Am I Bothering You? Am I Bothering You? Am I Bothering You? Am I Bothering You?

A Philadelphia sports reporter went to Dulles International Airport to find former Eagles wide receiver DeSean Jackson, who was arriving to meet with the Redskins about a possible job. See the story that aired here.

The reporter repeatedly called the "interview" an exclusive, even though Jackson seems to be politely trying to tell the reporter to go away.

Instead, however, the reporter continues to ask questions.

Is this good journalism? 

First, did the journalist do a good job of trying to extract information from the player? Just because the player seems annoyed, should the journalist have stopped asking questions?

Second, did the journalist present the information in a proper manner? 

If You Disagree With Your Employer, Should You Quit So Publicly?

An American news anchor at RT (formerly known as Russia Today), announced that she was quitting her position as a protest against the Russian government, which subsidizes the network.

First of all, should she have quit? Was that the best decision if she did not agree with the agenda of her company?

Second, did she have to make her resignation during an actual broadcast? Was that grandstanding a little bit or was she just using her position to denounce the network and Russian government?

FYI: here is RT's response.

Can You Say That On Television? Should You?

After three teenagers were shot and killed in the Juniata section of the city in 2012, Mayor Michael Nutter was asked for a reaction. His comments are in the video above.

Is it acceptable to air his comments without bleeping?

Legally, it is fine for print. Ethically, would you print such a comment from a prominent figure? Or does his prominence make the quote all the more powerful?

Would you post the video on the online site of a news outlet?

What Should The Journalist Do After Realizing He Massively Messed Up?

Clearly, there is no journalism ethics question here. This entertainment reporter just plain messed up. Badly.

Still, we can learn from a situation like this.

What are the takeaways? How do we ensure that nothing like this ever happens again? How should the journalist have responded once Samuel L. Jackson began his takedown?

Should Journalists Predict the Future?

Thoughts?

What Do You Do When You Spot a Bear?

A reporter in Rhode Island worked on a story about a bear sighting in their viewing area. Rather than simply provide the information about the bear, the reporter learned what you should do if you happen across a bear.

Is the information she provides good and useful? Or is she making a mockery of the situation?

Can a Journalist Also Do Promotion?

A news anchor in Ohio posted a series of videos about what happens during commercial breaks in newscasts.

They are meant to be amusing, I believe, and at times they are.

Should a journalist be creating humorous videos about the news team? Is this good promotion for the station or is it stepping over the line from journalist to entertainer?

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 operated black newspaper in the country. And there are numerous websites that seek to tell the stories of African American people, as well as inform that community.

In 2013 - 186 years after the founding of the first black newspaper, Freedom’s Journal - do we still need a Black Press?

Do the mainstream media still treat non-white folks differently? Is there ignorance that remains, such as the unfortunate Vogue cover with Lebron James that recalled a 1917 military recruiting poster?

Or was the symbolism of the above image an honest mistake?

In the Obama-era, is it anachronistic to have news outlets that break down audiences by race or ethnicity?

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 with blood all over them, their shirts ripped open. Twelve people had been killed by a lone gunman and 71 others were shot.

"You're in the moment and the adrenaline kicks in," Kurtis said.

The next print edition of the newspaper wouldn't hit the streets for more than 30 hours. The Internet was the way to get information to people as quickly as possible. Kurtis recorded interviews and typed notes on his Blackberry, later dictating information to a rewrite person back at the office. Information was posted as quickly as it came in.

He was on scene from about 12:30 am until 8 pm - meaning he did not sleep for two full days.

"I saw so much grief and violence," he said, "that it was almost like I was in the theater that day."

Many of his colleagues sought counseling after witnessing the horror and some are still dealing with issues today.

For their coverage of the tragedy, the staff at the Denver Post won the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News Reporting.

"It was bittersweet," Kurtis said, and then he recalled what a friend told him: "You don't celebrate the incident. You celebrate the journalism."

Here are a few other things that stood out to me from his visit to class yesterday:

• He's from Colorado and he came to Temple because of the journalism program and the diversity of the student body.
• After he graduated, he applied for numerous jobs and suffered six months of rejection.
• He networked at events, like the National Association of Black Journalists convention and the Online News Association conference.
• He finally landed an internship with PBS Newshour, which later became his first real journalism job - writing stories for the Newshour website.
• He was one of a handful of people - on a staff of more than 30 - who knew how to use Final Cut Pro. That made him valuable.
• "We should all call ourselves multi-platform journalists," Kurtis said. "You're not going to survive as a single-skilled journalist."
• When he began covering politics for the Denver Post, he also started a web video show. And he sold ads to sponsor the shows.
• He keeps a DSLR camera in the trunk of his car in case news happens.

• When the movie theater shooting occurred, it was all hands on deck. Even the Broncos beat reporter arrived on scene to interview victims.
• You try to be as sensitive as you can while doing the job of journalism. "You want to break news," he said. "If we're not getting it first, it's because we're trying to get as accurate information as possible."
• He and other Post staffers were sent to Newtown, Connecticut last December to assist a sister news organization that had to report on the mass shooting there.

• He's had a few job offers but he wants to cover politics, so he's holding out for a good fit.
• He continues to cover the statehouse, where he is the junior reporter working alongside a veteran journalist with a huge pool of sources.
• "I've only been doing this a few years," Kurtis said. "I still have a lot to learn."

What stood out for you?

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 Halloween?

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 (which won an ESPY and was seemingly on permanent loop for a while).

Should journalists govern their enthusiasm with episodes like this? Or should we show the clip over and over again, as that is what fans love?

Do we have an obligation to entertain or should we be cautioning people that for every massive tackle, there is someone being tackled?

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 publish or air the student's name?

Do the people have a right to know? Shouldn't we know who among us has a weapon and has threatened to use it? Shouldn't we know who caused dozens of area people to be scared and discomforted?

Or should we err on the side of caution? The young man, apparently, is unstable. His was a personal situation and we could further traumatize him. And there is not a huge value in the public knowing after the fact.

What would you do?

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 marketing?

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 public?

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 it?

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 punishment?

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 more?

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 images?

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 in Philadelphia.

• A teacher in Colorado was suspended after she tweeted topless images of herself to Diplo. Philly.com ran the images on their website. Should Philly.com have published the images?

• There were 24.1 million tweets about the Super Bowl. Only 5.5 million of them were about Beyonce's halftime performance.

• AOL did a story about Penn State's hockey team. And AOL added the words "Jerry Sandusky" to the story URL. Some folks argued that was a blatant attempt at building better search engine optimization for the story. Is there anything wrong with that, if that was the case (which they deny)?

• A report says that 2012 college grads with full-time jobs in journalism had an average starting salary of more than $40,000 per year. This dude adds context to the claim.

Got any thoughts about any of this?

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-story?