Do We Still Need A Black Press?

As teaching assistant Katie Beardsley discussed in class the other day, the rise of the Black Press was very much a reaction to the portrayal of African American people in the mainstream media during the early 1800s.By the time of the Civil War, there were 40 newspapers dedicated to serving African American audiences. By 1900, she said, there were more than 600.Today, there are around 200, including the Philadelphia Tribune, which is the oldest continuously...

Kurtis Lee: "We Should All Call Ourselves Multi-platform Journalists."

Kurtis Lee was ready for bed just after midnight on July 20, 2012 when he received a call about a shooting at a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado.Lee, a political reporter for the Denver Post, rushed to the scene and immediately started tweeting details."Twitter is how I get my news," said the 2009 TU journalism grad. "It's how I break news."There were helicopters buzzing overhead and police and medical crews all around. Stunned people stood around...

Should The Sports Anchor Act Like Ron Burgundy?

A Boise sports anchor did his segment (and more) while acting as Ron Burgundy, the fictional character played by Will Ferrell.The video has gone viral.Is this the funniest thing ever, as some people have claimed? Should journalists simply present information and not act like Hollywood characters?Do journalists take themselves too seriously (and that's why this was seen as refreshing)?Does it matter that this was on Hallowe...

Neal Santos: "I Really Want to Celebrate the City."

Neal Santos was a sophomore in college when he realized he wanted to become a photojournalist. He was traveling in the Philippines, shooting pictures and meeting people."I realized the camera could be an excuse to dive into so many different worlds," he said in class yesterday.He returned to Temple and began interning - almost non-stop - until he graduated in 2008. He interned at the Philadelphia Daily News, the Metro, Inquirer, Good Housekeeping...

Should Journalists Celebrate the Violence?

A semi-retired sports journalist from the Washington Post wrote that he has one regret after 40 years of covering football: "not focusing more of my reporting and writing on the absolute brutality of the sport, particularly the painful post-football lives of so many players."While the NFL players settled a lawsuit against the NFL regarding serious injury brought on by game action and many journalists covered that case, journalists still tend to celebrate the violent actions that are common in football, like the massive hit in the video above...

Should Journalists Reveal The Name of The Suicidal Student?

On Sunday, a student barricaded himself in his off-campus home. Police believed him to be suicidal.Because weapons were involved - the student had a gun and fired several rounds, the area surrounding the home was cleared. Students and full-time residents had to leave their homes and were not allowed to return until after 2:00 a.m. Monday morning.The student was taken to a hospital to be checked out. No charges were immediately filed.Should journalists...

Real Life vs. Fiction. Journalism vs. Marketing.

In a fragmented media world, where everyone has a gazillion options for where to get information/entertainment/whatever, journalists are desperate to draw in an audience.A local news anchor tweeted the note above, referencing Breaking Bad, the popular cable program that sometimes airs during the same time slot as her newscast.Is her correlation to the fictional show in bad taste or smart marketi...

Should Journalists Make The Alleged Bigots' Statements Public?

A pair of local school officials are in the news because they allegedly had text conversations that were racist and sexually charged.When you watch the report above or if you read about the story in most outlets, you will not learn what the two allegedly said beyond the n-word. The transcriptions of the texts have been published in a few less-mainstream outlets.Should news organizations present the full transcripts or should journalists apply moral standards and not allow such language or behavior go publ...

I'm a Hero. News at 11.

A reporter in Phoenix was covering a story about flooding when he and the cameraman stumbled across a woman screaming for help.So the reporter helped her. And the cameraman shot the rescue. Then they aired that on the news.Did the reporter do something heroic and thus become newsworthy? Or is he simply casting himself as a hero by airing his good deed?If you had rescued that person, would you have broadcast ...

Is It Acceptable For a Journalist to Wear a Grape Suit?

A high school student was suspended after running onto a football field during a game - while wearing a banana costume.A journalist wore a grape suit costume when reporting the story.Is the reporter out of line? Or is he just mocking the severity of the young man's punishme...

Would You Do This For Your Job?

This is the news crew at KUTV, the CBS affiliate in Salt Lake City, Utah.Is this a good promo for their newscasts? Or is this not how good journalists should behave/be represented?Does it diminish their credibility or make you want to watch them even mo...

Seriously: Is Miley Cyrus Newsworthy?

So, Miley Cyrus performed at MTV's Video Music Awards and then the Internet went wild. During her performance, there were more than 300,000 tweets per minute about her. In total, there were more than 4.5 million mentions of her on twitter (and counting).Ever since the show was aired, people have been opining about her actions on websites, on television, on the radio, in newspapers and everywhere else.Because there was such a strong reaction, does...

