How About A Little News Before Your Pop Idol?

EVEN THE BBC NEWS is having trouble retaining an audience these days. And to solve the riddle of declining viewership, the chairman of the BBC Trust is mandating changes to appease those who are too impatient to watch the full news programs. A 90-second news update will precede primetime programming in Great Britain.

"BBC news and current affairs must be made more accessible to 'low-approving' viewers," The Times of London wrote, paraphrasing the chairman.

It seems that Britain has the same issues as America, where 27 percent of the population under 30 gets NO NEWS AT ALL.

The most interesting thing about the Times article, in my opinion, is the end where they list the purposes of the BBC:

• To sustain citizenship and civil society
• Promote education and learning
• Stimulate creativity and cultural excellence
• Represent the UK, its nations, regions and communities
• Bring the UK to the world and the world to the UK
• Demonstrate the benefit of new communications technologies

It sounds so noble and altruistic. Do you think journalism in the United States lives up to such standards?

Is presenting 90-second news before regular programming "dumbing down" the news or is it a way of forcing the public to be educated?

Are Journalists Newsworthy?

CBS3 ANCHOR ALYCIA LANE allegedly punched a cop in NYC and was arrested.

The blogs and newspapers are going crazy - Lane has been a regular in the gossip columns ever since she allegedly sent photos of herself in a bikini to ESPN anchor Rich Eisen.

So the arrest story is making news in Philly. But CB3 hasn't acknowledged the arrest. There has been nothing on their website, and they didn't mention her on today's newscasts.

What should they do? Do they report their own reporter getting busted? Or do they ignore the news to protect one of their own?

A Fake Mag Cover Is The Best of 2007?

DICK CHENEY NEVER posed for Texas Monthly magazine, but this cover was considered to be the best of the year by TIME magazine.










It's a fake, a computer-generated photo illustration - one that mimics a 1973 National Lampoon magazine (right).

Do you have any problems with a fake image being saluted by a major journalistic outlet like TIME?

Do You Really Want To Be A Journalist?

A PBS FILM CREW followed the staff of Penn State University's student newspaper, The Daily Collegian, for one year. The documentary airs on Tuesday on PBS.

Watch it. It sounds fascinating - the students deal with all the various difficulties (and triumphs) of professional journalists.

"The thing I love about newspapers is you have," one student says, "to do the work they give you every day, and every day is a new opportunity to do that."

"My favorite part of school was working at the paper. My senior year, I realized that. Our lives were the Collegian. My best memories are from it."

The paper's editor agrees, "The Collegian was my life."

But the editor, according to today's Philadelphia Inquirer, laments the public perception of journalists, characterized in the film by the paper's full-time adviser as lower than politicians, used-car salesmen and prostitutes.

"It really stings at first," he says. "But you get used to it, this us-against-them mentality on the part of the people you're trying to serve."

Do you really want to be a journalist? Think about why.

We have the greatest jobs in the world. But not everyone appreciates us.

Why do you want to be a journalist?

If You Moo, Don't Go To Sunbury, PA.

A PAIR OF ROAMING cows couldn't be corralled, so cops in Sunbury, PA shot them.

And journalists documented the entire scene. The image above graced the front page of Sunbury's Daily Item. Some people complained.

Should the newspaper have run the image of the animal's death on the front page? Is it the job of the newspaper to highlight what happened, or should the newspaper save the gratuitously graphic image for inside the paper?

He's Back. But Should He Be?

ABOUT EIGHT MONTHS after being removed from the airwaves, Don Imus returned.

“I will never say anything in my lifetime that will make any of these young women at Rutgers regret or feel foolish that they accepted my apology and forgave me,” he said on his new show on WABC yesterday. “And no one else will say anything on my program that will make anyone think I did not deserve a second chance.”

He had been fired from CBS in April after referring to the Rutgers University women's basketball team as “nappy-headed hos.”

Should this guy be back on the air? Does he deserve to have a voice, and therefore influence?

Does Flickr + PhotoShop = Journalism?

THE ASBURY PARK PRESS wrote an article critical of Governor Jon Corzine's financial restructuring plan. And to illustrate the article, the Press created a photo illustration of Corzine peddling items like a common street hood.

Corzine is upset.

"To put it mildly, he was not a happy camper," a Corzine administration official told the New York Times on the condition on anonymity.

His chief of staff wrote a letter to the editor stating: While working with photo editing software may be a useful tool for assembling gag photos or correcting minor imperfections. Using it to manipulate the governor — any governor — into a sinister character is not what we would expect from a responsible media organization.

Did the paper do anything wrong? Didn't they just see an injustice and try to make the public recognize it? Aren't they monitoring government?

Or did they go too far? Was it wrong to fabricate an image?

Would people have read the story if the illustration had not been so eye-catching?