The Weekly Index for April 23
By Andrew M. Seaman | April 23rd, 2010
Welcome back everyone!
I had a great time in Indianapolis last week for the annual SPJ spring board meeting.
There are a lot of great things coming to SPJ members across the country: new training videos, exciting new partnerships, and much more. The next few years will be one of the most exciting times to be a member of SPJ!
Have a great weekend, and enjoy The Weekly Index!
There has been an ongoing fight in Virginia over pictures that were confiscated from James Madison Univerity’s student newspaper The Breeze last Friday. The Roanoke Times has an article on how a Commonwealth Attorney and several police officers – armed with a search warrant – demanded The Breeze‘s editor turn over photos from a recent riot. The photos have been sealed and are now being held by a third party. SPJ sent a letter to the attorney on Monday, and The Washington Post carried an editorial about the situation yesterday. The News & Advance out of Lynchburg, Va. carried an editorial, too.
State courts have recognized that newspapers may withhold materials from the government unless officials make a compelling case to the contrary, a process that is supposed to play out in court in response to a subpoena. In this case there was no subpoena, no court arguments and no recognition that raiding a newspaper makes a mockery of the First Amendment. ~ The Washington Post
Robert Niles, from The Online Journalism Review, suggests that journalism has outgrown AP style and schools should prepare students to focus more on search engine optimization. Read his post here.
Dan Kubiske has two great posts on the International Journalism Committee’s blog. One of the posts deals with the upcoming elections in Burma, and a series of position papers from the Asian Human Rights Commission. You can read that post here.
Dan’s other post is about a new campaign to inform their users about which governments have asked that material be removed from Google. Surprisingly, Brazil leads the world in removal requests. Here’s the post.
I want to continue to shine a light on the winners of regional Mark of Excellence Awards. Please take some time to check out our press releases with the names that have been announced so far: Region 1, Region 4, Region 6, Region 7, Region 9, Region 10, and Region 12.
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Andrew M. Seaman is a senior communication studies student at Wilkes University in Wilkes-Barre, Pa. He is one of SPJ’s student representatives on the national board and you can follow him on Twitter @aseaman06.
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.