Dan Gross: "You Should All Be Communicating Now."

When Dan Gross was at Lower Merion High School, he was into punk music. He went to shows and spoke to musicians. He eventually started his own zine that, somehow, he distributed around the country.It was the music that drove him, not journalism."I didn't grow up with a desire to do this," said Dan, who recently left the Philadelphia Daily News after 14 years there. "It just happened."After high school, he continued making zines while he was an English...

Should Journalism Outlets Show The Gruesome Injury?

Louisville basketball player Kevin Ware suffered a severe broken leg last week during a game against Duke in the NCAA tournament. The video and images are fairly gruesome.Should news outlets show the video or run the imag...

Councilman Bill Greenlee: "Sometimes I think, 'I Could Be Covering the World Series Instead of Being at City Hall Getting Yelled At.'"

Philadelphia at-large city councilman Bill Greenlee was born, raised and still lives in Fairmount.Before entering politics, he studied journalism at Temple in the 1970's. He had dreams of being a sportswriter. While still in college, however, he began volunteering for David Cohen's campaign for city council. He wound up working for councilman Cohen for the next 26 years. After Cohen passed away in 2005, Greenlee won a special election to fill Cohen's...

Should Journalists Force The Issue?

Philadelphia magazine's new issue cover story is about the difficulties of being white in Philadelphia. It is full of bigotry and ignorance and it is overall a really poor attempt at journalism (even Philly mag staffers can't defend the piece).Let's move beyond that. Let's focus on the bigger question here: should journalists present major topics for discussion, and if so, how?The reality is that the story thrusts race and racism into the spotlight....

Innovation in Advertising or Danger to Journalism?

As traditional advertising becomes less and less popular (for whatever reason), media organizations are experimenting with other forms of revenue generation, such as "sponsored content."Sponsored content, such as this one for the upcoming Playstation 4, looks very similar to the usual editorial content. It is often labeled as sponsored content - this one says the story of from Sony Entertainment Network, a BuzzFeed Partner.Is there a problem with...

Cherri Gregg: "People don't know what they don't know until we tell them."

When Cherri Gregg was a little kid, she always wanted to know what was going on before anyone else. And she was always going around telling people about what she discovered."I always dreamed of being a reporter," she said yesterday in class.She got sidetracked though. After studying communications at Boston University, she earned her law degree from Howard University. Then she practiced intellectual property litigation for eight years. And she married...

Should The Media Make Deals With The Government?

The American military has been operating a secret base for drone aircrafts in Saudi Arabia, the New York Times revealed last week.It turns out that some members of the American media, including the Times, knew about the base for about a year, and they knew about the operations taking place there because they had obtained copies of the document approving activities at the base. According to the Washington Post, the document concludes "the...

The Reporter And The Random Person: Is This Professional?

A Florida reporter was doing a live shot/preview package in New Orleans the day before the Super Bowl when a random person approached her and began talking.Did the reporter handle this situation proper...

Recent Journo Grads Are Making Decent Money (And Other Odd Things You Learn On The Internet).

Oh, Internet. You'd think by now we'd know how to use you properly.Then again, maybe there are new rules and the old conventions are obsolete. Who knows?• The Lansing State Journal invited followers to "share" an image of a fatal car crash on facebook as a way of expressing condolences to the families of victims. Is there anything wrong with that?• An activist group launched a campaign - online and on facebook - to save the two main daily newspapers...

Carrying A Semi-Automatic Rifle in Virginia Is Legal. So Is This A Story?

A man walked into a grocery store in Virginia over the weekend and he was carrying an AR-15 rifle, like the one above. A few people called the police, who were dispatched to the scene.The police spoke to the man but he was not arrested. He was not breaking any laws - he legally owns the gun and it was not concealed.Is this a news story?A few outlets covered the episode. One news organization chose not to. What would you have do...

Is There Such A Thing As Proper Behavior For Journalists?

Friday, apparently, was national opposite day. So the morning crew at Colorado Springs' local Fox affiliate had their anchors imitating each other.This is a compilation of the show, put together by the station.Is this proper behavior for journalists? Is there such a thing as proper behavior for journalis...

If There Is Crazy Video, Does That Mean It's News?

There was a brawl in Old City last weekend when the bars closed. The video above was captured by a random person.Is this news?Several news outlets did stories about the brawl, including 6ABC, CBS3, the Daily News and Fox29.What qualifies this as news? Is it a matter of having the dramatic video? Is it because people will see the raw video and talk about it? Is this an unusual event, and therefore newsworthy?Or is this a non-sto...