking to the Future: Making Broadcast, Newspaper and Web Partnerships Work," that Potter's comment could appropriately be extended to include newspapers, highlighting the anticipated blending of all current media into a single online, multimedia platform. Merrill Brown, editor-in-chief at MSNBC.com, hammered the point home.

"It's all about the Internet," said Brown. "The Internet is where we're all headed."

He pointed out that his site, which was developed in 1995 in partnership with NBC-TV and Microsoft and has since grown to include partnerships with the Washington Post and Newsweek, has a massive daily audience. "We think it's the most important relationship anywhere of its kind in journalism," Brown told the audience of roughly 300 who attended that panel.

He said, partly because of the partnerships, MSNBC logs 2 million individual viewers every day. On big news days, when there is an important political development or major air tragedy or something similarly attention-grabbing, Brown said the site garners more than 3 million viewers, making it larger than the biggest daily US newspaper on those days. There's an important message in those numbers, he said, given that only about half of US adults are online and many of those still fumble with inadequate narrowband dial-up connections. More people, and a bigger audience still, is on the way.

The MSNBC-Post-Newsweek combination was only one such media amalgamation discussed during the early morning panel. Other panelists there included Cissy Baker, Washington news bureau chief of Tribune Broadcasting, which recently merged with Times Mirror; Bradley of WFLA-TV and Donna Reed, managing editor of the Tampa Tribune, which both are owned by the same company and operate under one roof with their combined Web site, the Tampa Bay Online Network; and Brad Kalbfeld of the Associated Press Broadcast News Center in Washington, which works with all those news operations. Marlis Majerus, news director at online-only news talk radio station WTOP2 in Washington, DC, and Tina Gulland, director of television projects at the Washington Post Co., rounded out the panel, among the best-attended of the conference.

"I think when all is said and done, all these circumstances are going to be about winning on the Internet," said MSNBC's Brown. "The scale of the Internet news opportunity and the risks to people - whether they are in television or in print (who) aren't moving quickly in this regard - are enormous."

The implications of that were a particular worry to many attendees. Questions from the audience during the two panels Friday frequently sought input on what kind of skills journalists in the new blended-media age will need. College professors, in particular, were concerned that their curricula are not adequate to turn out professionals capable of producing news stories while also taking digital photos, encoding HTML, filming video and recording audio to accompany news that would appear on multiple media channels owned by merging umbrella companies. And in both panels Friday, the reaction to that question was the same. Don't worry about that, panelists in effect said, give us young people who can write. "The core of convergence is journalism," said Dan Bradley, news director of WFLA-TV in Tampa, Fla. "The audience doesn't distinguish between platforms. Whether it is fair and accurate is what matters." The AP's Kalbfeld echoed the theme: "We want it right," he said, to which the Post's Gulland added, "The big thing is to teach them English; the pendulum has swung to an emphasis on technology, and now, no one can write." Still, Brown cautioned the educators in the audience not to relax on the issue of technology in their curricula. He said incoming journalists, at a minimum, need to have some grasp on the ways that software programs and other technology can transform their capabilities, and the expectations they will face in the newsroom of the near future. Such talk left a lasting impression on Henry Lippold, who has for several decades served as a broadcast instructor at the University of Wisconsin - Eau Claire. He noted that several ideas discussed at the conference run counter to journalists' tradition of staunch individualism, including the notion that reporters soon will no longer be able to consider news scoops their own, instead belonging to their multimedia organizations that might make them available to partner Web sites or TV stations, effectively scooping themselves. That kind of thing will be tough for many to swallow, the professor said.

"I think that the main thing that I picked up here is that we have to get on the ball and start educating students to be prepared for this situation," Lippold said.

"Overall," he said, "it was kind of a wake-up call. If that's the way the business is, we can't just say, 'That's terrible, we're not going to cooperate, we won't do it!' Otherwise our young people will be pure, but unemployed."

Information about the RTNDA 2000 convention is on the Web at http://www.rtnda.org/convention/convention.shtml

Reported by Newsbytes.com, http://www.newsbytes.com