Four Ball State Daily News staffers won awards for superior work from the Indiana Collegiate Press Association, including Sports Editor Teddy Cahill, whose profile of star running back MiQuale Lewis was named best sports story in the state.
Editor-in-Chief Aly Brumback won second place in the editorial / opinion division. Danielle Turnbull took second in the features division and former Photo Editor Peter Gaunt won a third for his photo of a downtown party crowd.
The awards were among 15 handed out to Indiana college newspapers on Saturday in conjunction with the HSPA Foundation’s Better Newspaper Contest and Newsroom Seminar at the Indiana Convention Center.
The contest was judged by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
I was walking to meet a friend for lunch today and met Forrest Moulin of Fairmont, Texas, playing his multi-toms on an Indianapolis sidewalk.
Forrest is in town for the Percussive Arts Society International Convention, which looks huge, judging from all the space they're filling at the city's convention center. More details here: http://www.pas.org/PASIC.aspx
Advice, like youth, probably just wasted on the young Mary Schmich The Chicago Tribune
June 1, 1997
Inside every adult lurks a graduation speaker dying to get out, some world-weary pundit eager to pontificate on life to young people who'd rather be Rollerblading. Most of us, alas, will never be invited to sow our words of wisdom among an audience of caps and gowns, but there's no reason we can't entertain ourselves by composing a Guide to Life for Graduates.
I encourage anyone over 26 to try this and thank you for indulging my attempt.Ladies and gentlemen of the class of '97:
Wear sunscreen.
If I could offer you only one tip for the future, sunscreen would be it. The long-term benefits of sunscreen have been proved by scientists, whereas the rest of my advice has no basis more reliable than my own meandering experience. I will dispense this advice now.
Enjoy the power and beauty of your youth. Oh, never mind. You will not understand the power and beauty of your youth until they've faded. But trust me, in 20 years, you'll look back at photos of yourself and recall in a way you can't grasp now how much possibility lay before you and how fabulous you really looked. You are not as fat as you imagine.
Don't worry about the future. Or worry, but know that worrying is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubble gum. The real troubles in your life are apt to be things that never crossed your worried mind, the kind that blindside you at 4 p.m. on some idle Tuesday.
Do one thing every day that scares you.
Sing.
Don't be reckless with other people's hearts. Don't put up with people who are reckless with yours.
Floss.
Don't waste your time on jealousy. Sometimes you're ahead, sometimes you're behind. The race is long and, in the end, it's only with yourself.
Remember compliments you receive. Forget the insults. If you succeed in doing this, tell me how.
Keep your old love letters. Throw away your old bank statements.
Stretch.
Don't feel guilty if you don't know what you want to do with your life. The most interesting people I know didn't know at 22 what they wanted to do with their lives. Some of the most interesting 40-year-olds I know still don't.
Get plenty of calcium. Be kind to your knees. You'll miss them when they're gone.
Maybe you'll marry, maybe you won't. Maybe you'll have children, maybe you won't. Maybe you'll divorce at 40, maybe you'll dance the funky chicken on your 75th wedding anniversary. Whatever you do, don't congratulate yourself too much, or berate yourself either. Your choices are half chance. So are everybody else's.
Enjoy your body. Use it every way you can. Don't be afraid of it or of what other people think of it. It's the greatest instrument you'll ever own.
Dance, even if you have nowhere to do it but your living room.
Read the directions, even if you don't follow them.
Do not read beauty magazines. They will only make you feel ugly.
Get to know your parents. You never know when they'll be gone for good. Be nice to your siblings. They're your best link to your past and the people most likely to stick with you in the future.
Understand that friends come and go, but with a precious few you should hold on. Work hard to bridge the gaps in geography and lifestyle, because the older you get, the more you need the people who knew you when you were young.
Live in New York City once, but leave before it makes you hard. Live in Northern California once, but leave before it makes you soft. Travel.
