Notes from southern Maine

I’m writing from southern Maine, where the sun just peeked out for the first time in about 10 days. I’m attending a five-week National Endowment for the Humanities seminar on “The Rule of Law,” which asks questions such as,

• “Why are Americans so reverent of law and the rule of law?
• What does “rule of law” even mean? What does it include or exclude?
• When the LAPD is beating the crap out of Rodney King, are they “doing law”?
• Why is our legal system the particular way it is, rather than some other? (Think of how native Americans conceptualize property rights, as an example of a very different way.)
• What do the Bush administration torture memos and our responses to them tell us about the law, its limits, its aims, and about the sovereign (the people)?
• Can law understand itself outside its own bounds, outside the bounds of a legal reason defined by the practice of law?

These are just a few of the questions we’ve tossed around so far, and we’ve had industrial-strength help sorting out some possible answers. Our discussion leader list has so far included Austin Sarat, Paul Kahn, Jill Frank, Caroline Winterer and Deak Nabers.

I’m really fascinated with Paul Kahn’s observation that the project of law is essentially a project of reform, and that the term suggests a return to some pure ideal, that it must suggest a return to the Constitution for its legitimacy. The law looks to the past for its future, a reflex enshrined in the latin “stare decisis,” or “let the decision stand,” a principle that ensures only incremental change in the law as it strives to conserve itself. In other words, to create new law, as the U.S. Supreme Court inevitably does, it claims to be returning to a constitutional ideal, a return to its pristine, pure past.

Kahn’s critique is that this project occurs entirely within law, as the study of religion operated well into the 18th century. To study Christianity was to practice it, to attempt to reform it. A truly “objective” study of religion, from the outside, did not occur until the late 18th century, when departments of religion were organized in the academy. Anthropology, sociology and psychology also participate in this project, outside the normative reality or construct of religion. In law, however, the project is largely sealed off from the outside, with its project of reform occurring entirely within its bounds. Scholars recommend reforms, as I attempted in my articles, but we are ignored. Law schools perpetuate this insularity by being primarily if not exclusively about vocational training.

In my law articles, as in all law articles, I began with the assumptions that law needed to be reformed, that it could be reformed, that there is or should be some sort of natural progression in the law toward a better future, and that these reforms could occur, would occur within the law, by the law. My articles, in other words, never stepped outside the orb of law to ask larger questions about why the law in this country is the way it is, why it’s not another way, and why we reflexively accept and obey this rule of law, as a constituted whole. In other words, I never stepped outside of law’s practice. The law — our law — is 100% a construct. We made it that way. Why?

The question of torture demands answers outside the system of law. The Bush (Yee/Bybee) memos point to this in how ridiculously they attempt to reconcile torture or “rough interrogation” with adherence to the rule of law. In fact, re-terming it “rough interrogation” is an important move in attempting to bring the practice within the rule of law. Words and terms really matter, particularly in the law, for the law.

If it is in fact torture, it cannot by definition be lawful, at least not by U.S. or international law. It must be something else. When it does become something else, something “legal,” its practice can be juridified (rules can be drawn up to regulate it). Thus result the laughable “legal rules” for rough interrogation, such as how many seconds a captive can be submerged in the water, the lowest temperature that water can be, etc., etc.

The historical precedent for torture as irreconcilable with the rule of law is slavery, which Deak Nabers helped us unpack. How did we make a space within the rule of law for the institution of slavery?

This is just a taste, of course. I teach Media Law, so stepping back and asking some of these larger question is helping me to understand the historical, cultural and legal contexts for some of the weird law we (communication practitioners) face, particularly in the tort areas of libel and privacy intrusion.

This past week marked our midpoint, and today we have a big lobster bake at the University of New England, which is hosting the seminar. So it’s not all books and gab. If the sun can just hang in there a few more hours, I think I’ll take my Frisbee.

Dura lex, sed lex! (The law is tough, but it is the law.)

The view at Biddeford Pool, southern Maine. Surf’s up!

Digital Storytelling and a Brave New World

This post is primarily for my students in Digital Storytelling, but I’m writing with a larger audience in mind. Some of these students rightly pointed out that we haven’t been leveraging the blog much lately, and for that I take full responsibility. I could blame Liberty Tree Week@Berry, but there is always time to blog. Blogito, ergo sum. So here goes . . .

