Welcome to The Weekly Index!

Please forgive the minimal posts this week. The school year is back, and in full swing, but I’ve compiled a pretty good list of links to keep you busy.

• Jessica Durkin, SPJ Digital Media Committee member, has a really cool post on one of the first tablets that people hoped would revolutionize the way we read newspapers. Obviously, the tablet in the 1994 video wasn’t and instant success, but who knows? Maybe, Apple will have better luck over a decade later.
• Speaking of the iPad, here is what The New York Times had to say.
• In more related Apple news: The University of Florida said they will require some of their journalism students to buy Macs, software packages, and other equipment. I can’t say that I am in favor of it, but the students will be able to use financial aid.
• You may not have the money to start a school newspaper, but as long as you have eager young minds… anything is possible. A high school in Ohio had trouble reviving a school paper that had sat dormant for 15 years. Their answer: Blog!
• Hey, young journalists! Do you have an online portfolio? Why not check in on the discussion over at SPJ’s Generation J blog.
• The Los Angeles Times has partnered with students from USC to produce content for their homicide blog.
• A battle has been brewing between a teachers union and a student publication in Nevada. A teachers union attempted to stop the publication of an article, but it looks like the article was published today after all. Check one for the First Amendment. Also, check back for a longer post on this.
• It looks like an old printing plant from The Washington Post will be sold, but unfortunately it doesn’t look like the presses will be start back up. The University of Maryland purchased the plant, which closed last year to extend their east campus.

There are about 100 other links that I would like to share with you, but I am heading to class. I will update the post later with a few more!

No immigrant has the same story on how they came to the United States, but the stories often share some similarities.

A class at Medill has stepped up to show local ethnic papers that while each culture is different, they face similar problems.

You can read all about it on SPJ’s Journalism and the World blog!

Everyone knows that writing is a craft and not just any regular teacher can coach a student into brilliant writing.  Great teachers come along once every great while so it’s important to know what they’re doing right and how you can best learn from them.

Roy Peter Clark points this out in “What the Best Writing Teachers Do, How Students Can Learn From Them.”

According to Clark, the best writing teachers:

• Encourage daily writing
• Do not bleed red ink all over every paper, but finds other ways to assess student work
• Write with the students
• Teach writing as a process and confer with students during the process
• Connect the dots between reading and writing
• Get students to talk (over and over and over again) about writing
• Offer praise and encouragement along with correction
• Revise, revise, revise
• Never use writing as a punishment
• Teach spelling and grammar within writing
• Believe that all students can improve

This is just a quick reminder that entries for the Mark of Excellence Awards are due by Wednesday!

You can use the really simple online application process here.

Don’t forget to tell your friends!

Happy Friday everyone!

This week was my first week of the last semester of my undergraduate career. I spent my time in classes, at the dentist, and morphing our campus chapter at Wilkes into a regional student chapter.

I would recommend that your schools consider looking to other local institutions for members, because it can really do wonders for your membership.

Linda Hall, membership coordinator for SPJ, pointed out this portion of our bylaws to me.

Section Seven. City-or area-wide campus chapters may be established by four-year and two-year universities or colleges within a radius of 75 miles, provided that at least one university or college involved has a school or department of journalism or offers courses of study relevant to the scope of the Society as defined in Article One, Section Two.

That being said, let’s get to The Weekly Index!

• The keynote speaker for the Spring 2010 National College Media Convention in New York City was announced yesterday. Terry Moran, co-anchor of ABC’s Nightline will headline the event on Monday, March 15. The convention, which is put on by the College Media Advisers, Inc., will take place from March 14 to the 16 at the Marriot Marriott Marquis Hotel in New York City at Times Square.
• John Ensslin, SPJ’s Region 9 director, talks about his “excellent SPJ weekend” on the Rocky Mountain SPJ Blog.
• Jay Mathews, an education columnist for The Washington Post, writes about why novice reporters should cover national education, and more experienced journalists should spend time on the local level.
• Here is an interesting discussion on the AP’s Facebook on how journalists should act in a crisis. The discussion stems from one of their own reporters and his reports from Haiti.
• In related news, The Los Angeles Times has an interesting article on the delicate line walked by medical correspondents when they are called upon to assist in a crisis.
• The National Sports Journalism Center has a great editorial from Jason Fry, a veteran web journalist. He argues that news organizations should embrace a young writer’s blog instead of forbidding them.

