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sharonchan:

Save the date!

UNITY Journalists Seattle Mixer

It’s been four years. Let’s connect! The UNITY 2012 convention is happening in Las Vegas, Aug. 1-4. Here is your chance to meet up with your fellow UNITY journalists who will be going! Please join us in welcoming the National Lesbian and Gay…

So the drive is a little far for a Tuesday night, but I am going to do my best to be there…

pantslessprogressive:

ABC’s Jake Tapper to White House Press Secretary: “You want aggressive journalism abroad; you just don’t want it in the United States.”

TAPPER: The White House keeps praising these journalists who are — who’ve been killed –

CARNEY: I don’t know about “keep” — I think -

TAPPER: You’ve done it, Vice President Biden did it in a statement. How does that square with the fact that this administration has been so aggressively trying to stop aggressive journalism in the United States by using the Espionage Act to take whistleblowers to court?

You’re — currently I think that you’ve invoked it the sixth time, and before the Obama administration, it had only been used three times in history. You’re — this is the sixth time you’re suing a CIA officer for allegedly providing information in 2009 about CIA torture. Certainly that’s something that’s in the public interest of the United States. The administration is taking this person to court. There just seems to be disconnect here. You want aggressive journalism abroad; you just don’t want it in the United States.

CARNEY: Well, I would hesitate to speak to any particular case, for obvious reasons, and I would refer you to the Department of Justice for more on that.

I think we absolutely honor and praise the bravery of reporters who are placing themselves in extremely dangerous situations in order to bring a story of oppression and brutality to the world. I think that is commendable, and it’s certainly worth noting by us. And as somebody who knew both Anthony and Marie, I particularly appreciate what they did to bring that story to the American people.

I — as for other cases, again, without addressing any specific case, I think that there are issues here that involve highly sensitive classified information, and I think that, you know, those are — divulging or to — divulging that kind of information is a serious issue, and it always has been.

TAPPER: So the truth should come out abroad; it shouldn’t come out here? [more]

inothernews:

Oh jeez.  This is why you do NOT fuck with the Associated Press.

Maybe Shepard could offer to redesign AP’s redesigned logo.

newsweek:

Behold! What the Stop SOPA blackout managed to accomplish in 24 hours.

Now if only people would get that worked up over every other bill that threatens our rights in the U.S.

I’ve got one in my apartment.

journojunction:

(Click to enlarge)

Surely I’m not the only one who works in a newsroom dotted with towering stacks of old newspapers? You just can’t beat that smell of old, yellowing newsprint. It clings to you, never shaking. Combined with spilled whiskey and vanquished dreams, it’s a defining newsroom fragrance. 

The Guardian explains the Stop Online Piracy Act.

I think it’s pretentious, but if you’re into that sort of thing, you can ‘like’ me here.

Makes me feel a helluva lot better about my own typos.

I want…everything.

Security contractor Blackwater has not actually been named Blackwater for some time: in 2009, the company changed its name to Xe (pronounced “Oh, you mean Blackwater?”) in an effort to rehabilitate its atrocious public image. However, The Wall Street Journal reports, starting now Xe would…

Yeah, I lol’d.

inothernews:

It’s a helluva nameplate town.

jerriann:

Our app made the list! I worked on the Orlando Sentinel app while working on the Casey Anthony trial this summer. I lobbied hard for a special section that I could design differently based on special coverage of events. So far this year we have used that section for our extensive Casey Anthony coverage, the hurricane season and now for our holiday content. I am really excited to see how we can use it in the future. 

From the article on the apps: “They were well-designed and easily navigated,” Ms. McPheters said. “They conform to many of the best practices we’ve established with features that conserve users’ time and device resources. They are highly functional, which means they work well and don’t have serious malfunctions. They download quickly. And they have lots of rich media enhancements.”

Proud of you, Jerriann!

shortformblog:

More on the case of Crystal Cox: A good decision made poorly?

