Society's Watchdog

Journalists often describe our collective community as the watchdog of society. We like to think we’re doing some good in the world in spite of the fact that we don’t always make a lot of money and we piss people off with incredible frequency. Often times we are. Sometimes we’re not.

I have a dog most would regard as a watchdog. She’s big; about 120 pounds and every bit as tall as I am when standing on her hind legs. When a stranger comes to the door, Gabby shakes the walls with her bark and immediately positions herself between the people in the house, which she knows and loves, and the person or people on the outside, of whom she is unconditionally skeptical.

While I am glad to have the protection of an animal that is, without question, willing and able to tear an individual apart in order to protect myself, and more importantly my fiancée, there is an inherent problem with the situation described above. To this point in my life, none of the individuals who have ringed my doorbell of knocked on my door did so with any intention of causing myself, my family, or my property any harm. Although things have happened to others; break-ins, rapes, murders, etc., causing me to remain cautious, it would be grossly inappropriate for me to assume that every time someone comes calling for my fiancée or myself they are trying to harm us in some manner.

As I near graduation in my chosen discipline and look forward to a magical piece of paper hanging on my wall I am growing ever skeptical of my classmates and soon to be peers. The last Journalism course I will ever take at EMU is Advanced Reporting; a professor’s last chance to force us into some real world experience before we depend on it for a living. The term or, “enterprise,” assignment for the course is to come up with an underlying issue and investigate to its end. Gathering the insights of experts and average Joes alike we are expected to offer a solution to the problem by the end of the course and present it to the class and, ideally, for publication.

As we struggled for topics one student decided to share a story she had been working on since September of last year. Her topic was sex offenders on campus. Through public records and internet searches she was able to find the name and profession of a janitor on campus whom, years earlier, was convicted of raping his wife. She began the cat and mouse game of interviewing the people responsible for hiring and keeping the man on board after his convictions. Over time the search led her to interview the man himself and get a lot of information on the subject.

The student then shared that she received an email this morning to inform her that the man’s employment with the university had been terminated. My professor told us that the university would never admit the fact that the investigation had something to do with the firing, but more likely than not, it did. Don’t worry about the fact that the man hasn’t done anything sexually offensive in years. Ignore the fact that he had moved on with his life and was gainfully employed and contributing to society. Don’t give any mind to the fact the this man was working after hours in a facility with locked doors where no one even had access to fall victim to his cruel intention. The student stated that she wasn’t sure how to feel about the guy losing his job. How about bad?This is when I started to wonder if maybe I’m one of the bad guys.

Rape is a terrible crime. It ranks highly on everyone’s list of blood boilers. While I am no exception, I did think we were a society based on second chances. Whatever his sentence, the individual in question had clearly “paid his debt to society” as we like to phrase it when we’re rooting for the convicted felon. What bothers me the most is that a day earlier, another journalist, with a different set of motives could’ve published a moving feature story on a convicted felon who had moved on with his life and changed his role from violent criminal into productive and meaningful serviceman.

The journalist may have been barking at a door with a trusted friend, whose loyalty had been proven, standing on the other side. On the other hand, what kind of grade would she have earned if she returned to the professor and said, “Nothing wrong here, no danger for students on this campus?” I don’t blame the professor, either; the problem runs much deeper. I feel the assignment is a realistic one perfectly in line with professional expectations. A newspaper editor would find just as much disinterest in a positive version of the story.

Sometimes the wind blows hard enough to make the door squeak and pop in unusual ways. My dog barks uncontrollably because she is incapable of distinguishing a real threat from one that doesn’t exist at all. She is so intent on protecting her family that false alarms are inevitable. I can give her a command forcing her to submit and realize the lack of danger in the given situation. I thank her for being aware of her surroundings and everything going on around her and move on. The world refuses to do so.

Negativity draws attention. If the dog believed in harmony and coexistence she would never be worried at all. We find ourselves in an identical situation. Our skepticism leans towards paranoia in a society that trusts itself less with each sunrise. We know in our hearts that bad things will eventually happen. This fact leads us to assume that they will right now.

I will never get rid of my dog. There’s too much at stake to be unprepared and ignorant of my surroundings. I keep her with a calculated risk, however. There’s always the outside chance that the watchdog, best intentions in tow, can strike an individual who is only passing by. If she were to do she would be deemed unfit for society and killed; a fate I hope the news media and the journalists who control them are smart enough to avoid.

This I believe About Digital Journalism

This I believe: That for better or worse, digital journalism is the future of news and broadcast media. Throughout the course readings and my consequent blog responses to each of them, I have tried to continue with a sense of truth and justice in the future of journalism. I find it important to keep these principles that we’ve spent hundreds of years working towards in the forefront of what we intend to do in the future.

