Since we are not having class this entire week, your homework covering your entire week is included in this and the following blog posts. (Also, please note I don't leave for my conference until Wednesday morning, so I am still available for you during
office hours Mondays and Tuesday during regular business hours.)
For this week, you will have TWO practice story assignments to do. The first one is slugged POLICE. For this one, use information provided in Reporting For The Media 10th Edition, Ch. 18, Ex. 3, p. 481. YOU ARE TO WRITE JUST ONE STORY REGARDING THE REPORT ON P. 481 ONLY. PLEASE IGNORE OTHER DIRECTIONS.
For this exercise, the incident is taking place in Okemos. The store is also located in Okemos. The responding authorities are from the Ingham County Sheriff's Department.
Your deadline for POLICE will be no later than 9 a.m. Tuesday, to omars@msu.edu.
Now, the POLICE
exercise is a bit different from previous practice stories, in that
instead of being given a set of information, you are being given a mock
police report form which to discern information, make sense of what
happened and write your story.
For you to be able to figure things out, you need to know what military time is. The police report, like most police and fire reports, are written in military time, which differs somewhat from regular time.
In regular time,
the daily clock is divided into two 12-hour clocks. For example, we
have 12 hours of the morning (known as a.m.), and 12 hours of the
afternoon (known as p.m.). The number indicates how many hours we are
into the morning or afternoon. Like, 8 a.m. is eight hours into the
morning. 2:30 p.m. is two hours, 30 minutes into the afternoon. Duh,
right?
Now, let's compare that to military time. In military time, the daily clock is a single 24-hour clock, where the number indicates how many hours we are past midnight, and into the day.
For
example, 0500 hours is equal to 5 a.m., since it's five hours into the
day. 1430 hours is equal to 2:30 p.m., since 2:30 p.m. is 14 hours, 30
minutes after midnight.
The
reports will list information in military time, but for the stories we
must translate that info into regular time, since the latter is the time
people in regular society use.
*****
Also, due by 9 a.m. Wednesday will be a practice story, slugged RESCUE. For this story, use the fire department report found in Ch. 18, Ex. 6, p. 492 of RFTM, 10th Edition. Please send your assignment to omars@msu.edu.
For this exercise, the city and fire department in question are those of East Lansing.
Also, military time is used in this report, which you'll have to
translate into regular time. Use the primer on military time shown above.
Also, please keep working on your first out-of-class story rewrite.
Your deadline for that is still no later than 9 a.m. Friday, via
email to omars@msu.edu. Please follow all directions as highlighted in
previous blog posts and the syllabus, and good luck!
Plus, if you haven't yet, please review the following blog posts with the Out-Of-Class #1 slugs on' em. It'll do ya good.
Class will resume Tuesday, Oct. 29 at 9:10 a.m. Om the mean time, have a nice week, ev'ry buddy!
Monday, October 21, 2013
JRN 200: Your Multimedia Homework
Sorry, folks. We have lots to do. So here we go:
First, we need to read Ch. 14 (p. 353-373) in Reporting For The Media, 10th Edition, by Tuesday, Oct. 29. (For anyone winging it by using a ninth or earlier edition of RFTM, this chapter does not appear at all in any previous editions whatsoever. So please make sure you have the 10th edition, or borrow a copy to get this chapter.)
Also, we need to read two downloads: The Reporters' Guide To Multimedia Proficiency (p. 1-42), and Journalism 2.0 (p. 1-128), also by Tuesday, Oct. 29.
You can get free printable downloads of each right here by clicking on the following links: first, here is The Reporters' Guide To Multimedia Proficiency. Next, here is Journalism 2.0.
Plus, please set up FREE accounts at YouTube.com, blogger.com and twitter.com for use in class by no later than Tuesday, Oct. 29. You may use personal social media accounts, but please be aware that if you do, I will see your personal content and your friends will see your class content. If this is a problem, please set up class-only accounts as needed.