Accept certain inalienable truths: Prices will rise. Politicians will philander. You, too, will get old. And when you do, you'll fantasize that when you were young, prices were reasonable, politicians were noble and children respected their elders.
Respect your elders.
Don't expect anyone else to support you. Maybe you have a trust fund. Maybe you'll have a wealthy spouse. But you never know when either one might run out.
Don't mess too much with your hair or by the time you're 40 it will look 85.
Be careful whose advice you buy, but be patient with those who supply it. Advice is a form of nostalgia. Dispensing it is a way of fishing the past from the disposal, wiping it off, painting over the ugly parts and recycling it for more than it's worth.
Newsday's Jimmy Breslin wrote the following article for the New York Herald Tribune in November 1963.
Washington -- Clifton Pollard was pretty sure he was going to be working on Sunday, so when he woke up at 9 a.m., in his three-room apartment on Corcoran Street, he put on khaki overalls before going into the kitchen for breakfast. His wife, Hettie, made bacon and eggs for him. Pollard was in the middle of eating them when he received the phone call he had been expecting. It was from Mazo Kawalchik, who is the foreman of the gravediggers at Arlington National Cemetery, which is where Pollard works for a living. "Polly, could you please be here by eleven o'clock this morning?" Kawalchik asked. "I guess you know what it's for." Pollard did. He hung up the phone, finished breakfast, and left his apartment so he could spend Sunday digging a grave for John Fitzgerald Kennedy.
When Pollard got to the row of yellow wooden garages where the cemetery equipment is stored, Kawalchik and John Metzler, the cemetery superintendent, were waiting for him. "Sorry to pull you out like this on a Sunday," Metzler said. "Oh, don't say that," Pollard said. "Why, it's an honor for me to be here." Pollard got behind the wheel of a machine called a reverse hoe. Gravedigging is not done with men and shovels at Arlington. The reverse hoe is a green machine with a yellow bucket that scoops the earth toward the operator, not away from it as a crane does. At the bottom of the hill in front of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, Pollard started the digging (Editor Note: At the bottom of the hill in front of the Custis-Lee Mansion).
Leaves covered the grass. When the yellow teeth of the reverse hoe first bit into the ground, the leaves made a threshing sound which could be heard above the motor of the machine. When the bucket came up with its first scoop of dirt, Metzler, the cemetery superintendent, walked over and looked at it. "That's nice soil," Metzler said. "I'd like to save a little of it," Pollard said. "The machine made some tracks in the grass over here and I'd like to sort of fill them in and get some good grass growing there, I'd like to have everything, you know, nice."
James Winners, another gravedigger, nodded. He said he would fill a couple of carts with this extra-good soil and take it back to the garage and grow good turf on it. "He was a good man," Pollard said. "Yes, he was," Metzler said. "Now they're going to come and put him right here in this grave I'm making up," Pollard said. "You know, it's an honor just for me to do this."
Pollard is 42. He is a slim man with a mustache who was born in Pittsburgh and served as a private in the 352nd Engineers battalion in Burma in World War II. He is an equipment operator, grade 10, which means he gets $3.01 an hour. One of the last to serve John Fitzgerald Kennedy, who was the thirty-fifth President of this country, was a working man who earns $3.01 an hour and said it was an honor to dig the grave.
Yesterday morning, at 11:15, Jacqueline Kennedy started toward the grave. She came out from under the north portico of the White House and slowly followed the body of her husband, which was in a flag-covered coffin that was strapped with two black leather belts to a black caisson that had polished brass axles. She walked straight and her head was high. She walked down the bluestone and blacktop driveway and through shadows thrown by the branches of seven leafless oak trees. She walked slowly past the sailors who held up flags of the states of this country. She walked past silent people who strained to see her and then, seeing her, dropped their heads and put their hands over their eyes. She walked out the northwest gate and into the middle of Pennsylvania Avenue. She walked with tight steps and her head was high and she followed the body of her murdered husband through the streets of Washington.
