" It is extremely hard to get into journalism. Even before the recession and the jerky transition to online publishing made new staff reporter jobs harder to get than an NYPD press pass, J-schools were consistently churning out several times as many talented, energetic, hopelessly indebted young people than there were salaried positions at even the smallest papers. So many people want to make a living writing that we are encouraged to accept tiny salaries and terrible working conditions, and breaking into the industry often involves years of underpaid or unpaid interning – closing off the most prestigious jobs to all but a wealthy few. We are expected to be grateful for any opportunities we are thrown, and encouraged to see ourselves as future members of a social elite rather than workers with a living to make and a job to do. "

This week in the fall of the Republic: Andrew Breitbart and the sorry state of US journalism

" Two weeks ago while visiting a friend who covers conflict in South America I was privy to a conversation between two experienced conflict journalists, each with more than a decade of experience. One was considering going to Syria. What followed was a very intense conversation that focused on logistics, fixers, money, outlets, and equipment. And this was a guy who has been published everywhere and regularly been caught in heavy gun battles between opposing forces. Nothing was taken lightly. Every potential setback was weighted.

" Citizen journalists have contributed many stories of value, especially with the Occupy movement. But journalism is still a skill. Grainy iphone footage does not a journalist make. And Syria is NOT an occupy protest. Your failure to prepare can lead to other people getting killed. Even if you are prepared, it can lead to people being killed. 13 Syrians were killed trying to help get Paul Conroy out of Syria. "

" In all our stories, especially matters of controversy, we strive to consider the strongest arguments we can find on all sides, seeking to deliver both nuance and clarity. Our goal is not to please those whom we report on or to produce stories that create the appearance of balance, but to seek the truth. "

" At all times, we report for our readers and listeners, not our sources. So our primary consideration when presenting the news is that we are fair to the truth. If our sources try to mislead us or put a false spin on the information they give us, we tell our audience. If the balance of evidence in a matter of controversy weighs heavily on one side, we acknowledge it in our reports. We strive to give our audience confidence that all sides have been considered and represented fairly. "

" Scott Kravet, the instructor—a graduate student in philosophy—offered a dose of epistemology, and in so doing captured the essence of news literacy. "Life isn't just having things handed to you," he said. "You have to be active. There's no proof in life, there's no certainty. But knowing these questions is better than not knowing them." "

" Usually, though, the Kremlin line is enforced the way it is everywhere else in Russian television: by the reporters and editors themselves. “There is no censorship per se,” says another RT reporter. “But there are a lot of young people at the channel, a lot of self-starters who are eager to please the management. You can easily guess what the Kremlin wants the world to know, so you change your coverage.” "

by way of Russia Today, but... " Under the National Operations Center (NOC)’s Media Monitoring Initiative that emerged from the Department of Homeland Security in November, Washington has written permission to collect and retain personal information from journalists, news anchors, reporters or anyone who uses “traditional and/or social media in real time to keep their audience situationally aware and informed.” "

" When all citizens are potential reporters, they risk being treated as journalists. "

" At the last, we arrive at the beginning, which Arthur Brisbane surely intended. Nothing else could possibly ensue from his intellectually dim ourobouros of cowardice. In a column in which he speculated about the worth of journalists' abdicating any responsibility, he placed the evaluative responsibility on the New York Times' readership. In a way, it was like watching the greatest newspaper in the nation engage in real-time market-testing of which group is worth sucking up to more. "

" If in doing the serious work of journalism–digging, reporting, verification, mastering a beat–you develop a view, expressing that view does not diminish your authority. It may even add to it. The View from Nowhere doesn’t know from this. It also encourages journalists to develop bad habits. Like: criticism from both sides is a sign that you’re doing something right, when you could be doing everything wrong. "

" Something happened in our press over the last 40 years or so that never got acknowledged and to this day would be denied by a majority of newsroom professionals. Somewhere along the way, truthtelling was surpassed by other priorities the mainstream press felt a stronger duty to. These include such things as “maintaining objectivity,” “not imposing a judgment,” “refusing to take sides” and sticking to what I have called the View from Nowhere. "

"It's all political," says squatter? non-rent-paying tenant? finally evicted after months of dispute.