Also, please make sure these accounts are set so they are open to the public.
And, please make sure that you have some sort of video recording device (for many of you, a recent-model smart phone should suffice) and an editing program on a desktop or laptop (iMovie or some comparable program is A-OK) that is ready to be used as soon as Tuesday, Oct. 29.
Is something afoot? You bet.
For our practice exercises, we will be moving away from traditional writing for print, and moving toward story-telling by video, via social media and using a more multi-dimensional Web format. I think the change of pace will be fun for this class, so don't worry and do get ready to try some new stuff.
Meanwhile, we will also continue working on traditionally-formatted (written) out-of-class stories, using the lessons we've learned up to now.
First, we need to read Ch. 14 (p. 353-373) in Reporting For The Media, 10th Edition, by Tuesday, Oct. 29. (For anyone winging it by using a ninth or earlier edition of RFTM, this chapter does not appear at all in any previous editions whatsoever. So please make sure you have the 10th edition, or borrow a copy to get this chapter.)
Also, we need to read two downloads: The Reporters' Guide To Multimedia Proficiency (p. 1-42), and Journalism 2.0 (p. 1-128), also by Tuesday, Oct. 29.
You can get free printable downloads of each right here by clicking on the following links: first, here is The Reporters' Guide To Multimedia Proficiency. Next, here is Journalism 2.0.
Plus, please set up FREE accounts at YouTube.com, blogger.com and twitter.com for use in class by no later than Tuesday, Oct. 29. You may use personal social media accounts, but please be aware that if you do, I will see your personal content and your friends will see your class content. If this is a problem, please set up class-only accounts as needed.
Also, please make sure these accounts are set so they are open to the public.
And, please make sure that you have some sort of video recording device (for many of you, a recent-model smart phone should suffice) and an editing program on a desktop or laptop (iMovie or some comparable program is A-OK) that is ready to be used as soon as Tuesday, Oct. 29.
Is something afoot? You bet.
For our practice exercises, we will be moving away from traditional writing for print, and moving toward story-telling by video, via social media and using a more multi-dimensional Web format. I think the change of pace will be fun for this class, so don't worry and do get ready to try some new stuff.
Meanwhile, we will also continue working on traditionally-formatted (written) out-of-class stories, using the lessons we've learned up to now.
Friday, October 18, 2013
911: Overall
Many of us did a very nice job with structure, but we struggled with the use of allegedly and proper attribution.
Until someone is convicted in court, any criminal or lawsuit-related actions are alleged. We need to liberally use alleged when referring to actions that are illegal, and we need to cite from where we are getting that allegation.
For example, if we write, Omar killed a squirrel, for libel purposes we take responsibility for claiming I killed a squirrel. We are saying it definitely happened and we can prove it.
It doesn't help that much if we say, Omar allegedly killed a squirrel, because if that's all we wrote, from a libel standpoint we are making the claim ourselves, without further evidence.
We need to attribute the allegation, not just for libel purposes but also so the audience sees from whom we're getting that from, and how we know that. The correct way would be, Omar allegedly killed a squirrel, police said.
Also, in this exercise it wasn't enough to say the dispatcher said or the girl said. That's because we didn't speak with them; we only know what they said because of the 911 call transcript.
If we just said, the girl said, we leave the impression with the reader that is what the girl told us. That's not correct, though. We only know because that's what she said in the transcript. So, proper attribution would be, the girl said, according to the 911 call transcript.
And yes, we need to be consistent in attributing like that, because the reader doesn't know if we used a mix of transcript-related quotes and our own interviews in putting together the story. Proper attribution makes that clear.
Until someone is convicted in court, any criminal or lawsuit-related actions are alleged. We need to liberally use alleged when referring to actions that are illegal, and we need to cite from where we are getting that allegation.
For example, if we write, Omar killed a squirrel, for libel purposes we take responsibility for claiming I killed a squirrel. We are saying it definitely happened and we can prove it.
