Month: February 2017

Your review of Janet Malcolm’s ‘The Journalist and the Murderer’

On By Dan KennedyIn Assignments

Your second graded assignment of the semester is due next Wednesday, Feb. 22, at 10 a.m. Please write a 500- to 800-word review of Janet Malcolm’s “The Journalist and the Murderer.” As the syllabus says, take as your starting point Malcolm’s famous opening sentence: “Every journalist who is not too stupid or too full of himself to notice what is going on knows that what he does is morally indefensible.” Do you agree or disagree? Support your argument with examples from her book, from Gene Weingarten’s article and from my review of the Errol Morris book.

As with your last review, I would like you to write this in the form of a review that we might read in a newspaper or on a website. As we have discussed, a review is different from academic report. You are providing a recommendation to your audience: Should they read this book or not? Thus you want to write it in a journalistic style. You will be graded on the strength of your argument, the quality of your writing and your attention to detail. Some guidelines:

  • Make sure you meet the deadline.
  • Spell all proper names correctly.
  • Write an enticing headline with an eye toward publication.
  • As with any piece of journalistic writing, aim for a strong lede that hooks the reader right away. Always keep in mind that you are writing for an audience.
  • Try to follow the AP style guidelines I posted recently. (Style note: You will find within the guidelines an admonition against the use of single quotation marks unless they are inside doubles. In case you were wondering about the headline on this post, headline style typically uses single quotes.)

Here are the book-review resources that I posted the last time: We all subscribe to The Washington Post, so be sure to take a look at its book section. You’ll want to concentrate on the nonfiction reviews. The New York Times offers extensive book coverage, including a standalone Sunday Book Review. The Boston Globe publishes good-quality book reviews, too.

Please write it as a Microsoft Word document and send it to me by email.

Thank you to Lisa Williams, Matt Carroll and Hacks/Hackers

On By Dan KennedyIn Class Updates

We are full of thank-yous today. Many thanks to Lisa Williams of WBUR Radio for spending some time with us to talk about ethics in the digital age. And thanks to Matt Carroll of our School of Journalism for inviting us to sit in on Wednesday night’s Hacks/Hackers event. During our discussion, several of you expressed interest in the data visualizations about the opioid crisis. Here it is if you’d like to explore it more deeply.

Getting ready for Wednesday’s class: The MacDonald case, Hacks/Hackers and more

On By Dan KennedyIn Assignments, Class Updates

There will be a lot of moving parts to our class this Wednesday, Feb. 15. I ask that everyone show up on time and be aware of what we’re going to be doing so that we can use our time together as efficiently as possible.

  • At 5:30 p.m. we’ll meet in our usual location, 148 Holmes. We will have a brief opening, some business and a presentation by Wen Lei.
  • At 6:15 we will leave for 220 Shillman. We’re going to sit in on a meeting of Hacks/Hackers Boston sponsored by the School of Journalism and Google Play Newsstand. Speakers will deliver lightning talks on projects they’re working on. You can find out more by clicking here.
  • The event is supposed to end at 7:30 or 8. We will return to 148 at that time and discuss the presentations — what we liked, what we didn’t.

What this means is that we won’t have a chance to discuss the MacDonald case and Janet Malcolm’s book. I think that’s all right. In your syllabus you will find two readings from two very different points of view: my review of Errol Morris’ “A Wilderness of Error” and Gene Weingarten’s profile of Brian Murtagh, who prosecuted MacDonald and maintains that he is guilty. I think you will find that those articles will give you a deeper understanding of what Malcolm is writing about.

You will also find the assignment for next Wednesday, Feb. 22, in the syllabus. I will post something more specific later, but please keep in mind the following guidelines: make deadline; make sure all proper names are spelled correctly; try to write a strong headline; and concentrate on making this a piece of journalistic writing, with a lede that grabs the reader. Write for an audience, not just for me.

A fascinating ethical dilemma

On By Dan KennedyIn Class Updates

We will open with the sad tale of Jose Ayala, who was victimized by his brother, Eduardo, after Eduardo told police he was Jose following a recent arrest. Eduardo Ayala was charged with stealing two guitars and breaking into a house.

The arrest was first (and falsely) reported on the Springfield Police Department Facebook page, and was then picked up by several media outlets — including MassLive.com, which followed up by publishing a story on the hazards of police reporting in the age of social media.

Some calming thoughts about Trump coverage from a #NeverTrump conservative

On By Dan KennedyIn News Worth Knowing

One of the most eloquent conservative voices against President Trump belongs to Tom Nichols, a professor at the Naval War College and at Harvard Extension School. Last May he wrote an epic tweetstorm arguing that conservatives should vote for Hillary Clinton, whom he detested, because Trump was “too mentally unstable” to serve as commander-in-chief.

Given Nichols’ anti-Trump credentials, I thought it was interesting to read an op-ed he wrote for The Washington Post over the weekend in which he argued that the media have been overreacting to some of the actions the Trump administration has taken. Among other things, he wrote:

There is plenty of fuel for the president’s critics in these actions, yet Trump’s opponents — especially in the media — seem determined to overreact on even ordinary matters. This is both unwise and damaging to our political culture. America needs an adversarial press and a sturdy system of checks and balances. Unmodulated shock and outrage, however, not only burn precious credibility among the president’s opponents, but eventually will exhaust the public and increase the already staggering amount of cynicism paralyzing our national political life.

I think this is important guidance. As we have discussed, there are reasons to think that Trump represents a unique threat to democracy. But journalists can’t run around with their hair on fire for the next four years. The best way to cover Trump is with calm, fact-based reporting — not with hyperbole that does not hold up to scrutiny.

The basics of AP style

On By Dan KennedyIn Class Updates

This slideshow will tell you nearly everything you need to know about AP style. I thought I would post it after reading your book reviews. Some of you may be accustomed to magazine (or Chicago) style, which would lead you to italicize the title of a book: The Elements of Journalism. In fact, AP style does not use italics for anything, so “The Elements of Journalism” would be correct. Some of you didn’t use anything at all — you wrote The Elements of Journalism, which I know from my years of writing a column for The Guardian is considered correct in Britain, but not in the U.S.

The print version of the AP Stylebook now requires heavy machinery to transport, but not to worry. You will rarely go wrong if you follow the rules in this slideshow. We do use AP style in the School of Journalism, so it’s a good idea to try to master the basics.