The purpose of this post is to show a sort of highlight reel of the course. Distilling from your final exams, there are several to present. As one student wrote, “I have learned more from this class, even without any tests, than from any other class this semester, and possibly since coming to Berry.” This is gratifying, because the “no test” policy is part of a larger strategy to create a learning (and doing) community somewhat divorced from the academic game (and violence) of grading and scorekeeping. Thanks to you all, this strategy worked, and to everyone’s benefit.

With that in mind, I’m happy to announce that the grades students see on VikingWeb will be exactly those you presented on the final exams. Congratulations to you all.

To the highlights:

• One student wrote that she learned ‘rapid adaptability.’ Great term (and an even better lesson to learn). She also learned to overcome pessimism toward the future of journalism by ‘discovering the art and privilege of truth seeking.’ Awesome. Truth seeking and reporting are  high honors indeed.
• Another wrote that she had learned ‘to be prepared for anything, for everything.’ Technology is a fickle friend — it breaks down and often behaves in unpredictable ways, so be prepared. She also said she learned that ‘layering is a good way to provide a wealth of information,’ and a great way to leverage online. Excellent.
• Just do it! Another with no interest in journalism prior to the course said she was grateful for exposure to ‘a new side of the communication major.’ Those with interest in journalism professionally reported a great experience ‘doing’ it rather than merely researching or discussing it.
• Nearly everyone celebrated our Friday morning discussions, and I would join in that lovefest. I really looked forward to our time together going ‘big picture.’ One student wrote, ‘I feel as if the class was like a therapy session, in that discussing problems with the media industry and the world helped us find possible solutions to the problems as well as encouragement to motivate a change.’
• Perhaps my favorite reflection was from someone who reported learning a great deal about herself. She said she learned she ‘can hold my own, that I can go out there and get the story.’ This is of course music to my ears. Berry students often undersestimate how vastly better prepared they are than many if not most of their counterparts nationally. Cross-trained, converged, adaptable and knowledgeable with so many tools and software, you guys are really muscular — ‘ripped’ in this metaphor.
• This student just mentioned also said she discovered that ‘there are a variety of ways to tell a story . . . that news doesn’t have to be linear,’ but that it can be multidimensional, multi-directional. ‘I learned I would have to get my hands into a variety of media and learn how to tell a story from a number of perspectives.’ She wrote that if she had stuck to her ‘I’m just a writer’ attitude, the learning could not have taken place. This student really got it!

Among the excellent suggestions for future iterations of the course:

• One-on-one mid-term conferences to discuss how a student is progressing and identifying specific things to work on. This is gold. I simply never thought of doing this, and it is so obvious.
• More leveraging of the blog, which several of you really liked. This continues the conversation from Friday mornings, allows the quieter ones to chime in, and provides us with a record of our discussions. I just dropped the ball on this one, as I said up top.
• More on managing the online content. We focused on developing the content but simply didn’t get to managing it very much. This is a valid criticism, and my response is simply the time issue. We spend about 37 hours together over the course of the semester. Things go wrong, and unanticipated changes must be made. We just flat out ran out of time on put-together. But we are in really good shape. Check the ARC URL in about two weeks, and you should see all of your content and a fairly complete, robust site that you each can use in portfolios and as an example of your work to show potential employers.
• Finally, at least two students reported that more direction would have helped. Yet, other students said the autonomy forced them to get it done, to be resourceful. I loved the fact that you all overcame, that you each learned what you needed to learn to produce quality stories, which you clearly did. The proof is always in the pudding.

Based on the products of your work and the comments in your reflections, excerpted here, the course was a phenomenal success. And we served a good cause with urgent need in the process. How cool is that?

The Lost Gutenbergs coming to Berry

Berry College’s Liberty Tree Week@Berry continues on Wednesday, April 29, with “The First Information Revolution: The Lost Gutenbergs,” a presentation on how a limited series of historically accurate, precise Gutenberg Bible reproductions were made.

Tim Yancey, master bookbinder, will present the 50-pound Bibles in various stages of production and explain how the project came about.