It doesn't help that much if we say, Omar allegedly killed a squirrel, because if that's all we wrote, from a libel standpoint we are making the claim ourselves, without further evidence.
We need to attribute the allegation, not just for libel purposes but also so the audience sees from whom we're getting that from, and how we know that. The correct way would be, Omar allegedly killed a squirrel, police said.
Also, in this exercise it wasn't enough to say the dispatcher said or the girl said. That's because we didn't speak with them; we only know what they said because of the 911 call transcript.
If we just said, the girl said, we leave the impression with the reader that is what the girl told us. That's not correct, though. We only know because that's what she said in the transcript. So, proper attribution would be, the girl said, according to the 911 call transcript.
And yes, we need to be consistent in attributing like that, because the reader doesn't know if we used a mix of transcript-related quotes and our own interviews in putting together the story. Proper attribution makes that clear.
911: Typical Examples ...
... of our work on this one. Again, nice job with structure, but we could do a lot better with attribution and the use of allegedly. Here are a couple of examples, with my comments in BOLD CAPS:
******
... and ...
East Lansing resident Andrew
Caspinwall was arrested today on a rape charge after a 6-year-old called 911
during the ALLEGED attack.
The
girl’s mother was the victim and the girl called the police after Caspinwall ALLEGEDLY entered their home.
“My
mommy needs help,” the girl told the dispatcher. ACCORDING TO A TRANSCRIPT OF THE 911 CALL. ATTRIBUTE! “Somebody’s hurting my mommy.”
The
girl went on to tell the dispatcher where she lived and that the attacker had ALLEGEDLY come through the back door
and hit her mommy, OUTSIDE OF QUOTES, WE
CAN SAY MOTHER INSTEAD OF THE MORE CONVERSTIONAL MOMMY according to the
call transcript.
She
then locked herself in her parent’s PARENTS’,
STED PARENT’S room upstairs upon the request of the dispatcher COMMA HERE according to the call
transcript.
The
dispatcher then asked if the attacker had a gun and the girl responded saying,
“No. A knife,” according to the call
transcript.
After
that, the dispatcher stayed on the phone and calmed the girl down until the
police arrived, according to the call transcript.
The
victim was taken to the hospital when the police arrived, according to the
transcript.
Caspinwall
is currently being held in the county jail with a bail set at $250,000.
******
... and ...
A
man was arrested in East Lansing Thursday when a 6-year-old girl reported his ALLEGED attack on her mother to a 911
operator.
Twenty-four-year-old Andrew
Caspinwall of 416 Wilson Ave. is being held in the Ingham County Jail on a charge
of rape. His bail is set at $250,000.
According to the transcript of the
6-year-old’s 911 call, Caspinwall was ALLEGEDLY
armed with a knife when he entered the back door of her home and hit her mother.
The young girl told the dispatcher
that, unbeknownst to Caspinwall, she hid upstairs under her parents’ bed, where
she could hear her mother crying as the ALLEGED
assault occurred. ACCORDING TO THE
TRANSCRIPT. ATTRIBUTE!
The dispatcher proceeded to tell the
6-year-old to lock the bedroom door, and that three police cars were coming to
help her mother. ACCORDING TO THE
TRANSCRIPT. ATTRIBUTE!
Police arrived shortly after and
arranged to take the young girl’s mother to the hospital, the call transcript
revealed. SAID, STED REVEALED The
girl’s father was also on his way after the police managed to locate him.
Once Caspinwall was caught and
arrested, the 911 dispatcher instructed the 6-year-old girl to unlock the
bedroom door and go downstairs to speak with the authorities. ACCORDING TO THE TRANSCRIPT. ATTRIBUTE!
911: Identification
Probably the hardest thing about this exercise for you was identification. We had competing interests at work here.
First, you should have been operating under the general journalistic premise that we do NOT name rape victims in almost all cases.
And on this point, some of us DID name the victim by name.
