Talking social media at the AEJMC conference

I'll be spending a good part of this week at the annual conference of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication, which is being held this year in Boston.

Tomorrow I'll be on a pre-conference panel called "Social Networking, Social Media: Facilitating the Pro-Am Approach to Journalism and Building Social Communities," part of a program titled "Reinventing Journalism and Yourself: One Tweet, One Friend at a Time." I wish I could invite everyone, but I'm told there's no more seating left.

I'm not sure how much blogging I'll be doing. I'm more likely to post Twitter updates; you can follow me here. This afternoon I succeeded at posting a photo to TwitPic with my new BlackBerry, so I'll try to do a bit of that as well.

One good gesture deserve another

Iran has released the Iranian-American journalist Roxana Saberi from prison.

This would be a good time for the United States to release the Al-Jazeera journalist Sami al-Haj from Guantánamo, no? According to Reporters Without Borders, al-Haj, arrested in 2001, has never been charged and has been interrogated more than 200 times.

Correction: Reporters Without Borders really needs to update its information — it turns out that al-Haj was released in 2007. Glenn Greenwald has all the details at Salon, including our continued detainment of Reuters freelance photographer Ibrahim Jassam. (Hat tip to Steve.)

Iranian-American journalist gets eight years

Iranian-American journalist Roxana Saberi has been sentenced to eight years in an Iranian prison, the Committee to Protect Journalists reports. The dispatch begins:

An Iranian court convicted journalist Roxana Saberi of espionage and sentenced her to eight years in prison today following a closed, one-day trial earlier this week, according to international news reports. Her lawyer said he will appeal. "Roxana Saberi's trial lacked transparency and we are concerned that she may not have been treated fairly," said Mohamed Abdel Dayem, CPJ's Middle East and North Africa program coordinator. "We call on the Iranian authorities to release her on bail pending her appeal."

You have to wonder if Saberi has been caught up in the byzantine workings of internal Iranian politics. President Obama has attempted to find an opening to the regime. Iranians who don't want to see any contacts between Iran and the United States obviously stand to benefit from Saberi's imprisonment.

Obama now pretty much can't — and shouldn't — have anything to do with the Iranian government unless it releases Saberi. Which it won't.

Here is a link to the CPJ's online petition demanding freedom for Saberi. I'm going to go sign the Facebook version right now.

More: I see that the petition is now closed. But I joined the CPJ's Facebook group, and urge you to do the same.

Still more: According to Global Voices Online, an Iranian blogger says Saberi is being held so that she can be used as a pawn in a prisoner swap.

Photo of Saberi with former Iranian president Mohammad Khatami.

A local take on global coverage

Three of the most interesting experiments in online coverage of international affairs are based right here in Greater Boston.

Global Voices Online, launched several years ago at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society, at Harvard Law School, is a site at which journalists cull and curate bloggers from around the world.

GlobalPost, a new project started by New England Cable News founder Phil Balboni and former Boston Globe reporter Charles Sennott, is assembling a worldwide network of correspondents and developing a variety of free and paid models.

And of course there's the venerable Christian Science Monitor, which recently dropped its daily print edition. (It unveiled a weekly print magazine this week, but the emphasis is on the Web site.) There's a Globe connection with the Monitor as well: the current editor, John Yemma, is a Globe alumnus.

Even as we lament the ongoing collapse of the newspaper business as we've known it, there are reasons to be optimistic about the survival of journalism. I thought I would take a look at how each is covering the anti-communist protests in Moldova, which have captured some worldwide attention because of the role played by social networks, especially Twitter.

Though none of the three is as comprehensive as what my former Boston Phoenix colleague Ellen Barry has been providing for the New York Times this week, each has been covering the story in unique ways.

This Global Voices post, a round-up of blog commentary by Veronica Khokhlova, along with two previous posts to which she links, shows some of the strengths and weaknesses of citizen journalism: the bloggers are good at giving you a flavor of what's happening, but you get little idea of why it's happening. I imagine this would mainly be of interest to people with a deep understanding of Moldova.

Indeed, folks at Global Voices will tell you that some of their most dedicated readers tend to be journalists and academics. Khokhlova's post is not something I would want to wade into without at least having followed some of the mainstream coverage first.

I like the photo, which I found by following one of Khokhlova's links, not because it's great photojournalism — it isn't — but precisely because it's so mundane. I think it gives a better feel for what it must be like to be in the middle of a protest than a more dramatic shot would provide. Then again, isn't giving you a true picture what journalism is supposed to do?

I'm also struck by the observation that if Moldovan young people had used a social-networking tool other than current media darling Twitter, the protests might not have received as much attention from the West.

At GlobalPost we find a 13-photo slideshow by Robert A. Reeder that takes us from a celebratory concert staged by the communist government, through protests and violence, and finally to a shot of Moldovan President Vladimir Voronin, who has ordered a crackdown and blamed the government of Romania.

