Group items tagged

" First: a questioning of existing principles such as impartiality - or, at least a demand for clarification of their meanings. Second: a stress on new values, such as transparency over objectivity; or, a preference for the unfiltered sharing of information over a filtered verification of "the facts." Responsible media practitioners remain committed to general principles, such as seeking the truth and reporting independently. But beyond this general level, the media revolution has undermined a previous professional consensus on the best forms of practice, and the norms that guide them. Our media revolution creates multiple and conflicting interpretations of journalism. Media ethics, like media, is in turmoil."

Each year on Constitution Day, students and teachers celebrate the most fundamental laws of our republic. On this Constitution Day, they should also celebrate Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, and other social media. Why? Because it turns out that social media are good for the Constitution. Specifically, they're good for the First Amendment. Fully 91 percent of students who use social networking to get news and information daily believe people should be allowed to express unpopular opinions, compared with 77 percent of those who never use social networks to get news. Not all the news is good this year. While more students understand that government can't censor the media in this country, nearly 40 percent still don't. While more students say they think about the First Amendment, most still don't. Even so, when the numbers start to move in the right direction, it's cause for celebration. Do we have teachers to thank for recent improvements in First Amendment attitudes? Not really. Fewer students say they get First Amendment instruction in school than in our last survey. And only 30 percent of teachers say they are teaching the subject. I'm afraid many teachers are a drag on First Amendment learning. The survey says most don't support free expression rights in a school context. They don't think school papers should print controversial articles. They don't think students should post about school on Facebook. And they mostly think social media hurt teaching.

The blogosphere -- arguably the first engine of the new-media age -- is becoming more female, while traditional media is horning in on the blogging action, a new study said Friday.

"This year, for the first time, American high school students show a greater overall appreciation for the First Amendment than do adults. More students than ever before say they are thinking about the First Amendment. Nine in 10 say people should be able to express unpopular opinions. Six in 10 say the press should not be censored by the government. What happened? One explanation: the digital age. In 2011, Connecticut researcher Ken Dautrich found "a clear, positive relationship" between social media use and support for free expression. He now finds the same link between digital media use and First Amendment support."

"Even in New York, the media capital, only 1 in 8 public high schools have a student newspaper, The New York Times reported in May, and many publish only a few times a year. Nationally, about two-thirds of public high schools have newspapers, according to a 2011 media study by the Center for Scholastic Journalism at Kent State University. But whether on paper or online, student newspapers tend to be absent from lower-income schools and lower-income students. That's sad because, as Robert Fulghum titled his best-seller, "All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten," I often feel as though I learned all I really needed to know about journalism in high school. Newspapers of all sorts have been battered for decades by television and widespread illiteracy. With the explosion of Internet traffic, too few youngsters are learning good news literacy. As Mrs. Kindell taught, you need to be a good reporter before you start giving your opinion. Today's world of blogging and tweeting encourages the opposite. Too bad we don't have more Mrs. Kindells to go around."

Bodies hanging from bridge in Mexico are warning to social media users

"Even for a society comfortable with blood and gore in its movies and video games, the bombings at the Boston Marathon have sparked a new debate among news organizations about when images are too gruesome to display."

Facebook. Twitter. MySpace. Cell phones. Blogs. Time thieves, all of them. Or at least that's how they've sometimes been portrayed in news media, common lore, and even the occasional scholarly study. Social media just add to the Great American Isolation, right? Not so, says a study from the Pew Internet and American Life Project.

Trayvon Martin, an unarmed 17-year-old, was fatally shot on Feb. 26 in Sanford, Fla. The next day his death was a top story on the Fox-affiliated television station in Orlando, the closest big city to Sanford. Within a week it was being covered by newspapers around the state. But it took several weeks before the rest of the country found out. It was not until mid-March, after word spread on Facebook and Twitter, that the shooting of Trayvon by George Zimmerman, 26, was widely reported by the national news media, highlighting the complex ways that news does and does not travel in the Internet age.

Although news executives know their industry is in trouble, most are unwilling to turn to the government or interest groups for help. Three quarters of editors and news directors polled say they have "serious reservations" about government funding of journalism, and 78 percent say the same thing about interest groups, primarily for fear that independence can be compromised, according to a study by the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism.