Earlier in this semester, we discussed when and when not to name victims in stories. In most cases we DO name victims, but a notable exception in American journalism regarded the names of rape victims.
In general, the current rule of thumb is that in weighing the benefit to society in knowing who exactly was victimized versus the harm that would come in terms of stigma to the victim, we do not name rape victims expect in rare circumstances, like a victim wanting to intentionally put a name and face to a victim to promote greater societal understanding, or a rape victim whose alleged attacker wasn't convicted in criminal court but who is facing a lawsuit for money in civil court.
This wasn't one of those times.
Then, there is the concern of making a virtual identification; that is, giving so much other information that it is easy for anybody to identify the victim.
Some of us named the victim's daughter. A daughter only has one mother, right? So that would be real easy to narrow down who the victim was if we gave the girl's name.
Also, some of us listed the exact home address where the crime took place. Only one family lives in a home, right? Again, we took a huge step in virtually identifying the victim.
Even though an exact address would expose the victim, don't readers still deserve to know where a crime took place? I mean, a story is much more relevant if it happened on your street or in your neighborhood than if it didn't. Some location is necessary to establish relevance.
A couple of us handled it in a smart way: you simply said the incident happened on Wilson Avenue. No street address included. That gave readers enough information to better set proximity, without giving away the victim's home and creating a virtual identification.
Now, what about the suspect's name? I think only under the rarest of cases would you not name the suspect. He's central to the story. As a society we need to know who among us is considered dangerous, and who among us is being locked up like a zoo animal by our authorities.
The only time in my whole journalism career when I didn't name a suspect was in a case around 1992 -- really early in my professional career -- where I was covering the trial of a teen accused of raping his own mother.
My editors went back-and-forth on how to handle it before deciding they wouldn't name the victim or the suspect, because naming the latter would identify the former. And there was a big ol' editor's note added ahead of my lede to explain their reasoning.
So exceptions are rare. Either the circumstances are amazingly twisted and unique or the suspects are juveniles and a particular media organization has rules about naming kids.
Again, this ain't one of 'em.
I also thought important to the story was noting that Caspinwall was a neighbor of the victim. Readers need to know if this crime was totally random or if there was some sort of link between the victim and attacker. Readers have more reason to worry if someone is willy-nilly breaking into random homes, as opposed to attacking a neighbor, right?
But only a few of us you noted the link.
Note I say Caspinwall was a neighbor, not her direct neighbor. A neighbor -- or even better, a nearby neighbor -- could be somebody next door or down the street, right? So using neighbor in the generic doesn't necessarily narrow the possible victim pool to a single house or two.
Next, is the suspect's home address needed? I think some identification of where he lives is noteworthy. Wouldn't readers really want to know if an alleged rapist and home invader lived by them? Wouldn't you?
Also, there was something else that I think we owed the reader: an explanation of why you weren't naming the girl or listing her exact address.
Even though you're following journalistic rules, your readers probably don't know those rules and may simply be wondering, why the hell aren't there any names or exact addresses in this story? It wouldn't have hurt to have a simple background sentence somewhere in the story, like this:
The names of the girl and victim and the exact address where the crime occurred is being withheld to protect the identity of the victim.
That way, you are being transparent with readers about why they're not getting the level of information that other non-rape stories would include. A couple of us did do something along those lines.
Admittedly, this was a confusing exercise. We had many different factors tugging at us. It's really a tough situation for a young reporter to find himself or herself in. In a real-world setting, we'd definitely want to bring an editor in the loop to help make the best judgments that give the readers the most information while at the same time minimizing harm to the victim.
But here, I wanted to test your judgment and see how you responded. And I figured you'd appreciate the lesson much more if we did it this way, as opposed to just lecturing about it.
And in all fairness to you, how you handled these circumstances were a smaller-than-usual part of your assignment grade here. I gave you a break because I didn't want you to suffer a penalty on this one, but I did want you to have to think about it before we discussed it now.