Providing historical context for the first information revolution will be Kathy McKee, professor of communication and former associate provost at Berry College.

After Yancey’s presentation, Gene Policinski, executive director of the First Amendment Center in both Washington D.C., and in Nashville, will lead a short discussion about religious expression and freedom of information in America today.

The event begins at 6 p.m. in Berry College’s Science Auditorium. Admission is free, and cultural events credit is being offered.

The presentation is one of several events scheduled as part of the Liberty Tree Initiative program.

Yancey is a partner in Bookbinders Workshop, which launched in February 2007 to build the Lost Gutenbergs. He acquired a single set of the reproduction Gutenberg Bible pages by winning it at auction.

Along with partner Michael L. Chrisman, a world-renowned bookbinder and expert in book restoration and conservation, Yancey began the daunting task of researching and procuring the materials needed to restore the biblical texts and make them available to the public. Yancey and Chrisman then set out to investigate the possibility of purchasing and restoring the rest of the “lost” Gutenberg sets – 120 in all – missing since 1961.

In addition to directing the First Amendment Center, Policinski is a veteran journalist whose career has included work in newspapers, radio, television and online operations. He oversees operations and programs of the Center and is co-author of the weekly syndicated newspaper column, “Inside the First Amendment,” and executive producer and host of the national touring multimedia stage production, “Freedom Sings.”

McKee, who has been at Berry College since 1986, was recently appointed editor of Journalism & Communication Monographs by the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication. McKee also serves on the editorial board of the peer-reviewed journal Mass Communication & Society and has reviewed for the Journal of Advertising and Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media. She is also co-author of two books, Media Ethics: Cases & Moral Reasoning (Allyn Bacon Longman, 2008) and Applied Public Relations: Cases in Stakeholder Relations (Erlbaum, 2005).

The Liberty Tree Initiative is an informal coalition of educators, journalists, librarians, artists and authors with a shared interest in building awareness of the First Amendment through education and information. It was founded in partnership with the American Society of Newspaper Editors, with help and support from the Knight Foundation, the McCormick Foundation and the First Amendment Center at Vanderbilt University.

Expanded details on Liberty Tree Week@Berry >> Berry PR

Liberty Tree Week@Berry writing contest

Liberty Tree Week@Berry Writing Contest: Rebooting America

A call for entries

A sizeable number of Americans are unable to name their basic freedoms, and less than a third can name even the three branches of government. Only about 3% of those surveyed could name “petition” as one of the five freedoms in the First Amendment. Less than 20% named religion, press or assembly. Far more can name all of the “American Idol” judges or many if not most of the characters in “The Simpsons.”

Are we amusing ourselves to civic death?

The Liberty Tree Week@Berry essay contest, “Rebooting America,” invites undergraduate students to submit 1,000-word essays on one of three topics for a competition for cash prizes. First place will win $100; second place will take home $50; third place nets $25.

The contest, which is being administered in cooperation with the Honors Program at Berry, invites submissions on four issues or questions:

• Do news media in America have too much freedom to watchdog government and inform an electorate? Or not enough? Just the right amount? Argue for or against, for example, a strengthening of the Freedom of Information Act, for or against a reporter’s right to protect the confidentiality of an anonymous source, or for or against the impunity of publishing truthful information legally obtained.
• Seemingly every year, Congress introduces legislation to begin the process of amending the Constitution to explicitly prohibit the burning of the national flag. Argue for or against such legislation, discussing why an individual may or may not burn the national flag as “protected speech” under the First Amendment.
• Should the clearing a Campus Carrier rack of the “free” newspaper be considered theft? Argue for or against a proposed Georgia law making school newspaper theft a specific criminal offense.
• Does Berry’s speech code violate the First Amendment to the U.S Constitution? Several court cases nationally in the past 15 years have resulted in the abolishing of university speech codes, in particular hate speech codes. On the other hand, few would endorse hate speech as a responsible exercise of the right to expression. Examine Berry’s speech code and argue for or against its constitutionality.

Submit your entries for judging to Dr. Brian Carroll, electronically to bc AT berry.edu or snail mail to Box 299. Deadline is noon, Friday, May 1.