"Every public school district in New Jersey would be required to set guidelines on how its employees communicate with students online under legislation set for a vote in the state Senate today. The bill (S441) would require that the policy be written, and include "provisions designed to prevent improper communications between school employees and students made via e-mail, cellular phones, social networking websites, and other Internet-based social media." If it passes both houses and is signed by Gov. Chris Christie, school districts would have four months to adopt the policy."

"SEOUL, South Korea (AP) - Ex-NBA star Dennis Rodman hung out with North Korea's Kim Jong Un during his improbable journey to Pyongyang, watching the Harlem Globetrotters with the leader and later drinking and dining on sushi with him. "You have a friend for life," Rodman told Kim before a crowd of thousands Thursday at a gymnasium where they sat side by side, chatting as they watched players from North Korea and the United States face off in mixed teams, Alex Detrick, a spokesman for the New York-based VICE media company, told The Associated Press. Rodman arrived in Pyongyang on Monday with three members of the professional Harlem Globetrotters basketball team, VICE correspondent Ryan Duffy and a production crew to shoot an episode on North Korea for a new weekly HBO series."

EVERY summer in Chicago, most neighborhoods put on their own street fair, with generally the same mix of homogeneous items: cheap sunglasses, tacky art, deep-fried food and music by local bands. But recently, a new concept - let's call it the curated flea market - has caught on, thanks to the introduction this year of Dose Market by a group of young and intrepid media and style experts.

Mr. Mak's design of a silhouetted profile of Mr. Jobs in the Apple company logo was shared across the Web and reported by news media. The actor Ashton Kutcher posted the design on his Twitter account.

A poll run by the social media news blog Mashable found that 75 percent of Facebook fans "hate" the redesign. The new Facebook fared even worse on the poll site Sodahead, where 86 percent gave the changes a thumbs down.

The 25-year-old son of a Stafford councilman struck and killed a man with his car Wednesday morning, according to a report on APP.com. Robert Kusznikow was driving south on Mermaid Drive when his vehicle hit Michael Grosso, 76, of Barnegat at 10:22 a.m. Grosso died just before 11 a.m. at Southern Ocean Media Center in Manahwaki, the report said.

The U.S. Supreme Court began its October 2011 term this morning, kicking off what could be a major season for the student media. The SPLC is tracking five cases that will be addressed by the Court this term - even if it is just to refuse to hear the appeal. Any one of these cases could dramatically reshape the First Amendment climate for students. Before we preview those cases, however, it's worth brushing up on some High Court 101.

Twitter users are able to share their ideas and beliefs on topics and provide followers with various insights. I would say there are upsides and downsides to using twitter as a news source.

ALLENDALE - The Northern Highlands Regional High School Board of Education is expected to vote tonight on a revised policy governing student publications. The changes to the policy come in response to an incident in the spring in which a story written for the student newspaper, The Highland Fling, was censored by administrators. "I think we saw there were concerns last year," Board of Education President Barbara Garand said, adding that the policy has previously been revised a "couple of times." Among those concerns, she said, were the use of anonymous sources, which students would need to divulge to their adviser under the new policy. The school board approved a revised version of the censored story, written by Adelina Colaku, that was published in June after a three-month fight. The story detailed an ongoing dispute between former Superintendent John Keenan and nine tenured administrators and supervisors. The original version raised concerns over the use of anonymous sources. Michael Rightmire, whose job as director of technology had been eliminated in May and was a source in the article, agreed to go on the record for the revised version of Colaku's story. John Woodnick, the newspaper's faculty adviser for 10 years, stepped down from the Fling, but continues to teach English. Colaku said she is particularly concerned with the change in policy regarding anonymous sources. "The law says if an adviser knows who anonymous sources are and the administration wants to know, they can ask and the adviser is obligated to tell them," she said. "That would have been a great impediment on the procession of my story," Colaku said. Gina Palermo, editor in chief of the Fling in 2012-13, said she is concerned with the regulation that says school-sponsored publications should "foster a wholesome school spirit and support the best traditions of the school." Instead, she said student newspapers should be held to the same standards as professional media. "In a professiona