You might not want to watch this

Several of you suggested links on the gator story to other sites having to do with hunting alligators in Alabama. Here's one I found that might interest you. It might also upset you. Let's just say that after watching it, I felt sorry for the gators.

The extra credit store is now closed

Congratulations to the four students (2 in each section) who correctly answered that the error in the cutline in the DAR picture was that Thomas Jefferson's home was not at Mount Vernon. That was the home of George Washington.

Take a look at the older posts to find the picture and extra-credit offer.

Redeye uses illustration effectively today

Many scenarios seen for journalism's future

Jeff Jarvis rolls out some possible scenarios for the future of journalism in his Buzz Machine blog. Be sure to read the comments as well.

Wonder what's in the picture at the top of his blog? That's a printing press.

From the former "sun never sets" empire

The headline that caught my eye today was this one from The Guardian in the former empire where they used to say the sun would never set on it. Here's its prediction that the sun is now setting on our very own American empire, striking fear in my hegemonic heart.

College papers increasingly going online

Here's an article on what college newspapers are doing online. At first I figured that the neglect of the Kaimin was the usual East Coast bias ("Everything west of the Hudson is camping out"). But there is mention of several papers not only west of the Hudson, but west of the Mississippi.

Despite overlooking the Kaimin, the article is a good starting place for seeing what other university papers are doing online.

Section 1 final offer: Wednesday at 8 a.m.

Responding to the roar of the crowd in Section 1, I have been looking for a time and place to give the in-class portion of the final before Dec. 12, which is the scheduled time.

Room 009 is available from 8 to 10 a.m. on Wednesday, Dec. 10. If you cannot take the final at that time, please let me know ASAP. I'll let everyone know for sure once I hear back from anyone who has a conflict.

Section 3, you are still on for Wednesday, Dec. 10, 2008, from 3:20 to 5:20 p.m. in Room 004.

Stevens out of Senate, Palin still in the news

Interesting times for Alaska politics. Ted Stevens, longest serving Republican in U.S. Senate history, gets bounced (that's what a criminal conviction a week before the election will do for you), but Sarah Palin's face keeps showing up. Wonder when her Senate campaign begins.

Here's the AP story on Stevens: http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gZXmpL3-GlWbhbGKemFmCm_bPPmQD94HVFD80

In case you missed it: Hulk for dictator

In case you missed the teaser on the front of the Daily Skiff, here's the kind of leadership student editors at TCU would like to see: "Hulk Hogan should be America's dictator."

Why didn't the Republicans think of that before Nov. 4?

Three articles worth reading

I saw three articles on Romenesko this morning that I thought worth pointing out to people headed into the field of journalism.

Set aside plenty of time to read this article in the Columbia Journalism Review that argues, "To win the war for our attention, news organizations must make themselves indispensable by producing journalism that helps make sense of the flood of information that inundates us all."

Next up is from the Daily Skiff, The Texas Christian University newspaper, quoting Craig Flournoy, an assistant professor at Southern Methodist University, on how the turmoil in journalism today "benefits young people because it allows them to move up the ladder faster."

And finally, check out this article from the Knight Digital Media Center that quotes Jonathan Weber of New West right here in Missoula on the increasing interest in community news sites.

Trim stories, don't butcher them

I had the feeling some of you charged out of the classroom today intent on using the delete key as a samurai sword on the latest assignment. I have asked for this collection of 1,800 words (I hesitate to call it writing) to come down to 900, and many of you asked why leave that many standing.

I'm a believer in less is more, that longer writing is easier to do than concise writing ("I didn't have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one," Mark Twain said -- yea verily). But please use caution that you leave the essential information in this story. If you think you have done that in fewer than 900 words, fine. But I'll be checking it twice over Thanksgiving.

So don't start acting like John Belushi as the Samurai Deli Owner.

Now and then I lead you astray

Several of you have answered the extra credit question by pointing out that the caption says "Then" and "Now" and there is no "Now" photo. In the original publication, there was a second photograph, which I decided not to post. That is not the obvious error that several readers brought to the attention of editors. Sorry about that bum steer.

I am still accepting answers by e-mail. Only one correct answer so far. Keep trying.

That must have been some fire

I was struck by the picture on the front of La Opinion, the Spanish language paper published in Los Angeles, Calif. A photo like that of such destruction is bound to make readers stop and look.

Interesting juxaposition of Arizona stories

One paper is reporting an increase in tuition while another is tracking the rise in salaries of state university presidents.

Now read this: Extra credit on the blog

See anything wrong with this picture and caption? E-mail me if you think you do, and there could be some extra credit coming your way.

Headlines as koans, except when they aren't

koan /koh'an/ n. A Zen teaching riddle. Classically, koans are
attractive paradoxes to be meditated on; their purpose is to help one to
enlightenment by temporarily jamming normal cognitive processing so that
something more interesting can happen (this practice is associated with
Rinzai Zen Buddhism).
-- from http://dictionary.die.net/

You probably knew what a koan was before you read the definition above. But have you ever considered the headline as koan? Jessica Winter at slate.com has. She says of New York Times headline writers: "Your mission is to distill a piece to its essence in a few words without sacrificing nuance, and usually, you are more than up to the task."

But sometimes those headline writers fall into a pattern that looks more philosophical than declaratory. Read all about it.

Festering hemorrhoid or a lure to read on?