Everybody watched her while she walked. She is the mother of two fatherless children and she was walking into the history of this country because she was showing everybody who felt old and helpless and without hope that she had this terrible strength that everybody needed so badly. Even though they had killed her husband and his blood ran onto her lap while he died, she could walk through the streets and to his grave and help us all while she walked.
There was mass, and then the procession to Arlington. When she came up to the grave at the cemetery, the casket already was in place. It was set between brass railings and it was ready to be lowered into the ground. This must be the worst time of all, when a woman sees the coffin with her husband inside and it is in place to be buried under the earth. Now she knows that it is forever. Now there is nothing. There is no casket to kiss or hold with your hands. Nothing material to cling to. But she walked up to the burial area and stood in front of a row of six green-covered chairs and she started to sit down, but then she got up quickly and stood straight because she was not going to sit down until the man directing the funeral told her what seat he wanted her to take.
The ceremonies began, with jet planes roaring overhead and leaves falling from the sky. On this hill behind the coffin, people prayed aloud. They were cameramen and writers and soldiers and Secret Service men and they were saying prayers out loud and choking. In front of the grave, Lyndon Johnson kept his head turned to his right. He is president and he had to remain composed. It was better that he did not look at the casket and grave of John Fitzgerald Kennedy too often. Then it was over and black limousines rushed under the cemetery trees and out onto the boulevard toward the White House. "What time is it?" a man standing on the hill was asked. He looked at his watch. "Twenty minutes past three," he said.
Clifton Pollard wasn't at the funeral. He was over behind the hill, digging graves for $3.01 an hour in another section of the cemetery. He didn't know who the graves were for. He was just digging them and then covering them with boards. "They'll be used," he said. "We just don't know when. I tried to go over to see the grave," he said. "But it was so crowded a soldier told me I couldn't get through. So I just stayed here and worked, sir. But I'll get over there later a little bit. Just sort of look around and see how it is, you know. Like I told you, it's an honor."
Posted: 16 November 2003 http://www.arlingtoncemetery.net/digging-grave-an-honor.htm
This video is an audio interview I did on the Southside of Indy for a column about the shooting death of a 14-year-old boy over a drug debt.
I used the interview in the following column on the case. After the column is an AP story about the sentencing of the shooter.
In a rugged alley, youths reflect on one of their own
Indianapolis Star, The (IN) January 8, 2003
By JOHN STRAUSS
The girl was 14 years old and said she had been there all day, in the alley with Ant Dogg's other friends, a few days after he was killed.
His death certificate says the victim of the shooting was William Anthony Boicourt.
But around East Street, a few blocks south of Eli Lilly and Co. headquarters, they just called the 14-year-old "Ant" because he was only 5 feet tall and 100 pounds.
Dog is what you call somebody you're friendly with. So after the girl and other kids made sure I wasn't a cop, one of them walked up and smiled. "What up, dog?"
Just talking to people about Ant, I said.
"He was just a neighborhood boy," said Chelsea. "He was everybody's best friend. He had no enemies that I know of."
This was said in an alley where you might expect to find enemies. Two boys walked past with a large, fierce-looking dog at the end of a rope. The brick building next door was abandoned, the yard littered with car parts and beer bottles.
Part of a garage wall across the alley was marked as the place where Ant was shot to death late Jan. 1 -- spray-painted graffiti tributes, wine bottles, a pair of dice and other tokens.
Some of the dead boy's friends passed around a blunt, a large marijuana cigarette.
I didn't bring up the drug angle that police say was behind the killing, but the girl did: "We don't think it was drug-related. I didn't know Anthony to smoke weed or nothing."
Another kid, John, walked up.
"So what if he smoked weed? Everybody f - - - - - - does," said the boy, who could have passed for 12.
He was angry at another friend of Ant's, 14-year-old Keith Allen Munden, who is charged with murder.
A 17-year-old also has been arrested, and the two blame each other for the killing.