An ethical dilemma

Wow, it has been far too long since the last posting. This semester has been insane. My latest ‘excuse’ is Liberty Tree Week@Berry, a week of events we’ve planned for Berry here in Communication. It’s swallowed every discretionary moment, and much more. But it will be so worth it.

To our purpose: An ethical dilemma for my class of cross-platform content editors and producers. First, the scenario:

To hyperlink or not to hyperlink, that is the question

You are deciding for the AJC (& Web site), WSB TV (& Web site) or CNN (& Web site). Your audience: AJC – the Southeast; WSB TV – Georgia; CNN – the nation.

What: A new prime minister of Iraq has just been named, a Shiite who had been an outspoken critic of Saddam Hussein and had lived in exile before the American invasion of 2003.

Shortly after taking office in April 2009, he is kidnapped, along with five American journalists, by a rival Sunni faction. Several hours later, the kidnappers say they have hanged the prime minister to protest the execution of Hussein. The kidnappers don’t bother with cell phone video; they provide professional-looking video that shows the prime minister dropping through the platform. The video shows his head snapping off and his body, and head, falling to the floor.

The kidnappers have posted the video on their Web site, and American officials have independently confirmed that it shows what it says it does: the decapitation of the Iraqi official. But American officials are asking American news organizations not to link to the video because, they claim, doing so will help the kidnappers achieve their ends.

No American news site has linked to the site yet, but we, the editors at the AJC, are eager to do so. We in the newsroom meet to discuss our coverage. Our key questions: Will we include a link to the hanging video and, therefore, the kidnappers’ Web site, or not? Controversy is sure to follow whatever decision we make, so the second question: How will we explain our decision?

Remember: We are to maximize the truth, minimize harm and serve the public interest. These are our journalistic imperatives. And we are to conceive of ethical decision-making as a process. It’s not about whether you are a good, moral person or not.

So, for Monday, post a few sentences identifying your decision and justifying and explaining it. Nothing too lengthy.

To help you:

• Poynter’s ethical decision-making tool/step-by-step
• Poynter’s guidelines on linking policy
• Kristof on ethical dilemmas (Word .doc)

Save the whale!

We simply had too little time this morning to unpack or even fully introduce The Long Tail this morning. I will try here to follow up on just one of the key threads this morning and on a lingering question on at least one of the discussion evaluation sheets: What are the implications of a long tail economy on or for the news biz?

I have good news and bad news. Let’s begin with the good news.A diminishing value on “cultural buckets,” as Anderson refers to the hits and the hit makers, means an end to monopolies. This is good for entrepreneurs, for single-voice publishers, for new news organizations just starting out. The era of “one size fits all” is over because the scarcity model (analog) has given way to the abundance model (digital). Consumers (and readers/viewers/interactors) are networked, and this network is choosing more non-hits than hits.

The bad news: Competing on the tail means facing a dizzying, daunting number of competitors. Because of printing, paper, ink and distribution costs, the print news industry is  a “hit”-driven business — it has to be. Remove those costs, which could also be seen as barriers to entry into the marketplace, and you get what we’ve seen online – everyone and his or her mother publishing online (the giant 90% crap model I drew on the whiteboard).

So we end up competing not only against the New York Times, CNN.com and the Rome News-Tribune, hypothetically here, but also with each and every blogger on any one of the topics we’re reporting on, on all the topics we’re reporting on. Imagine the long tail of competition re-configuring for each and every story or multimedia package we publish online, as we compete within a new niche each and every time we publish.

Print is dead, or at least it’s dying. When, therefore, should a print newspaper, facing the worst fiscal year for the industry since the depression,  consider moving all of its assets online? The question is how to replace enough of the revenue streams that have long-supported print fast enough to continue to fund news and editorial operations, and do it while facing new competition on every front. The AJC, to cite just one of hundreds of potential examples, appears to be losing this battle.

Not all newspapers need wholly migrate to online, but many will have to in order to survive. And online needs these newsgathering, original reporting enterprises. A study in 2007 determined that more than 95% of blog content is derivative, leaving less than 5% that includes or delivers original reporting.

I’ve described this ecosystem before as a whale, with the whale metaphorically representing good, old-fashioned, boots-on-the-streets reporting and newsgathering. An entire ecosystem of dependent organisms (advertisers, reporters, editors, ad reps, newspaper delivery people, printing plants, even bloggers) feeds off this whale. The 95% of commentary, media criticism and observations based on original journalism is part of this dependent ecosystem.