The “blogger-not-a-journalist” thing still sticks, but … In the past few days, there’s been a bit of an uproar on the decision by a federal judge to decide, in a defamation case, that investigative blogger Crystal Cox isn’t a journalist protected by shield laws. We were ticked, too. However, Forbes reporter Kashmir Hill disputes the way the story was first presented by Seattle Weekly, which broke the story: “The facts in the case are far more complicated, and after hearing them, most journalists will not want to include Cox in their camp.” Hill points out that it appeared Cox was attempting to engage in reputation damage, not journalism, including sending out the e-mail shown above, in which Cox reportedly offered reputation-protection services. And ultimately, Cox’s claims —the ones that hit court after she was forced to give up her source — didn’t hold up to scrutiny. The fact of the matter is, the shield law element of this shouldn’t have even come up in the case: Even without it the claims wouldn’t have held up, according to Kevin Padrick, who claims ruin at the hands of Cox’s many sites. source

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futurejournalismproject:

Over 40 states have shield laws that protect journalists from revealing information about the sources used during their reporting.

This is all well and good until you get into the tricky business of actually defining who a journalist is. Someone reporting for CNN? No brainer. Except for jaded, we all agree he or she is a journalist. 

But what about someone reporting for a new startup with a part time staff of three? Or the lone blogger who digs deep into one particular subject?

In Oregon, a judge has decided that shield laws only apply to those who are officially part of an established media organization (again, defining what that might mean leaves us scratching our heads).

Via the Seattle Weekly:

A U.S. District Court judge in Portland has drawn a line in the sand between “journalist” and “blogger.” And for Crystal Cox, a woman on the latter end of that comparison, the distinction has cost her $2.5 million…

…Cox runs several law-centric blogs, like industrywhistleblower.com, judicialhellhole.com, and obsidianfinancesucks.com, and was sued by investment firm Obsidian Finance Group in January for defamation, to the tune of $10 million, for writing several blog posts that were highly critical of the firm and its co-founder Kevin Padrick.

Representing herself in court, Cox had argued that her writing was a mixture of facts, commentary and opinion (like a million other blogs on the web) and moved to have the case dismissed. Dismissed it wasn’t, however, and after throwing out all but one of the blog posts cited by Obsidian Financial, the judge ruled that this single post was indeed defamatory because it was presented, essentially, as more factual in tone than her other posts, and therefore a reasonable person could conclude it was factual.

The judge ruled against Cox on that post and awarded $2.5 million to the investment firm.

Now here’s where the case gets more important: Cox argued in court that the reason her post was more factual was because she had an inside source that was leaking her information. And since Oregon is one of 40 U.S. states including Washington with media shield laws, Cox refused to divulge who her source was.

But without revealing her source Cox couldn’t prove that the statements she’d made in her post were true and therefore not defamation, or attribute them to her source and transfer the liability…

…The judge in Cox’s case, however, ruled that the woman did not qualify for shield-law protection not because of anything she wrote, but because she wasn’t employed by an official media establishment.

From the opinion by U.S. District Judge Marco A. Hernandez:

… although defendant is a self-proclaimed “investigative blogger” and defines herself as “media,” the record fails to show that she is affiliated with any newspaper, magazine, periodical, book, pamphlet, news service, wire service, news or feature syndicate, broadcast station or network, or cable television system. Thus, she is not entitled to the protections of the law.

shortformblog:

The View from Syria: Bashar al-Assad denies crackdown to Barbara Walters

This is a frustrating interview, friends. In it, Bashar al-Assad essentially denies the obvious — that there’s a bloody crackdown happening against anti-government protesters, led by the Syrian government. Example: Walters references a series of pictures showing pictures of violence — including against children. “People went from house to house,” she said. “Children were arrested. I saw those pictures.” Assad’s response: “To be frank with you, Barbara, I don’t believe you.” Like we said, supremely frustrating. Assad says that “terrorists” are behind the months-long violent crackdown, rather than Syrian troops. source

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shortformblog:

RIP Louis Silverstein, the guy who gave The New York Times its shine

An unsung journalistic hero: Before Louis Silverstein, newspaper design was a trade, not a profession. With the many changes he made as art director of the Times in the 1960s and 1970s, he helped change that. White space? More ambitious typefaces? Larger fonts? Abstract illustrations? Those were all his doing. Many of the conventions that modern newspapers now take advantage of came (in part) from Silverstein’s work. It took a lot of pushing, but Silverstein sold editors on these ideas. As a result, the Gray Lady is (and many other papers are) a lot less gray. And graphic design and news aren’t separate entities. Silverstein died Thursday at 92. (Also worth a read:The Society for News Design has a lot of anecdotes about an important figure in visual journalism.) source

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