" What I had meant to describe specifically was the construction of a full-blown alternative media ecosystem, which has been become more self-sufficient and self-contained as it’s become more interconnected. ... That does not mean conservatives are completely cut off from outside information — as David Brooks notes today, research suggests that frequent visitors to partisan sites are actually more likely to also visit “the enemy” — but it tends to be approached in roughly the same spirit we might read the Korean Central News Agency. "

" The output may have varying degrees of liberal slant, but The New York Times is not fundamentally trying to be liberal; they’re trying to get it right. Their conservative counterparts—your Fox News and your Washington Times—always seem to be trying, first and foremost, to be the conservative alternative. And that has implications for how each of them connects to the whole ecosystem of media: Getting an accurate portrait is institutionally secondary to promoting the accounts and interpretations that support the worldview and undermine the liberal media narrative. "
...
" There’s another explanation that’s related to the rise of what I’ve called the politics of ressentiment... So here’s a hypothesis: Epistemic closure is (in part) an attempt to compensate for the collapse of geographic closure. A function no longer effectively served by geographic segregation—because the digital equivalents of your local hangout are open to invasion by the hordes from New York and London—is being passed to media segregation, bolstered by the sudden demand that what was once tacit and given be explicitly defended. "

" One of the more striking features of the contemporary conservative movement is the extent to which it has been moving toward epistemic closure. Reality is defined by a multimedia array of interconnected and cross promoting conservative blogs, radio programs, magazines, and of course, Fox News. Whatever conflicts with that reality can be dismissed out of hand because it comes from the liberal media, and is therefore ipso facto not to be trusted. (How do you know they’re liberal? Well, they disagree with the conservative media!) "

" budget cuts caused enrollment in California community colleges to decline by over 400,000 students. That’s more than the total number of undergraduates enrolled in the entire California State University system.

" This is, in short, a completely avoidable public-policy catastrophe that will have lasting negative effects on California and the nation as a whole. Yet the lion’s share of national media coverage of California higher education budget cuts has focused on marginal problems among the most privileged people. "

" Due to slim pickings, OakFoSho assembles only a 12-person crew. Undeterred, he exhorts them to "go ahead and make something happen right now." Pointing to his left, OakFoSho advises: "We can get out of sight by just walking that way for about 50 yards." One of Oak's recruits interrupts their deliberations to shout at a passing police cruiser driven by a female officer. "Go home, you fascist bitch!" To pad his crew to a baker's dozen, OakFoSho rousts a homeless guy sleeping under a blanket against a light pole. No sale. Homeless Guy prefers to sleep in peace, thanks all the same. "

" And yet, almost none of these reporters actually talk to Anonymous members, or seriously consider the plausibility of Anonymous' claims. Anyone can be Anonymous, but that doesn't mean Anonymous actually listens to what anyone puts in a random YouTube video. "

...to protect the identity of a leaker. RT @sambowne: Ethiopian journalist ID*quot*d in WikiLeaks cable flees country

"Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!…You're all nuts. Shut up, let me talk." - Free Waterfall, Jr.

" Do hurricanes receive too much media coverage? ... I don’t know. What’s easier to evaluate is how much coverage Hurricane Irene received in comparison with other hurricanes. By that standard, the coverage was quite proportionate to the amount of death and destruction that the storm caused. "

Contrast "RIM to turn in teh youth OMGZ" with… "RIM will, gee, comply with the law"

Contrast "RIM to turn in teh youth OMGZ" with… "RIM will, gee, comply with the law"

" The 46 national and state-level news sites examined-a group that included seven new commercial sites with similar missions-offered a wide range of styles and approaches, but roughly half, the study found, produced news coverage that was clearly ideological in nature. "