Plenty of young sportswriters could use personal blogs to make themselves into cleaner, stronger writers who better understand their own business and are more open-minded about its possibilities. ~ Jason Fry

• Of course you couldn’t turn anywhere in the world of journalism this week without hearing about http://www.nytimes.com/ planning to charge for content starting next year. Could this be the start of something good?
• SPJ’s diversity blog has a really useful post from Leo E. Laurence on whether to use the word “Latino/Latina” or “Hispanic.”

When journalists use the word Latino for a person whose ancestry can be traced to Spain, they are generally safe. But, using the word hispanic may offend many Latinos. ~ Leo Laurence

• Leo also wrote a great post on the diversity blog about why journalists should avoid the term “illegal immigrant.”
• The first Donald W. Reynolds Visiting Professor in Business Journalism at Arizona State University is veteran New York Times business reporter Leslie Wayne. Here is the press release.
• Want to make your sports webpage POP? Make a heatmap! Here is a post on how to make them.
• The Washington Post celebrated Martin Luther King Jr. Day by having some of their staffers, including Ben Bradlee, recite part of King’s “I Have a Dream” speech, and asking viewers how King inspired them.

Here’s the video:

Have a happy and safe weekend!

p.s.You can always follow us on Twitter, too!

February is only 10 days away, which means Black History Month is only 10 days away, too.

We would be remiss if we didn’t use this time to help educate and inform people, especially our campus members, about race reporting.

There have been many wonderful books and articles published on this topic, and February would be a perfect time to share some of them on our blog.

Please send us the title and author of any books or articles that you think would be a valuable resource for our readers. Feel free to include some information on why you liked the piece and why others will find it useful.

You can email the information to me at aseaman@spj.org.

The Observer, the independent newspaper of Notre Dame and Saint Mary’s, accepted the resignation of Assistant Managing Editor Kara King, who took responsibility for the publication of an anti-gay cartoon in last Tuesday’s edition of the paper.

“A miscommunication between another editor and myself led to the comic running without me first reading and approving the material,” said King in a letter dated today. “Regardless, no excuse can justify the comic even being considered for publication, and the duty to censor it fell to me. I failed to do so, and am solely responsible for providing a forum for this message of hate.”

We first told you about the cartoon on Friday.

An editorial in today’s The Observer, the independent newspaper of Notre Dame and Saint Mary’s, apologized for an anti-gay cartoon that appeared in the January 13 edition of the paper.

According to IrishCentral.com, the cartoon depicts a conversation between a person and a saw. The saw asks, “What’s the easiest way to turn a fruit into a vegetable?” The man says, “No idea.” The saw replies, “A baseball bat.”

“The Observer, though an independent newspaper, is representative of the community of the University of Notre Dame and the values it so cherishes: family, understanding, service, respect and love,” read the editorial. “Allowing this cruel and hateful comic a place on our pages disgraced those values and severely hurt members of our Notre Dame family — our classmates, our friends. For this, we sincerely apologize.”

Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) said they contacted the paper’s editor after they saw the cartoon.

“This type of advocacy of anti-LGBT violence must stop. It isn’t funny. What’s more, it promotes hate crimes, which are all too prevalent in society today,” reads a post on GLAADBlog.org.

GLAAD also says that the cartoonist posted the cartoon to his blog, and said the original cartoon’s punch line was “AIDS.” The cartoonist claimed the punch line was changed, because the paper did not want to poke fun at AIDS.