Reeder's pictures, along with the photo captions, give you enough of a flavor that you come away feeling as if you know something about what's going on. But, as with the Global Voices post, this is supplementary material, not a substitute for a well-wrought news report.

Finally, the Monitor, on its Global News blog, presents a post by Fred Weir that is characteristic of Monitor journalism: it's short but surprisingly deep, offering just enough news and lots of perspective and analysis. It carries a Moscow dateline, and lacks the up-close feel of the Times coverage. But it may be all that a curious, intelligent general reader needs to know.

Weir's post went up on Wednesday, so the Monitor hasn't been as timely on the Moldova story as the Times' Barry has. But judging from Barry's story in today's paper, not a whole lot has gone on since then.

All in all, an impressive performance. If you start with the Monitor, then check out Global Voices and GlobalPost, you'll come away pretty well-informed about a remote corner of Europe.

Photo taken from the blog Kosmopolito, linked from Global Voices Online, whose content is made available through a Creative Commons license. Some rights reserved.

A new paradigm in foreign correspondence

Good story in the New York Times on Sunday about the new paradigm in foreign reporting. It wasn't that long ago that a reporter for, say, the Times understood that few of the people he was covering would ever see what he wrote — and that it would trickle back slowly.

Now, because of the Internet, writes Anand Giridharadas, Western media outlets are available everywhere — so much so that the majority of Google searches for Indian and Chinese news in the Times comes from those countries.

On and on the NewsTrust J-hunt goes

But it all ends tomorrow! Today's five six picks:

• Many Would Shrug if Their Local Newspaper Closed by Andrew Kohut, Pew Research Center
  
• Iraqi who threw shoes at Bush jailed for 3 years by Hamza Hendawi, The Associated Press
• Life, online, after the Rocky Mountain News by Robert Niles, Online Journalism Review
• Google News Archive Search Shows Promise for News Organizations by Amy Gahran, Poynter.org
• Newspaper failures are old news. It’s time to focus on solutions. by Tom Regan, Christian Science Monitor
• The MinnPost Model: Is it sustainable? by Matt Snyders, City Pages

Here, once again, is NewsTrust's journalism topic page. Please consider taking part.

NewsTrust: The J-hunt continues

Five more stories on journalism for your perusal:

• APIs: The new distribution by Jeff Jarvis, BuzzMachine
• Defogging the Economic Crisis by Jamie McIntyre, American Journalism Review
• Why is Jim Cramer shouting at me? by Gabriel Winant, Salon
• CPJ calls for Iranian president's intervention in Saberi case by the Committee to Protect Journalists
• Behind the Incredibly Shrinking Media by Paul Armstrong, Business Week

If you'd like to join in the fun, sign up for NewsTrust and visit the journalism topic page.

Journalism about journalism on NewsTrust

My reading and blogging habits will be substantially different this week, as I am hosting the journalism topic area for NewsTrust.

NewsTrust is a social-networking tool that enables community members to submit and rate news stories on qualities such as fairness, sourcing and importance. If you've never tried it before, I encourage you to sign up and give it a whirl. I'll keep you posted on what I'm submitting this week in the hopes that you'll pitch in.

Here is what I submitted this morning. The links will take you not directly to the story but, rather, to a NewsTrust review page. From there you can go to the story and review it for yourself.

• Ex-WaPo Editor Jim Brady to News Sites: Experiment More, Now by Steve Myers, Poynter.org
• Paid Content: You Can't Tell the Players Without a Scorecard by Ken Doctor, Content Bridges
• The Future of The New Republic by Paul Waldman, The Daily Beast
• United, Newspapers May Stand by David Carr, The New York Times
• Where Were the Media as Wall Street Imploded? by David Folkenflik, National Public Radio

Hope you'll consider taking part.

Seeking advice on social media for journalists

This Friday I'm leading a workshop on blogging and social media for journalists at the annual New England Press Association convention. I'm expecting a fairly savvy group — not likely to be too many outright novices. Any advice?

Turning the First Amendment on its head

Robert Ambrogi has posted a 36-page section of the report ordered up by the Boston City Council as part of its crusade to get out of having to comply with the state's open-meeting law.

It's hard to make out and I haven't had a chance to go through it yet. But Ambrogi's comments are on the mark, especially with respect to the councilors' argument that the law impinges upon their own First Amendment rights:

How does that saying go about the devil reading the Bible to his own ends? That was all I could think of as I read a report arguing that the First Amendment gives Boston city councilors the right to conduct the people's business behind closed doors....

The ... premise is that this "prohibition" on private speech between public officials violates their free-speech rights. That is the most extreme contortion of the First Amendment I've ever heard or read.

Ambrogi concludes with a hope that councilors will send the report "straight to the circular file." But that's only going to happen if the press and the public pressures them to do so.

The original Boston Herald story made it pretty clear that some influential members, including president Maureen Feeney and former president Michael Flaherty, think weakening the public's right to know is a neat idea.