Finally, this is how I would have handled it: I WOULD NOT name the victim or the girl. I WOULD name the suspect and even use HIS home address. I'd say the victim lived nearby, but I wouldn't specifically say they were direct neighbors.
That way, readers know who did this (and know exactly where the sicko lived) and the general area where the crime occurred and that it wasn't a random crime, while at the same time limiting the ability to identify who the victim was.
This is the sort of stuff you'll have to think about all the time in deciding what is the best way to tell your story.
First, you should have been operating under the general journalistic premise that we do NOT name rape victims in almost all cases.
And on this point, some of us DID name the victim by name.
Earlier in this semester, we discussed when and when not to name victims in stories. In most cases we DO name victims, but a notable exception in American journalism regarded the names of rape victims.
In general, the current rule of thumb is that in weighing the benefit to society in knowing who exactly was victimized versus the harm that would come in terms of stigma to the victim, we do not name rape victims expect in rare circumstances, like a victim wanting to intentionally put a name and face to a victim to promote greater societal understanding, or a rape victim whose alleged attacker wasn't convicted in criminal court but who is facing a lawsuit for money in civil court.
This wasn't one of those times.
Then, there is the concern of making a virtual identification; that is, giving so much other information that it is easy for anybody to identify the victim.
Some of us named the victim's daughter. A daughter only has one mother, right? So that would be real easy to narrow down who the victim was if we gave the girl's name.
Also, some of us listed the exact home address where the crime took place. Only one family lives in a home, right? Again, we took a huge step in virtually identifying the victim.
Even though an exact address would expose the victim, don't readers still deserve to know where a crime took place? I mean, a story is much more relevant if it happened on your street or in your neighborhood than if it didn't. Some location is necessary to establish relevance.
A couple of us handled it in a smart way: you simply said the incident happened on Wilson Avenue. No street address included. That gave readers enough information to better set proximity, without giving away the victim's home and creating a virtual identification.
Now, what about the suspect's name? I think only under the rarest of cases would you not name the suspect. He's central to the story. As a society we need to know who among us is considered dangerous, and who among us is being locked up like a zoo animal by our authorities.
The only time in my whole journalism career when I didn't name a suspect was in a case around 1992 -- really early in my professional career -- where I was covering the trial of a teen accused of raping his own mother.
My editors went back-and-forth on how to handle it before deciding they wouldn't name the victim or the suspect, because naming the latter would identify the former. And there was a big ol' editor's note added ahead of my lede to explain their reasoning.
So exceptions are rare. Either the circumstances are amazingly twisted and unique or the suspects are juveniles and a particular media organization has rules about naming kids.
Again, this ain't one of 'em.
I also thought important to the story was noting that Caspinwall was a neighbor of the victim. Readers need to know if this crime was totally random or if there was some sort of link between the victim and attacker. Readers have more reason to worry if someone is willy-nilly breaking into random homes, as opposed to attacking a neighbor, right?
But only a few of us you noted the link.
Note I say Caspinwall was a neighbor, not her direct neighbor. A neighbor -- or even better, a nearby neighbor -- could be somebody next door or down the street, right? So using neighbor in the generic doesn't necessarily narrow the possible victim pool to a single house or two.
Next, is the suspect's home address needed? I think some identification of where he lives is noteworthy. Wouldn't readers really want to know if an alleged rapist and home invader lived by them? Wouldn't you?
Also, there was something else that I think we owed the reader: an explanation of why you weren't naming the girl or listing her exact address.
Even though you're following journalistic rules, your readers probably don't know those rules and may simply be wondering, why the hell aren't there any names or exact addresses in this story? It wouldn't have hurt to have a simple background sentence somewhere in the story, like this:
The names of the girl and victim and the exact address where the crime occurred is being withheld to protect the identity of the victim.
That way, you are being transparent with readers about why they're not getting the level of information that other non-rape stories would include. A couple of us did do something along those lines.
