No worries - I'm not even "from" Akron, but grew up two towns over - farm town that also welcomed the tire/rubber and power plant industry engineers. Favorite "field trip" was looking at all of the pretty colors, sniffing the unique stench and admiring the lunar landscape of the Barberton PPG chemical plant lagoon.

However, early in my childhood, it was not unusual to have blimps fly very low and slow overhead. And for the boys, there was the annual Soapbox Derby.

The highlight of the Beacon Journal was the Sunday funnies section. Blondie, Beetle Bailey and Peanuts from top to bottom. Oh, and my mother's friend's needlepoint column.

Yes, excitement abounded.

"So, are we all reduced to calling the reporter for every story which we think may be substandard or incomplete? Would that make a reporter's quality inversely proportional to the volume of recordings in their voicemail?"

No. But if you are going to criticise the reporter personally for being a lapdog (and I'm not saying he wasn't), you should check if the fault was, in fact, editorial. Glenn's criticism of King was scathing and I believe, accurate. Of course you don't need to ask permission to write a critical story. Not all reporting is this critical of a reporter personally. It is easy to make a single call. My point is; doing this small thing makes the story a more effective and complete critique. I don't understand why this is such a contentious point with you guys, unless you simply want to swallow all of Glenn's views without independent thought. Somehow, I don't think that is the kind of readership he wants.

From Media Matters

CNN's John King repeated McCain's dubious explanation of vote against Bush tax cuts

Summary: CNN's John King reported that Sen. John McCain "didn't vote for the Bush tax cuts because there weren't spending cuts." In fact, during the Senate debate on the conference committee version of the 2001 tax cut bill, McCain did not mention the absence of offsetting spending cuts; rather, he stated that, while he supported an earlier version of the bill "that provided more tax relief to middle income Americans," "I cannot in good conscience support a tax cut in which so many of the benefits go to the most fortunate among us, at the expense of middle class Americans who most need tax relief."

http://mediamatters.org/items/200801100014

Johhny wants a cracker, Johnny wants a cracker... squawk squawk!

"The 'broadcast portion' is what was presented to the public, and therefore all that matters.

You're trying to dance around that fact, and clumsily at that.

You're also attempting to base an argument on evidence you don't have.

Keep digging. We find this amusing."

With due respect Walter, that is not a fact, it is your opinion, expressed condescendingly at that. The broadcast portion isn't all that matters. Glenn criticised the reporter personally. If there was more to the interview, the fault is editorial and the personal criticism might be unfair or overblown. In this case, I doubt that it is but wouldn't you rather know for sure before you call someone a lapdog?

Speaking of journalismists, on "The Daily Show" tonight, Stewart gave a pretty good skewering to some of our more corpulent-headed media clowns, with some special KY Jelly-free pleasuring of Tweety, whom Stewart characterized (as I recall, I'm tired) as "insane."

It and "The Colbert Report" that followed were especially worth watching tonight, and should be available for viewing online soon.

As Professor Smith says that these are two of his favorite shows, I hope he watched and will share with us his objections or lack thereof to the somewhat less than reverential treatment accorded on the shows to many of his tribe.

KR

Funny, John McCain has repeatedly gone on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart several times, even after being taken to task about his support of the Iraq War, even after being lampooned for cozying up to the religious right.

John McCain, to paraphrase Jon Stewart describing the Iraq War interview on Bill Moyers' Journal, is tough enough to take being a POW, surely he can take being grilled by the anchor of a fake news program.

Which brings us back to John King specifically, and CNN and the rest of the cable and television news glad hands media.

...if you are going to criticise the reporter personally for being a lapdog (and I'm not saying he wasn't), you should check if the fault was, in fact, editorial. Glenn's criticism of King was scathing and I believe, accurate. [...] My point is; doing this small thing makes the story a more effective and complete critique. I don't understand why this is such a contentious point with you guys, unless you simply want to swallow all of Glenn's views without independent thought. Somehow, I don't think that is the kind of readership he wants. -- Bill Keane

It is to some extent the readership that he has, however. Having said that, I agreed with you some 12 hours ago, and I wasn't the only regular letter writer to have done so.

1) It would have been a plus if Glenn had gone through the motion of contacting his office before publishing -- but I don't see it as required in order to critique a published piece of work (all of which have editors, eh?). -- Holly McLachlan, 9:45 a.m.

