PRSA local update III: Black belt mentoring. The chapter's sensei program kicked off Oct. 10 with six master PR practitioners ("sensei") agreeing to advise a like number of students ("kohai"). To participate, e-mail Linda Jacobson, ljacobson@quepr.com.
PRSA local update IV: NBC 5 assignment editor Stephen Wright will reveal "Things Assignment Editors Love and Hate" at the NuPros meeting from noon to 1 p.m. Friday, Nov. 16, at the Four Star Coffee Bar, 3324 W. 7th St. All new professionals are invited.
PRSA local update V: The chapter's ethics program in September is going into a national PRSA database of program ideas for 2008. The Sept. 12 program, "Ethics in Action: The Complexity and Consequences of Misunderstanding(s)," had a record attendance and featured TCU professors Will Powers and Melissa Schroeder. Patti Grey reviewed drafts of the pending resource file during the national conference with the hope of distributing by the end of the year.
PRSA local update VI: Tom Dunning, who heads the powerful Dallas Citizens Council, and newcomer Wayne Mielke, APR, whose company, Comerica, recently moved its headquaters to downtown Dallas from Detroit, will discuss "PR-ing the Rebirth of a City" at the Dallas PRSA meeting Thursday, Nov. 8. More here.
SPJ national update: Protection maybe, and only for some; and FEMA employees wear many hats. The House of Representatives on Oct. 23 passed HR 2102, the Free Flow of Information Act of 2007, which attempts to reinforce free speech and a free press but which appears to leave unprotected blogger-journalists, stringers and freelancers. Those disseminating information are protected only if they do it "for a substantial portion of the person's livelihood or for substantial financial gain." The question may be moot, as President Bush says he will veto the act. More here and here and here and here. ... The Federal Emergency Management Agency staged a phony news conference Oct. 23 about assistance to victims of wildfires in southern California. The agency -- slammed for its marginal response to Hurricane Katrina -- had FEMA employees pose as reporters and ask questions of Vice Adm. Harvey Johnson, the agency's deputy director. "I'm very happy with FEMA's response," Johnson said in reply to one softball query. No genuine journalists attended, although they were given a conference call number they could use to listen in. More here.
SPJ national update II: Sounds like a Swiss army knife for reporters; and journalists urged not to forsake principles. Reuters says it is working with Nokia on a handheld device that could transform the way journalists in the field file news reports. The mobile application is billed as a "a lightweight toolkit that provides everything journalists need to file and publish stories from even the most remote regions of the world." More here. ... Journalists are in danger of committing professional suicide if they abandon core values in an effort to keep the industry viable, the executive editor of the International Herald Tribune told the annual meeting of the Online News Association. Michael Oreskes, speaking Oct. 19 in Toronto, said journalists have a responsibility to complete the mission of finding business models that sustain watchdog journalism, citing London School of Economics research showing that as press freedom goes up, national income rises and political corruption declines, thus making nations with a free press "[politically] cleaner and wealthier." More here.
SPJ national update III: We'd tell you the truth, but then you'd know the truth; and score one for the alt press. NASA on Oct. 31 promised Congress that it will reveal results of an unprecedented federal aviation survey that found that near-collisions, runway interference and other aircraft safety problems occur far more often than previously recognized. NASA gathered the information under an $8.5 million safety project, through telephone interviews with 24,000 commercial and general aviation pilots over nearly four years. The agency initially refused to disclose the results and, further, ordered the contractor that conducted the survey to purge all related data from its computers. More here and here. ... A criminal case against Phoenix New Times fell apart Oct. 19 amid admissions that a special county prosecutor made serious mistakes. Maricopa County Attorney Andrew Thomas dismissed all charges against the free weekly newspaper less than 24 hours after two New Times owners were arrested for publishing details of a grand-jury subpoena that demanded the internet records of any person who had visited the newspaper's web site since 2004. More here.
SPJ national update IV: Futurists ponder your morning paper; and investigative journalists planning to do the work, then give it away. What will the newspaper look like in 2020? The World Association of Newspapers asked 22 futurists, academics, industry insiders and internet pioneers. Some say newspapers will resemble glossy magazines. Some say they will be individually tailored to readers. Some envision networks of news generators and digital news hubs. More here. ... Paul Steiger, the top editor of The Wall Street Journal for 16 years, and a team of wealthy Californians are assembling a group of investigative journalists who will provide their work to media outlets at no charge. The nonprofit group, Pro Publica, will pitch each project to a newspaper or magazine, wherever it will make the strongest impression. The intent is to do long-term projects, uncovering misdeeds in government, business and organizations. More here.
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Red and Yellow, Black and White, Income's Always in Their Sight
by Susan Tallant
Where are all the minority journalists? SPJ members and guests picked the brains of four student media advisers to find out during the October meeting at Shady Oak Barbeque & Grill in Arlington.
Robert Bohler of TCU said one problem is lagging enrollment in academic journalism because of more lucrative degree options. "No one goes into law or medicine because that is their calling," he said. "They go for the money."
Bohler said students are not following their passion anymore. The industry could help by triggering an interest when future journalists are young. "When I was a kid I knew about (Walter) Cronkite and (David) Brinkley. ... I don't think kids today know their journalists."
Tracy Everbach, UNT, believes minorities either don't know enough about the profession, find it too hard to break into, or don't like the pay. A solution, she said, may lie in recruiting. Her editor started a freshman internship program to groom future reporters and also visited high school minorities to generate enthusiasm for the profession.
Besides an African-American editor this semester, nine of the last 10 UNT editors-in-chief have been white, with three females. In contrast, Bohler's group this year of 10 editors and 17 reporters (mostly women) includes 15 Anglos.
The Tarrant County College adviser, Eddye Gallagher, said her staff is a balance of males and females in a wide range of ages. "We have been pretty diverse," she said. TCC has had two black editors and several Hispanic editors since the college opened in 1967.
Lloyd Goodman, UTA, said that although the university paper, The Shorthorn, has a combined editorial/advertising/production staff of 75, only one-third of the students want to be career newspaper people. "The rest just like it," he said.
He said The Shorthorn handles news involving minorities like any other type of coverage, by walking the beat. "It is extremely important to get your staff out there, talking, and not just staying with each other," he said. "There are parts of the community that editors need to see."
Each campus approaches student news a little differently and the pay varies from staff to staff, but all four advisers agreed that perceived income potential is a big issue for attracting journalism majors, regardless of their ethnicity.
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PEOPLE & PLACES
The University of Oklahoma's Gaylord College of Journalism and Mass Communication and the JayMac Alumni Association named Linda Pavlik, Class of 1970, a distinguished alumna. Pavlik's career spans more than 30 years as a communications specialist, the past 24 as president of Pavlik and Associates. Before moving into PR, Pavlk established the first Tarrant County news bureau for the Dallas Times Herald. She was a political writer and investigative reporter for five years at the Star-Telegram, where editors nominated her for the Pulitzer Prize two consecutive years, and she won numerous state and national awards for investigative reporting and public service journalism. ...