The whale is ill, perhaps critically so. It needs to adapt to its new digital ocean. The questions: Can the analog, hit-driven whale evolve fast enough to stay alive, to become digital and keep this whole ecosystem alive? Can it grow a long tail? I await your responses as you look to the long tail for an answer to last week’s question, how to save journalism.

“Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.” — Thomas Jefferson

The future of the news

As news organizations face declining advertising revenues and rising costs, as they reduce the numbers of boots on the ground, of reporters out there gathering the news and watchdogging government, as government grows, we as a democracy face a difficult question: Who’s going to pay for quality journalism? How?

Missing in the Internet age, as empowering as it is for individual voices, is a sustainable online-only revenue model that can pay for the expensive enterprise of reporting, of good journalism that operates on the principle of verification. This is where you come in. I want your ideas, your thoughts, your perspectives on how to save journalism in an era of free digital content. We (the general public) don’t want to have to pay for anything, including copyrighted content, including full-length movies. But content isn’t free, or at least it isn’t produced without cost.

I will first present some models, including two you read about and heard of this week, but then I want to get your proposals. Help save journalism!

• Isaacson’s micropayment model that was discussed on The Daily Show, which would operate something like 99-cent songs on iTunes
• A nonprofit model, like NPR or the St. Petersburg Times newspaper, perhaps even government-subsidized
• DisneyWorld theme park model: An interactor pays a super-aggregator, like Google or TimeWarner, for a pass to ride all the rides, read all the content, for some determined period of time. Berry’s online databases are on this model.
• Start from scratch: Build up an online-only news organization absent the costs of print production and distribution or studios and broadcast equipment. Examples: New West, Politico.com, TalkingPointsMemo and VoiceofSanDiego.org.
• Branded, personality-driven stables of writers, like the HuffingtonPost.com, which draw visitors/interactors
• Your ideas HERE: So let’s apply the wisdom of the crowds here and generate some new ideas. Build off of each other’s ideas. By midnight Sunday.

Storytelling with a purpose

Thank you, Dustin, for another excellent discussion. I couldn’t be happier with our Friday morning sessions so far. They have been rich, and I noted that each and everyone participated this morning. That’s a good discussion.

I would like to build on our froth of engagement by bringing up a few things we simply didn’t have time for this morning, in particular what journalistic storytelling is and for what it should strive.

Kovach and Rosenstiel write on page 188 of The Elements of Journalism, paraphrasing Roy Peter Clark and Chip Scanlan of the Poynter Institute, that “effective newswriting can be found at the intersection of civic clarity, the information citizens need to function, and literary grace, which is the reporter’s storytelling skill set.”

I want to explore this skill set, begin unpacking it, because it is precisely this skill set with which the course endeavors to equip you.

First, what is journalism? In this course, as in many if not most instances, it is storytelling with a purpose. What’s the purpose? “To provide people with information they need to understand the world,” Kovach and Rosenstiel write (page 189). First we have to find the information, then we seek to make it meaningful, relevant and engaging. This is our task with the AIDS Resource Council. We will gather information, then we will make connections, reveal how relevant this information and cause are, and engage site visitors with the plight of AIDs survivors, showing them how they can get involved.

To that end, I point us to the advice on the book’s page 197, that “better storytelling doesn’t begin after you sit down to edit a story on video, write a script, or pull up to an empty screen to write a narrative story. It begins before you ever go out to report. And it involves reporting differently, going to different sources and asking different questions.”

The book suggests a few questions to guide this story-planning process:

• What’s this story really about?
• Who is the audience for this story and what information do these people need to know to make up their own minds about the subject?
• Who has the information?
• What’s the best way to tell this story?

How do we tell our story? Again, Rosenstiel and Kovach have us covered (page 199):

• A profile
• Explanatory piece
• Issues and trend stories
• Investigative
• Narrative
• Descriptive day in the life
• Voices or perspective story
• Visual story

Which of these make the most sense for us working with ARC? Specifically, we have these events coming up:

On Feb. 12 here at Berry, HIV testing will be offered free to anyone at Berry. This will be done 10am-2pm in the Ladd Center. We’re welcome to be there and to interview, photograph, etc., but we need to be sure to ask each and every individual’s permission before proceeding. I will put a consent form together. How are we going to tell this story? Brainstorm.

