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 that make the situation newsworthy? Is there a legitimate news story about her performance?

Or are the media capitalizing on the public reaction and exploiting it to boost their readership/viewership?

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 major at Temple. He took a copy-editing class taught by an adjunct professor who was a copy editor at the Daily News. The prof told Dan about an editorial assistant gig at the paper and Dan applied. His career was launched while he was in school (though it started with him answering phones and greeting guests).

He began writing stories for the paper and eventually, in 2004, ascended to the position of local gossip columnist. He documented the lives of local athletes, TV reporters and anyone else in the public eye in the region.

"I know some people look down on this kind of reporting," he admitted, "but a lot of the time, it's where the truth comes out."

For example, he reported a "blind item" that said a Philly university president was about to be fired by the board of directors about one month before Temple announced that then-president David Adamany was retiring.

"Who's telling you the realer story?" Dan asked.

After nine years of breaking stories about quibbling news anchors and the post-game partying of professional athletes, Dan took a voluntary buyout this winter.

He's now planning his next career step - likely something to do with strategic communications/crisis management but likely connected to journalism in some fashion.

Here are a few things that stood out to me:

• Dan did not get along very well with the other main gossip columnist in town, another Temple grad.
• People are more polite when cameras are rolling.
• Former Philly news anchor Alycia Lane called Dan on Christmas day to tell him that she was engaged.
• Never reveal your sources if you promise them anonymity.
• Be careful what you email people as when you email stuff, it can become very public, very quickly.
• The angry sorority girl? "I love that girl," Dan said. "I want to be her best friend."
• He never outed people who were not already out, and he never published rumors of affairs until relationships had crumbled.

And here's his advice for aspiring journalists/communicators:

• Create a path for yourself. "Jobs aren't really happening anymore," he said.
• "ESPN is not going to hire someone because they know a lot about football," he said. Rather, you need to prove that you can do the job by having your own blog/website, by interning and freelancing.
• You have to self-promote. "There's no excuse if you are not on twitter talking about what's in the news or even breaking stories about something," he said.
• "You should all be communicating now," he concluded.

What stood out for you?

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?

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?