" In December, in the middle of Belarus' postelection protests, a number of opposition websites were forced down by distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks. But instead of just pulling them down, some independent media websites were also mirrored, including the website of RFE/RL's Belarus Service. "

" The mirrored sites seemed to have two primary purposes: 1) to present an exact mirror minus any overtly critical stories of the authorities. 2) disinformation, for example by presenting inaccurate information about the time/location of opposition rallies. "

" Yes it was a mistake Johann - but it looks like you're going to get away with it, and will continue to write 'long intellectual profiles' for the paper which surely just lost what little credibility it had left. "

... so he's a lying sack. " Hari said in a blog posting he used such quotes when people had expressed the same sentiment during an interview, but had “said it more clearly in writing than in speech.” In some cases he added descriptions of the setting in which the words were allegedly said to him. "

" As PR becomes ascendant, private and government interests become more able to generate, filter, distort, and dominate the public debate, and to do so without the public knowing it. "What we are seeing now is the demise of journalism at the same time we have an increasing level of public relations and propaganda," McChesney said. "We are entering a zone that has never been seen before in this country." "

" There is no warning whatsoever. And Righthaven’s demands are excessive: $150,000 for a single infringement and the surrendering of the domain name to Righthaven. That last demand, which has no basis in copyright law whatsoever, is the hammer Righthaven uses to extort money from some of the more significant web sites. "

Some extraordinarily incompetent and/or unethical examples of science journalism.
" Why don't journalists link to primary sources? Whether it's a press release, an academic journal article, a formal report or perhaps (if everyone's feeling brave) the full transcript of an interview, the primary source contains more information for interested readers, it shows your working, and it allows people to check whether what you wrote was true. Perhaps linking to primary sources would just be too embarrassing. Here are three short stories. "

" As I said earlier, this is about taking sides with truth. It’s about being knowledgeable enough to make a decent stab at uncovering the truth and presenting the outcomes of that quest to one’s readers, even if that outcome lies firmly on one side of a “debate”. "

" John Connolly is a well-known, and well-liked, character in New York media circles. ... And according to the two highest ranking Scientology officials to ever leave the church, he's been a paid informant for the cult for two decades. "

" This weekend, Rep. Ron Paul won the straw poll at this year’s CPAC the second consecutive year. However, when he was interviewed about victory during America’s Newsroom on Fox News, yesterday, they aired the clip of his announced win in 2010 in which there is a significantly higher amount of booing from the crowd. "

" Are we really supposed to believe that, despite the fact that we can't find evidence of any meaningful amount of money, there's a vast network of Lex Luther-like porn moguls, living inside underground lairs, filled with stolen antiquities? Or is it something more like China, hysteria, fear, and titillation that leaves common sense and observable facts behind? "

side-by-side comparison of Hubbard's Notice of Separation from the National Archives with the photocopy provided by the Church of Scientology, with notes about discrepancies

" That's borne out by a memo from AOL Chief Executive Officer Tim Armstrong on where his company's journalism is going. It's fairly chilling reading, ordering the company's editors to evaluate all future stories on the basis of "traffic potential, revenue potential, edit quality and turnaround time." All stories, it stressed, are to be evaluated according to their "profitability consideration." All AOL's journalistic employees will be required to produce "five to 10 stories per day." "

" Simply put, there are few countries in the world with citizenries and especially media outlets more devoted to serving, protecting and venerating government authorities than the U.S. Indeed, I don't quite recall any entity producing as much bipartisan contempt across the American political spectrum as WikiLeaks has: as usual, for authoritarian minds, those who expose secrets are far more hated than those in power who commit heinous acts using secrecy as their principal weapon. "

" Clearly, it is for governments, not journalists, to protect public secrets. Were there some overriding national jeopardy in revealing them, greater restraint might be in order. There is no such overriding jeopardy, except from the policies themselves as revealed. Where it is doing the right thing, a great power should be robust against embarrassment. "