Closed-door government

The Boston City Council, having been found in violation of the state's open-meeting law earlier this year, has come up with an all-too-typical response. According to Boston Herald reporter Ed Mason, council members today will take up an 80-page report that it commissioned urging the state to exempt them from the law.

Council president Maureen Feeney tells Mason that the law presents "challenges" and is "confusing." Before I go any further, you should know that the law does nothing more than require governmental bodies such as the city council to conduct the public's business in public, and to provide adequate notice of when its meetings will take place.

Councilor Michael Flaherty is quoted as saying that the law creates a "chilling effect," claiming, "You can't even have a conversation with colleagues in the hallway or in a session." That's an interesting observation. The law says that a quorum — that is, a majority — of members cannot discuss official business outside the context of a legal, publicly announced meeting.

If Flaherty had said, You can't even have a conversation in the hallway with six or more colleagues about city business, that would be accurate. It would also underscore the absurdity of his complaint.

The law doesn't even require public meetings when there is a good reason for them to be held behind closed doors. Various exceptions are allowed, most typically to discuss contract negotiations and lawsuits.

Any journalist, community activist or public watchdog who's spent any time dealing with municipal government will tell you that the open-meeting law ought to be strengthened, especially with regard to punishing violators.

The law is a burden only to public officials who think the public is a burden.

A world without editors

Jeff Jarvis argues in his Guardian column that editors are becoming obsolete. These days, he says, we write first and edit later, often in response to what our readers tell us.

The Jarvis system works for a certain type of journalism (mainly short, bloggy-type stuff like this), but it wouldn't work for everything. I can't imagine a major investigative series coming together without deep involvement on the part of skilled editors. Then again, that's the sort of journalism most endangered in the current environment.

And it would seem to me that an editor whose intervention prevented a libel suit has just covered her salary for the next five years.

Plugged in, tuned out

I'll be taking part in a panel discussion tomorrow evening on young people and the news. Titled "Plugged In, Tuned Out," the program — sponsored by the Massachusetts Institute for a New Commonwealth (MassINC) — will take place from 6:30 to 8 p.m. at the Back Bay Events Center, in the Dorothy Quincy Suite at 180 Berkeley St. in Boston.

Other panelists will be Adam Gaffin, the impresario of Universal Hub; Bianca Vazquez Toness, a reporter for WBUR Radio (90.9 FM); and Dante Ramos (scroll down a bit), deputy editorial-page editor of the Boston Globe. The moderator will be Adam Reilly of the Boston Phoenix.

The panel is an outgrowth of an article I wrote for MassINC's quarterly magazine, CommonWealth, which you can read here. For more information and to RSVP, click here.

A horrifying symbol

This Reuters photo is destined to become the symbol of the Burmese government's brutal crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrators. Kenji Nagai, a video photographer for Japan's APFN news service, was fatally shot while covering the protests yesterday.

It's early, and there are no doubt details we don't know yet. But according to the photo caption in the Boston Globe, Nagai kept shooting even after he'd been injured. The Washington Post reports that Nagai was taken away by soldiers, but it's not clear whether he was alive or dead at that point.

The Committee to Protect Journalists has a pretty detailed account that also reports Nagai kept doing his job after he'd been shot. The CPJ's post includes this statement:

The Committee to Protect Journalists strongly condemns the shootings and the heavy government interference and ongoing harassment of journalists who are attempting to cover the unfolding political events in Burma.

The Guardian has posted a remarkable video of Nagai covering the fall of Baghdad in 2003.

Casting a misspell

At the beginning of each semester, I tell my students that I have a rule about spelling: botch a proper name — person, place or thing — and it will cost you a letter grade. Even so, I often find I have to temper justice with mercy, lest I risk failing someone for the course despite turning in work that is otherwise quite good.

Apparently it's not much different at the New York Times, whose public editor, Clark Hoyt, weighs in with a piece today on misspelled names. He writes:

The fact is, The New York Times misspells names at a ferocious rate — famous names, obscure names, names of the dead in their obituaries, names of the living in their wedding announcements, household names from Hollywood, names of Cabinet officers, sports figures, the shoe bomber, the film critic for The Daily News in New York and, astonishingly and repeatedly, Sulzberger, the name of the family that owns The New York Times.

Pretty amazing, and I'm not sure why it's so difficult. Hoyt thinks the Internet might have something to do with it, as it's become all too easy for reporters to pass on other people's mistakes. But that doesn't make sense, because any reporter ought to know enough to visit an authoritative Web site.

A small example. One day in the early '90s, when I was working for the Boston Phoenix, a fellow copy editor and I were trying to figure out how "Dunkin' Donuts" ought to be rendered. One of us ended up walking to Kenmore Square in order to look at the sign outside a DD. Today, all we would have needed to do was click here.

When I was going to journalism school, one of my professors, Bill Kirtz (now a colleague), used to say that if you couldn't be trusted to get the little things right, then you couldn't be trusted to get the big things right, either. It's a credo I've tried to live by, even as I've gotten my share of things wrong, both little and big.