On March 3, another HIV testing event, from 9am to 1pm.

On March 7, the Latino community is having a health fair in West Rome. This opportunity is golden – two marginalized communities, Latinos and AIDs survivors. Hundreds came to this event in October 2007. How are we going to tell this story?

Finally, on March 10, Women and Girls HIV/AIDs Awareness Day, with free testing and some other events. More on this later.

ARC also delivers and otherwise provides food/groceries on Wednesdays. How do we tell this story, which is part of a larger story about the services ARC provides?

So, for each of these pieces of our overall, what is the story, and how do we tell specifically that story? Which medium or media should we use? I await your brainstorms.

BTW, Sanna’s Swedish for “Lies, damned lies and statistics”:
Löngn, törbannad löngn och stateshic.

And, finally, a pointer to Jon Stewart on CNN’s now-defunct Crossfire making many of the same points you all so aptly made this morning in discussion.

Maximizing truth and minimizing harm

I commend our discussion leaders this morning. I didn’t give Lindsay and Minyoung enough time. I’ll figure out how to make quizzes shorter. And not everyone liked being called on, but I measure a discussion’s success in part by how many voices were heard. By that measure, we had a good morning.

Finally, you see that I am physiologically incapable of shutting up. I try really, really hard. I’ll try harder. A big “thank you” to Lindsay and to Minyoung for being our pioneers, our trailblazers. The first discussion is the hardest one to lead.

So, to extend and expand our discussion here in the limitless online environment, I’d like to pose a few more brain ticklers to which time did not permit attention (our fearless leaders had three pages of questions).

First, I’d like to return us to Minyoung’s chart of how inter-related, interconnected Korea’s media and political networks are. We in the United States face a similar challenge, that of media consolidation. To Minyoung’s chart I’d like to add this one from Columbia Journalism Review (select a media company, like News Corp., and see the mind-numbing list of properties; it explains much in the area of product placement and cross-promotions).

My question: What in your opinion are the greatest threats to American journalism’s obligation to the truth and to fierce independence? What, in other words, are the corrosive influences upsetting or polluting our collective pursuit of truth, of meaning, of sense?

Another follow-up I’d like your thoughts on concerns how journalism sometimes fails in its attempt to report or provide the truth. This was an interesting question from this morning. What, in other words, are the more common ways a fuller account of the truth (or a truth, or some truths) is prevented? Some options here include bias in the news, a failure to provide a complete account (insufficiency), and allowing one voice or one side or perspective to color or even dominate the account (the first callback often shapes the rest of the story; it’s human nature). What do you think?

And the natural follow-up to the follow-up: What can we do as digital storytellers to avoid these sand traps and stay in the fairway?

Finally, our “list,” the centerpiece of our discussion. Kovach and Rosenstiel encourage us to:

1. Never add anything that was not there.
2. Never deceive the audience (or the people formerly known as the audience; as one blogger famously put it, speaking to journos: “We [bloggers] will fact-check your ass!).
3. Be as transparent as possible about your methods and motives.
4. Rely on your own original reporting.
5. Exercise humility (this will protect us against assumption)

We added:

• Maximize truth and minimize harm.
• Act (fiercely) independently. (Briona)
• Do your own work. (Michael Oreskes, The New York Times)

What is missing from this very fine list?

DEADLINE: 6 p.m. Sunday (SuperBowl 43 kickoff!)

What is visual culture?

For my students in Visual Rhetoric, I want us to crowdsource a definition of “visual culture.” To do this, we first must come up with some notions about culture. What is culture?

Here are the groundrules: I want at least one comment from each person in the class, and this comment cannot merely agree with those that preceded it. Of course all are invited to comment more than once, reacting to other students’ definitions.

Secondly, no Googling or outside sourcing of any kind. For this to work, these definitions, like culture itself, should come only from us, out of our heads.

The deadline: Friday morning, 10 a.m., so that I have time before class to read them and draw some conclusions.