This may be all I say about the use of the semicolon since I tend to fall into the camp most clearly represented by Jim McLean. He is described by Hugh A. Mulligan, who worked as a correspondent for The Associated Press for 50 years, as his first boss, “a crusty old hard news hawk” and a newsroom character whose proudest boast was that he had never used a semicolon in his life. Mulligan quotes McLean’s regard of the semicolon as “a festering hemorrhoid hanging between two half-assed clauses.”

Lynne Truss in her book “Eats, Shoots & Leaves” has a loftier outlook on this punctuation mark, quoting Lewis Thomas, American essayist:

“The semicolon tells you that there is still some question about the preceding full sentence; something needs to be added . . .. The period tells you that that is that; if you didn’t get all the meaning you wanted or expected, you got all the writer intended to parcel out and now you have to move along. But with the semicolon you get a pleasant feeling of expectancy; there is more to come; read on; it will get clearer.”
(“The Medusa and the Snail,” 1979)

More simply put, Truss says the semicolon is used between two related sentences where there is no conjunction such as “and” or “but,” and where a comma would be ungrammatical.

Her example: “I loved Opal Fruits; they are now called Starburst, of course.”

Semicolons are also used to separate items in a list that includes commas within it, like this quote today on Salon.com in a tribute to John Leonard, book reviewer, from his acceptance speech in 2006 when he won the National Book Critics Circle lifetime achievement award:

"My whole life I have been waving the names of writers. From these writers, for almost 50 years, I have received narrative, witness, companionship, sanctuary, shock, and steely strangeness; good advice, bad news, deep chords, hurtful discrepancy, and amazing grace.”

“The books we love, love us back. In gratitude, we should promise not to cheat on them -- not to pretend we're better than they are; not to use them as target practice, agitprop, trampolines, photo ops or stalking horses; not to sell out scruple to that scratch-and-sniff infotainment racket in which we posture in front of experience instead of engaging it, and fidget in our cynical opportunism for an angle, a spin, or a take, instead of consulting compass points of principle, and strike attitudes like matches, to admire our wiseguy profiles in the mirrors of the slicks. We are reading for our lives, not performing like seals for some fresh fish."

Get all that? We can discuss in class; there’s always more that could be said about the semicolon, and the colon, too, for that matter.

This page really needs to be noted

I'm still looking back on Front Pages from the election, and this has got to be the one that stands out the most. I'm posting it here days late because I think it worthy of your attention. A quiet, understated presentation that works oh so well, I think.

Check out these links to election front pages

Given that I missed the boat yesterday on finding front pages from the biggest news story this semester, let me try to make up for that by linking to a very good site that not only shows you some of the best pages but discusses them as well. Visualeditors.com looks like a good site to bookmark if you are considering design as a career option. Check it out.

I found Visual Editors through a blog kept by Mark Matassa, a former colleague at The Seattle Times. Mark has an interesting story about the rush on Wednesday morning to get copies of real newspapers, the kind printed on paper. As Mark says, "A funny thing happened on the way to newspapers' funeral: A bunch of news broke out, in the form of yesterday's historic election, and people decided they wanted a paper. Not just the paper's "content" -- usually available free on their websites -- but the actual, old-school newspaper."

Maybe there's life in the old girl yet. Who said that? Besides my late father-in-law?

See you in class.

Trying to see front pages today a trying job

And I gave up trying. The Newseum site with today's front pages is very bogged down, probably from heavy traffic with people seeing how the nation's papers reported and displayed Obama's election.

I never could get past the first page in their gallery, but that was enough to get a taste of how this election was played. The three papers pictured are from the beginning of the Newseum's alphabetized list.

News has a future? Let's talk about that

The University of Montana School of Journalism will be co-hosting a Webcast on the future of the news business. You can be part of it on Monday, Nov. 10, at 4:30 in the afternoon in Room 316. It will probably last until about 6.

Hope you can attend. This is from the news release on the event:

WASHINGTON – The National Press Club, the world’s leading professional
organization for journalists, will Webcast a forum on the future of the
news business to journalism schools at six Western universities.

The Nov. 10 event will be found on the Web at www.visualwebcaster.com/NPCforum.

This NPC Centennial Forum will feature leading national journalists:

Donna Leinwand, national correspondent for USA Today and Club vice
president;

Ed Henry, White House correspondent for CNN;

Amar Bakshi, who spent the last year traveling the world to produce a
Web series “How the World Sees America” that appeared on the Washington
Post and Newsweek Web sites;
and
Mark Jurkowski, associate director of the Project for Excellence in
Journalism.

The panel will be moderated by Gil Klein, a veteran national
correspondent, former National Press Club president and director of the
Club’s Centennial Forums program.

People watching the Webcast will be able to ask questions of the
panelists in real time either by e-mail through the Webcast or by sending an e-mail to NPCforum@gmail.com.

This forum is part of a nationwide conversation the National Press Club
is holding during its 100th anniversary to look at where the news
business is going and what news consumers should be demanding. Schedules
and video highlights of forums in other states can be found on the
Club’s Web site: www.press.org.

Not bad for the gray, old lady

I almost always find something more interesting in the way of Page One layouts than what the gray, old New York Times has to offer. But on a day when oversized mugs of McCain and Obama dominated the nation's front pages, I thought the NYT had the right mix and the right look.