“The Observer made a dangerously misguided decision that promoting violence was somehow superior to making fun of HIV/AIDS. Both versions of the cartoon were abhorrent,” said GLAAD.

According to the newspaper, one reason for the cartoon’s publication was a breakdown in the editing process.

“On our part, we must practice more responsible journalism and editing. That this comic was published reveals holes in our editing practices, which are currently being addressed.”

UPDATE: January 15 @ 8:25 p.m.

The artist’s blog seems to have been deleted, but Google has a cache of the blog with a copy of the comic, the original comic, and an online conversation with The Observer.

The conversation shows The Observer rejecting the original comic, and then saying the new version is “good.”

The cartoonists did release an apology.

“We cannot begin to express how apologetic we are for everyone who has been hurt by our comic and its implied message,” read the statement from Colin Hofman, Lauren Rosemeyer and Jay Wade.

What do you think about this situation? Do you believe The Observer should revise more than their editing procedures?

Let us know what you think by leaving a comment!

Today we are going to start a new feature, The Weekly Index, where I will try to point you towards some interesting articles, websites, features, videos and podcasts that pertain to campus journalism.

So, let’s get started!

• The Chronicle of Higher Education has an article and video about campus news blogs. Some of the blogs have become so popular that they are scooping the campus newspapers.
• How do journalists cover an event in the aftermath of such a terrible natural disaster? The Washington Post’s Howard Kurtz tells us in today’s column.
• Tiffany Luckey, Generation J Committee member, posted a video to their committee’s blog featuring Colleen Kiphart asking the question, “What does diversity mean to you?”
• Kevin Smith, SPJ’s president used his blog to recap what SPJ has been up to lately. Leave some time to read this, because we’ve been doing A LOT! Part of that is about defending students, too.
• Dan Kubiske talks about the scuffle between Google and China on the Journalism and The World blog. Some of the hacks seemed to target journalists.
• USA TODAY spends “a few minutes with Andy Rooney,” and they talk about his 31 years at 60 Minutes and a possible retirement in the very distant future.

“I hate to say it, but a computer is better than a typewriter.” ~ Andy Rooney

• Pew’s Project for Excellence in Journalism said they found that print journalism is still the best source to find out information about a community.
• The Student Press Law Center has some information about a contest that allows high school students to win a nice chunk of change for a winning PSA on the First Amendment.

That’s all for this week! Don’t forget to check back for longer blog posts throughout the week, and I will see you back here for The Weekly Index next Friday!

Happy reporting!

p.s. You can always follow us on Twitter, too.

The Society of Professional Journalists stepped up to support Northwestern University’s Medill Innocence Project today.

SPJ joined three other organizations in an amicus curiae brief, which supports a motion to stop a subpoena from the Cook County state’s attorney’s office.

The subpoena is demanding notes and other materials created by the student journalists involved with the Project’s investigation of Anthony McKinney, who has been in prison for 31 years for murder.

The students found information that led a judge to grant McKinney another hearing, which then led the Cook County state’s attorney to subpoena the information.

SPJ joined the Student Press Law Center, the College Media Advisers, Inc. and the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication in the brief.

The brief argues that, while collecting the information, the students were reporters. As reporters, the students are protected by the Illinois Reporter’s Privilege Act.

A judge accepted the brief and has scheduled a hearing for Feb. 10.

The Student Press Law Center has a copy of the brief on its website in PDF format.

In related news, ChicagoBreakingNews.com is reporting, “Today, an attorney representing the Chicago Tribune, the New York Times, the Chicago Sun-Times, CBS News, the Washington Post and the Hearst Corp. – in addition to a dozen more newsgathering organizations – filed a brief in Cook County Circuit Court opposing the forced surrender of the material.”

Hopefully justice will prevail in the end, and the court will realize, as they did in Tinker v. Des Moines, that students and teachers do not shed their First Amendment rights at the schoolhouse gate.

We will keep you posted on future developments.