The best example of a future I can subscribe to comes from Leonard Downie, Jr., and Michael Schudson who provide grounds for the most detailed and inclusive conversation about the future of journalism I've ever come across in their The Reconstruction of American Journalism report. They take and honest, in-depth look at what changes have already happened, what trends show may be coming next, and what the conclusion of the transformation may look like.

On the other end of this Brent Cunningham is a narrow minded individual and discouraging individual when giving his insights on the future of journalism. Hopefully my saying this will automatically sway public opinion to agree with me. I am, after all, a journalist, and according to Cunningham in his How journalism can regain its relevance piece, journalism has "more important" roles than "emitting an endless stream of incremental developments and story frames."

By definition, Brent, journalism is, "writing characterized by a direct representation of facts or description of events without an attempt at interpretation. That is one version of the Merriam-Webster definition. Note the phrase created by the words I chose to emphasize, "direct facts without interpretation." That is what journalism is supposed to be; the principle of objectivity that each of us learned in our first semester of dedicated study.

Lastly, I believe that Dr. Tracy’s Evolution of the Newspaper of the Future is ringing true already. We can see her principles of community interaction involvement playing out in AnnArbor.com’s Your Voice" section on every page that provides the method of correspondance Dr. Tracy describes as "ongoing communication."

I believe that digital is the future of everything. I also believe that no matter what I, or the individuals I’ve sighted believe, the future of journalism is going to be determined by the free market system that has brought the newspaper industry to its knees in the past five years. I believe that people will never stop wanting to read their news and they will never stop looking for more interesting or interactive ways to get it.

DVR great for busy times

Some of my classmates wrote their news scoops assignment on the Holiday Parade. All I can say in regards to it and their dreamy reports is "thank God for DVR." On a day where I had to make Thanksgiving Dinner for both mine and my fiance's families, I was unable to leave my oven in favor of the local coverage. I wasn't able to watch the parade until much later in the weekend, and thanks to modern technology, I was able to do so.

I started considering how this technology could affect the future of journalism. I feel like it already has, whether directly or indirectly. The way we used podcasts, online video, and other on demand technologies is indicative of the way journalism will look in the future.

Things need to be accessible to anyone who wants to see them at anytime. Such is why blogging is so successful.

Crafty crafts

Martha Stewart has been a prominent figure in our aociety for the last 15 years or so. I saw her this morning with a guest who used the seeds from chili peppers in a recipe and then said, "we absolutely hate throwing things away these days." My first thought was that this was a lit but what she did next was amazing. She showed how to dry the peppers and then proceeded to paint them into little decorations for the holiday season. It was a neat little way to revisit the Native American concept of using absolutely everything.

I don;t mean to get in the corner of a corporate fraud but, at any rate, this was a neat idea and a good way to make the most of what you have. No matter who you are.

Black Friday brings cheer, crowds

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CANTON, Mich.: The biggest shopping day of the year began early in the evening hours of Thanksgiving for many dedicated shoppers. The event is called Black Friday but for the, not so select, number of deal hunters who got in line just after finishing their turkey and potatoes, this is a misnomer.

Emma Tills, 35, a Canton resident stood in line at her local Target store for seven hours prior to the store’s 5 a.m. opening. “It was really hard to stand outside all night; leaving the kids at home with their dad instead of spending the holiday with them,” Tills stated. “But the deals are so good that we can’t afford to pass them up.”

With features like $3 appliances and extensively discounted large screen TVs, the situation not only affected shoppers, but retail workers as well.

“I couldn’t even find a place to park when I got here this morning,” said Troy Young, an employee working his fourth holiday season at Target. “We also had to have two people escorted from the premises for getting into a fistfight over a spot.”

Like it or not these Black Friday deals are here to stay. With doors seeming to open earlier every year, many like the Fairlane Mall at Midnight, the biggest shopping day of the year shows no signs of slowing down.

Target’s Ford Rd. location finished the day with just over half a million dollars in sales, about five times their daily average. With that many more gifts under the tree, this Christmas promises to be cheery despite the hard economic times around us.

Social netSTALKING

What would we do without Facebook, Myspace, or Twitter? How in the world did people survive without them for thousands (or millions depending on who you ask) of years? Social networking has become much more than a fad or way to spend free time when everyone else is busy on Friday night.

God knows these sites didn't need the free advertising that my links above provide. The fact that I am able to freely post these links and refer people to these pages from my own little corer of the blogging world demonstrates a principle unique to the internet.

