Journalism Class - Tuesday November 8

[jerusalem-s.livejournal.com]

Spider has a mug of coffee and a slightly more cheerful look on his face. He's seated again on the top of his desk and sharing his cigarettes with his cat. Swinging his heels, he addresses the class. "Grading's almost finished, up to and including the midterm, and I'd have to say that I'm impressed. Well, with those of you who are still with us, anyway. Attendance has been above and beyond the call of duty and participation has been very, very high. Grades, credit and attendance reports will be available by Friday for the curious."

Taking a swig of coffee, he gave his students an evil grin. "Which means that the final project for the term is going to be a doozy. I'll be giving you over a month to put together the article that I'm asking for, however, and I'm in final negotations with a few people before actually assigning it, however. I am very, very pleased with the amount of class participation."

There was a pause as he waved the cat away from his coffee before she got cigarette ashes in it. "Today I have an ethical question related to yesterday's discussion on slant - specifically the remarks concerning the journalist who seemed to draw from only one source and leave a great deal of detail to one side. Some of this is due to editing for space, some of it is sloppiness. When you have only a very specific number of column inches in which to tell your entire story... what do you cut first?"

Comments

[medusae-x.livejournal.com]

Duce answers almost immediately, "Anything that distracts from the main purpose of the piece. If your reader gets distracted, your story loses impact, and chances are good the reader will forget about it by the time they've finished their tea and toast."

[jerusalem-s.livejournal.com]

"Very good. The first thing to go are the fiddly bits that have nothing at all to do with what you're trying to say." Spider nodded. "The ethical question comes when you're down to the wire. What qualifies as 'distracting'? When does it become a matter of skew?"

[medusae-x.livejournal.com]

"When you choose hyperbole over fact," Duce answers. "You can spin just about any fact your way with proper motivation and context. When forced to choose what to cut, we'd rather cut the hyperbole and work the spin on the facts."

[jerusalem-s.livejournal.com]

"An excellent answer."