October 27, 2009 – 5:52 pm
I cannot remember anything about the day in 1988 that the Supreme Court issued its decision on Hazelwood School District v. Kuhlmeier. I cannot remember if my newspaper made a very big deal out of it, but the decision embarrasses the heck out me 20 years later.
The Supreme Court ruled in Hazelwood that high [...]
October 13, 2009 – 5:15 pm
My students have been particularly engaged by Paul Saffo’s reference to the “Schumpeterian moment.” There is a distinct possibility they just like the word, but I think I see real light bulbs go off in their energetic minds when I talk about Saffo’s echo of the Joseph Shumpeter thought that we’re in a moment that [...]
October 5, 2009 – 5:29 pm
It happened twice again last week and I decided somebody has to yell the truth louder. Two more people over 50 decried how little students know. The usual “we’re on the road to perdition” lectures followed with the whole smugness and superiority package.
Translated, what the baby boomers are really saying is that students “don’t know [...]
September 29, 2009 – 6:04 pm
My old friend Phil Meyer called it right when he commented in this article about ESPN.com entering Chicago. Phil called it another “nail in newspapers’ coffin.” ESPN’s spokesman, Paul Melvin took a much politer tack. “As a company, we are fans of newspapers, and not believers they are going away. They face challenges that will [...]
September 24, 2009 – 3:29 pm
Perhaps the wisest thing I read this summer was this fine articulation of an idea I’ve been talking about for months. Rick Edmonds, the media business guru for Poynter Online wrote this: “Put another way, a transition to robust digital options and aggressive experimentation are still good strategies for newspaper organizations. But I might tap [...]
September 16, 2009 – 3:55 pm
I have been serving on a non-profit board at the Franciscan Retreat Center (The Casa) in Scottsdale for over a year. Because of the appreciation for my background with writing, the requests to write documents for every part of the Casa were overwhelming. If I fulfilled all the requests, writing church messages could take up [...]
September 10, 2009 – 4:35 pm
On February 9 at 1:55 p.m. I filed my first ever Tweet. It read: “This is my maiden voyage. Call this the old man and the technology sea.”
My world did not shake. My emotional moorings remain sound. Social media and I have gotten along just fine. My kindergarten granddaughter reading her first Junie B. [...]
September 9, 2009 – 3:41 pm
My former ethics students have been particularly engaged by the controversy over the Associated Press transmission of the photo of the soldier who died in Afghanistan. One student wrote: “I thought of you as I was reading about the controversial photo of the Marine that AP posted, even after they were repeatedly asked not to [...]
September 3, 2009 – 1:28 pm
Wednesday I came out of a News21 presentation of work done by Cronkite School journalists that made me ready to shout from the rooftops. This is sensational work done by great students with expert professional direction and funded by two incredibly far-sighted funders. Even more important for readers of this blog there are bright, clear [...]
September 2, 2009 – 10:40 am
Two weeks ago The Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication had an all-day faculty meeting on the subject of academic research. The most intriguing discussion was on whether academic research should have “impact.”
The discussion revealed a fascinating chasm between academics and recent professionals.
I want to be very careful not to simplify or sensationalize [...]