A further problem with Mr. King's "editor defense" is the overall tone of the aired interview -- and disparagement of that somewhat unctuous tone was a large part of Glenn's original critique. He was slamming the interview as much on the basis of the non-spoken attitudes that were (so clearly) displayed as on the actual, non-newsworthy content.

It could just be he's a Republican or Independent (Tim prides himself on being a maverick, like McCain). He clerked for J. Craig Wright, a former Republican justice of the Ohio Supreme Court back in 1991. Wiki goes on to say:

In 1991, Wright reportedly engaged in a tussle with fellow Republican, Justice Andrew Douglas, Douglas's secretary Sue Pohlman whom Douglas was living with, and still is to this day. Douglas said that Wright pushed him to the floor.

The Chicago Tribune reported that the argument was over comments made by Wright regarding Douglas's secretary, Sue Pohlman. The Tribune also reported that the tussle took place in front of fellow Justice Alice Robie Resnick and it ended only when Wright had to help Douglas up off of the floor.

He has written before about...

The pains of free speech

By: Tim Smith

Posted: 4/17/06

Free speech is such a pain in the butt.

A couple incidents involving that pesky First Amendment put the Kent State administration in a bind last week, and I feel sorry for my friends in high places - not something that happens often.

First, there was the episode with Facebook.com and student athletes. Athletic Director Laing Kennedy announced that athletes may be barred from using the social network phenomenon because of its potential for harm.

Seems some athletes were less than discreet in discussing personal activities that didn't reflect well on themselves, their teammates or the university. Worse, professional sports agents may have contacted some athletes as a result of what had appeared on those personal Internet sites. (Apparently, the agents were unaware of the existence of college athletes until they conducted a Google search for "clueless jocks.")

(...)

Faculty in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication regularly warn students about showing common sense when posting material on Facebook or MySpace.com. Those pages are on the Internet, and they are accessible globally, including by prospective employers. Students think their revelations, not to mention pictures, are cute and will be viewed by a very narrow audience. Not necessarily so...

That's the trouble with speech. It is always the arrogant, elitist, stupid stuff that we're forced to defend. But if we don't, then all the other insightful, intelligent, useful stuff is at risk.

Like I said, a pain in the butt.

You can say that a third time, perfesser.

Perhaps the perfesser feels he's becoming increasingly irrelevant. Perhaps he resists change. Perhaps he has an issue with Barrett v. Rosenthal.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barrett_v._Rosenthal

Teaching Journalism in the Digital Age

Adapt or Die of Irrelevance

The clash between academic requirements for professors and the education students of journalism need to have grows more intense.

By Karl Idsvoog

I’m doing something few university student journalists ever do. I’m writing an article to be published on the pages of a magazine. There won’t be an iPod version, or a video to accompany its eventual appearance online, or interactivity for discussion and debate about what I say, or a blog or slide show—just words on the page. Only gradually is Nieman Reports adapting to what every journalism student must adapt to quickly—the evolving multimedia environment. With university journalism education, we can no longer train print journalists, or radio or TV journalists, or photojournalists; today, these are all pieces of a larger pie we call multimedia journalism.

Boom! That’s the sound heard as journalism schools blow up their curriculum...

“It is all about multimedia, interactivity, 24-hour deadlines, and new methods of delivering the news,” says Endres. “It’s more than we ever expected of students 10 to 15 years ago.”

(...)

Jan Leach, a journalism professor who came to Kent State a few years ago from a print newsroom, shares this experience. “I’d be surprised if any newspaper editor would hire a student right out of j-school who didn’t have a good understanding of writing/producing online,” she says.

In the school’s legal issues class, Barrett v. Rosenthal is to the Internet what New York Times Co. v. Sullivan is to libel, as citizen journalism becomes the “next major battleground” for online speech, in the view of Professor Tim Smith. In the courtroom as well as the newsroom, the news media landscape is changing rapidly, so for students to succeed, the classroom—and the university in which it is embedded—must change as well. “If we want our kids to be competitive, we need to prepare them for the world they are about to enter,” Smith says...

http://www.nieman.harvard.edu/reports/07-3NRfall/p63-idsvoog.html