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 position. He was re-elected in 2007 and 2011.

"Sometimes I think, 'I could be covering the World Series instead of being at City Hall getting yelled at,'" Greenlee said with a laugh.

He loves his job, he added, especially helping people who need help the most. He's worked on legislation to ensure people's homes are not stolen from them (which was surprisingly easy). He crafted a bill that said victims of domestic violence could not lose their jobs because of missed time due to the violence. And his most recent accomplishment was getting an earned sick pay bill through council (it now waits for the mayor's reaction).

"The actions of city council affect people on a more day-to-day basis than that of Congress or the Senate," Greenlee stated.

But there tends to be very little coverage of city council, he said. The newspapers pay attention to the mayor and political controversy (rather than the substance of bills). Television almost never covers council.

"There are times when I get frustrated," Greenlee admitted.

Much of this is determined by how we communicate these days. There are more ways for people to get information now, so there is greater competition for viewers. Less-intriguing news - like council actions, gets bypassed.

When Greenlee has stories he really wants covered, he'll hold a press conference or reach out to specific journalists who he knows would be interested. If stories pertain to specific audiences or specific neighborhoods, he taps into those niche outlets like the Northeast Times or WURD.

When he was a college journalism student, he was instructed to read everything because it's important for all journalists to have at least a little knowledge about everything.

"I'm disappointed by how little young people know about local government," he said about modern youth.

You should be interested and engaged, he said.

What did you think of the councilman and his ideas?

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. Is that a good or bad thing?

Are they ultimately doing a good thing by forcing the discussion, or is this a dangerous and divisive act that could have greater ramifications (beyond people dropping their Philly mag subscriptions)?

There is not one incident that is the catalyst to tell their story. Rather, they say that race and racism is an underlying issue that exists in Philadelphia as it has for half a century.

What positives can come out of this, if any?

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 advertisements looking like editorial content?

Or is this a brilliant new way for media organizations to raise cash?

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 a fellow lawyer, whom she met on her first day of law school.

"I didn't like it," Cherri said of being an attorney. "I didn't love it with the same passion that my husband did."

So she did some research on graduate schools and wound up at Temple. Immediately, she became involved with TUTV and she reported and anchored for Temple Update. She freelanced video packages for a Turkish news organization. She kicked ass in her classes, she developed contacts and sources and she built her demo tape.

"It's on you," she said. "You can't blame your professors if you don't succeed."

Halfway through her graduate studies at Temple, Cherri began working as a part-time reporter at KYW Newsradio. Her immediate supervisor is a Temple grad, as is the news director and most of the reporters (some of whom also teach at Temple). After completing her graduate program, Cherri went full-time at the station.

Last month, she covered the inauguration of Barack Obama. She watched Beyonce lip-sync from up close. She reports, writes, tweets, shoots images, packages video and creates podcasts while covering multiple stories every day.

"There's no chilling," she said. "It is fast-paced."

But she loves it.

"We get to be thought leaders," Cherri said. "People don't know what they don't know until we tell them."

Here are a few other things that stood out for me:

• Her reason for going into law is the same as why she became a journalist: "I want to give voice to people who can't speak for themselves."
• She thinks she'll go to television news at some point but she knows she has much to learn still.
• She believes in making strategies, figuring out what she needs to do to get to where she wants to be.
• She thinks you should make a strategy too.
• As a journalist, you have to be comfortable around all kinds of people.
• Be nice to everybody. Who knows where people will wind up, and you don't want to burn bridges.

What stood out for you?

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 United States can lawfully kill one of its own citizens overseas if it determines that the person is a 'senior, operational leader' of al-Qaeda or one of its affiliates and poses an imminent threat."

The media had an informal agreement with the government not to reveal the details.

Should the Washington Post, New York Times and other news organizations have revealed the information when they first learned about it?

Is there a danger/problem with the media making deals with the government?

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?

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