Sir Timothy Berners-Lee, in his testimony before the U.S. House of Repesentatives stated that, "new data integration capabilities, when directed at personal information, pose substantial privacy challenges which are hardly addressed by today's privacy laws." The fact is that we are all vulnerable to identity theft crimes which are the fastest growing group of crimes in the U.S. The worst part about it is that a lot of us are digging our own graves.

When speaking of how thiefs obtain our personal information, Berners-Lee says, "people actually reveal a lot about themselves, but with the intent that it only used in certain contexts by certain people." Are we giving ourselves away, literally? Stay tuned for more discussion on the future of the web, what we need to do to protect ourselves, and what some of the newest threats may be.

The economics of giving

My grandma quit smoking some 30 years before she died. Her pack-a-day habit was something she picked up well before the adverse medical effects of the cancer causing toxins in cigarette smoke were well known or publicized. Even though the last time she slid a match across a strip of flint was long before printed ad revenues went down the proverbial toilet, grandma still experienced the affects on her health. The resulting lung cancer and aggressive chemo therapy ultimately killed her. Knowing the facts ahead of time, and following a well formulated and articulated plan can prevent many problems in the long run and ultimately make life easier.

Just as never smoking is the best remedy for diseases caused by smoking, not letting the world economy go down the tubes is the best way to prevent expensive rebuilding costs for underdeveloped nations across the world. A Washington file article noted that in 2005, U.S. aid to African nations reached an all-time high and were projected to increase in the following years. Another web-site, theadvocates.org, sites that The United States has given more than $320 Billion in foreign aid since the end of WWII. If those aren’t impressive try this on for size: at the 2007 G8 Summit in Gleneagles, the developed western world pledged to donate $50 Billion a year to help the poor nations of the world. Over half of this money was to go to the world’s poorest nations in Africa. The pattern here is a lot of giving and little result. The problem is that, despite efforts, poverty is not decreasing. Reports, such as Chen Shaohua’s Is poverty increasing in the developing world? cite that World Bank claims of decreasing poverty don’t account for inflation or population increases and claim that things are actually getting worse for third world nations. We call it the developing world but it is, in fact, not developing with any sort of consistency.

Just as quitting smoking proved to be only a temporary fix for my grandma’s health problems, dumping money into these nations without any sort of coherent agenda is not helping matters. One individual has a plan for a potential solution and wants you to join in his cause.

Victor Helb, 32, a Wayne State University student, and native to the West African nation of Liberia, was sent away from the warring country when he was just 12 years old. His parents felt he would have better opportunities in the Detroit area, where he had family with which to stay. Now, 20 years later, Helb feels the same desire to help others succeed as his parents did when they sent him away.

Helb is taking on an international challenge of promoting love across continental divides and knowledge across a gap that is even wider. Liberia has been left without hospitals, schools, and even running water since the 14 year civil war ended in 2003. With the help of college students across the nation, Helb wants to raise money through used book sales. The goal of his Liberian Literacy Foundation is to teach Liberian’s to read by building learning centers, creating a computer-based education network spanning the country.

“They have a whole generation that has grown up without schools,” explains Helb. “They don’t know anything more than what they’ve been living in.”
The education centers will be run by wind energy that will be supplied in surplus and sold to other nations in order to offset carbon emissions worldwide.

“Liberia will actually be able to contribute to the world economy instead of asking for handouts from the developed world all the time.”
Helb’s homecoming is set for January when he will return to Liberia for the official “kick-off” of the project. The Liberian president will be there and is set to hold the honor of cutting the tape.

Helb’s efforts have been an ongoing process even though he is currently away from home. Wayne State University has become the first official sponsor of the program and has provided a four year scholarship to a Liberian student as well as raising thousands already through used book sales.

This isn’t call to humanity or charity because those ideals have clearly failed the estimated 1.2 Billion people in the world who live in extreme poverty. Even the most money hungry, inside trading, cheap-skate executive at a multi-billion dollar organization can make sense of the economic situation. We have a choice to either dump countless amounts of dollar bills into a continuously growing pit of need to no avail; donating just to make ourselves look and feel good, or we can invest our time, and our useless old text books wisely in order to take steps at actually solving a problem.

Grandma’s cancer wasn’t cured by chemo and radiation therapy. We were all happy she decided to fight it and stay alive for as long as she could, but the truth is the methods being used were simply insufficient. The only thing that could’ve cured grandma’s cancer would’ve been a preconceived arrangement with real implications for the future; a plan to attack a problem at its roots and create a promising future.