Admittedly, this was a confusing exercise. We had many different factors tugging at us. It's really a tough situation for a young reporter to find himself or herself in. In a real-world setting, we'd definitely want to bring an editor in the loop to help make the best judgments that give the readers the most information while at the same time minimizing harm to the victim.
But here, I wanted to test your judgment and see how you responded. And I figured you'd appreciate the lesson much more if we did it this way, as opposed to just lecturing about it.
And in all fairness to you, how you handled these circumstances were a smaller-than-usual part of your assignment grade here. I gave you a break because I didn't want you to suffer a penalty on this one, but I did want you to have to think about it before we discussed it now.
Finally, this is how I would have handled it: I WOULD NOT name the victim or the girl. I WOULD name the suspect and even use HIS home address. I'd say the victim lived nearby, but I wouldn't specifically say they were direct neighbors.
That way, readers know who did this (and know exactly where the sicko lived) and the general area where the crime occurred and that it wasn't a random crime, while at the same time limiting the ability to identify who the victim was.
This is the sort of stuff you'll have to think about all the time in deciding what is the best way to tell your story.
911: Allegedly
First, we need to liberally and frequently use alleged and allegedly in our story. Up to now, everything is lleged and nothing has been proven in a court of law. So Andrew Caspinwall is the alleged suspect. Caspinwall allegedly broke into the home. He allegedly wielded a knife. He allegedly raped the victim. We can't really overdose on forms of the word alleged.
Second, there is some confusion on what was alleged here.
Is it alleged that the woman was raped? No. She was raped. Someone broke into her house and raped her. That much was clearly established.
What is alleged is who raped her. A man did, obviously. But it's alleged that it was Andrew Caspinwall.
So you should say Caspinwall allegedly raped the victim. Or the victim was raped, allegedly by Caspinwall. Or that the girl said a man, alleged to be Caspinwall, did this and that.
Is Caspinwall allegedly charged with rape? No. He is charged with rape. That's the name of the charge he's facing. It's a bit confusing in this exercise because the name of the charge and the action he is alleged to have done are the same: rape.
So, let's imagine instead of allegedly raping the woman, Caspinwall stabbed her to death. Caspinwall would be charged with murder, since that's the name of the charge which he will face in court. He's a murder defendant. The charge of murder came because he allegedly stabbed a woman to death.
The action is alleged. The charge is simply the label of the law which he is alleged to have broken.
I know this is confusing. Does this help?
Second, there is some confusion on what was alleged here.
Is it alleged that the woman was raped? No. She was raped. Someone broke into her house and raped her. That much was clearly established.
What is alleged is who raped her. A man did, obviously. But it's alleged that it was Andrew Caspinwall.
So you should say Caspinwall allegedly raped the victim. Or the victim was raped, allegedly by Caspinwall. Or that the girl said a man, alleged to be Caspinwall, did this and that.
Is Caspinwall allegedly charged with rape? No. He is charged with rape. That's the name of the charge he's facing. It's a bit confusing in this exercise because the name of the charge and the action he is alleged to have done are the same: rape.
So, let's imagine instead of allegedly raping the woman, Caspinwall stabbed her to death. Caspinwall would be charged with murder, since that's the name of the charge which he will face in court. He's a murder defendant. The charge of murder came because he allegedly stabbed a woman to death.
The action is alleged. The charge is simply the label of the law which he is alleged to have broken.
I know this is confusing. Does this help?
911: Transparency About Lack Thereof
When one of you decided to leave the little girl's name out of this, you mentioned this in an early attribution:
The girl, whose name will remain anonymous to protect the victim, said ...
You are doing something out of the ordinary (leaving someone's name out) and you are being transparent with your readers (by explaining why).
Good job!
The girl, whose name will remain anonymous to protect the victim, said ...
You are doing something out of the ordinary (leaving someone's name out) and you are being transparent with your readers (by explaining why).
Good job!
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