" Since its launch, WikiLeaks has grown from an edgy experiment into an organization of inestimable significance; Assange routinely ranks on lists of the most influential people on the planet. It’s a powerful organization, with little transparency or accountability. We’re pleased to be among a handful of news outlets that regularly break news about it, and we plan to go on, without favor or animosity. "

" "I think we write trend stories because we think they're news," Shafer said in a phone interview. "We write bogus trend stories because we're wrong, we're lazy, and we're mentally tardy." "

" When you enter the vaccine-thicket, one thing you can rely upon is that experts will be vilified. To the extent you attempt, with thorough reporting, independent research and cogent analysis, to become something of an expert yourself, you likely will be labeled a villain, too. "

" The trouble behind all of this is that we want people to be different from the way they are. "

" It is almost as though Assange realized that the Internet alone is not competent to “check and verify” a huge volume of un-contextualized secret documents. Only people with expert knowledge of Afghanistan and of the operating procedures of the U.S. Army will be able to read those documents and separate the meaningful from the meaningless. Likewise, only people with an earned reputation for trustworthiness can have their interpretation of the leaks accepted by the public at large. And, it even seems, only institutions with the resources to keep their websites up and running during periods of heavy traffic can manage to disseminate the leak at all. "

"Paul Maidment, chief editor of Forbes.com, tendered his resignation, while new ‘chief product officer’ Lewis Dvorkin called an on-the-record meeting to announce a bold new online strategy for the company. ... That Forbes.com will soon be opening its doors to 1000s of unpaid contributors and that [rather than commissioning quality in-house journalism] “Forbes editors will increasingly become curators of talent”."

RT @substitute: Look at the headline before it goes to press.

Journalism. The comments are hilarious.

" Dear Atlanta Progressive "News," if you weren't such lazy, biased f*cking douchebags, this is what you would have reported about Kasim Reed's representation of various corporations in employment litigation: "

" In an e-mail statement, editor Matthew Cardinale says Springston was asked to leave APN last week "because he held on to the notion that there was an objective reality that could be reported objectively, despite the fact that that was not our editorial policy at Atlanta Progressive News." "

"The core of my problem was in shifting from that of a book writer – with two years or more on a project – to what I describe as the “warp speed of the net.” ... It allowed already published sources to get through to a number of my final and in the quick turnaround I then obviously lost sight of the fact that it belonged to a published source instead of being something I wrote."

The entire TV news genre just lost the game.

"Ninety-five percent of Baltimore stories with fresh information came from 'old media,' the vast majority from newspapers, a survey funded by the Pew Research Center says."

"But the article did not mention Mr. Peterson, his backing of The Fiscal Times, that he was a co-founder of the Concord Coalition or that his foundation was a major underwriter of the coalition."

Most of the time I think that journalism is worth saving. Then I see the perverse worship by journalists of a man who did more damage to the profession than any of the crude agitprop on Fox News.

""I am concerned that if the direction of the news is all blogosphere, all opinions, with no serious fact-checking, no serious attempts to put stories in context, that what you will end up getting is people shouting at each other across the void but not a lot of mutual understanding," he said."

35 universities found Futurity: a press release distributor

MSNBC teevee hosts display epic, Fox News-level failure in their flogging of an obvious crank. If you've managed to make a birther nut look like the reasonable party in the interview, you're doing it wrong.

"But big metro newspapers themselves? They are out of here. I want to say that there are three people in the world responsible for their demise"

"Hearst said on Tuesday that it may sell or close The San Francisco Chronicle if it cannot wring enough savings from the money-losing newspaper. ... Hearst warned last month that it may sell or shut down another of its papers, The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, if no buyer can be found."

"Last week, 3,000 copies of the New School Free Press were stolen on the day it was published. ... mostly it was a group of radical students, angered by our portrayal of their organization, who attempted to silence our voices through such a crude and undemocratic method. "