"The evidence that we've been able to compile so far indicates it was the 14-year-old (Munden) who pulled the trigger," Marion County Prosecutor Carl Brizzi said Tuesday. "It was an execution-style murder, very deliberate."
Ant was shot four times, including once in the back of the head, with a Winchester 30-30.
This is the kind of lever-action rifle seen in the movies about the wild West, which is what the streets sometimes look like these days.
Police say the killing was over a debt, and that somehow drugs were involved. "If somebody feels disrespected, they retaliate," city police Detective Alan Leinberger said.
Back in the alley, Michael Wiegand walked up to see what was going on. He's a restaurant worker and lives with his wife a block away.
The kids need a neighborhood center to keep them off the street, he said.
Actually, the streets are just fine, Chelsea said. "If they want to walk the 'hood, they're going to walk the 'hood," she said of the teenagers.
"Nobody's going to keep them inside."
A few blocks up East Street, a squad car had pulled somebody over. Wiegand said police were often in the area because of crime. The kids don't seem to know any other way.
"We love this neighborhood," Chelsea said. "This is our life, right here. This is the 'hood. We was born and raised on East Street, and that's where we always will be."
Maybe. Generations have grown up here. It would be good to see these kids survive childhood, too.
0-0-0
Below is an AP story from the sentencing.
The Associated Press State & Local Wire June 21, 2004, Monday, BC cycle Boy, 15, gets 55 years for shooting pal over drug debt SECTION: State and Regional LENGTH: 318 words DATELINE: INDIANAPOLIS
A 15-year-old boy accused of shooting a younger drug associate over a debt was sentenced to 55 years in prison by a judge who scolded him for his nonchalance.
Keith Munden, was convicted of shooting William Anthony Boicourt, 14, in an alley on Jan. 2, 2003.
"While he was left on the ground to die his lonely death, you went home to the comfort of that warm house and pretended nothing happened," Marion Superior Court Judge Sheila Carlisle told Munden in sentencing him Friday.
Boicourt's mother, Lillian Henry, testified she had given her son life, but "Keith Munden took it away." "It hurts me to think that even after Keith serves his sentence, he will still be young enough to have an opportunity to come out, get a job, get married and have a family," Henry said.
With credit for good behavior, Munden could be released from prison when he's in his early 40s.
Deputy Prosecutor Ralph Staples described Munden as a "hoodlum" and said the evidence left no doubt that Munden shot Boicourt four times with the bolt-action, .30-caliber rifle.
The evidence presented during the trial showed Boicourt and Munden used and sold a variety of drugs. Munden admitted being upset over $400 that Boicourt owed him for a half-pound of marijuana, but denied shooting his friend.
However, two witnesses, Nicholas Harritt and Munden's then-girlfriend, Randi Knight, 17, testified that Munden lured Boicourt to the back of a car and shot him four times.
Harritt, 19, who drove the car and sold Munden the rifle used to killed Boicourt, is serving an eight-year prison sentence for assisting in the murder.
Paul Boicourt, 20, took the stand and read a poem in memory of his brother, who was known as "Ant Dogg." He was a slight 5 feet and 100 pounds when he died.
"Lil' Ant Dogg was an angel, in a neighborhood of hell," Boicourt said. "A tiny little homey came from heaven for a spell."
The Ball State Daily News won seven national awards at this weekend’s College Media Convention, including a share of the best-of-show competition and two first-place finishes for newspaper design.
Kyle Lewis won the Page One Design of the Year Award from Associated College Press, which sponsors the convention with College Media Advisers. Becky Rother won the first place award for newspaper page design. The awards were presented Saturday at the convention in Louisville.
Elsewhere, the Daily News was among nine finalists for the top Pacemaker Award and placed in the Best-of-Show contest featuring the top 10 newspapers at the conference.
Honorable mentions went to the Daily News staff for multimedia story of the year, and to former Editor-in-Chief Vinnie Lopes for sports story of the year.
American Collegiate Press is the oldest and largest national membership organization for college student journalists. The group’s member publications include more than 20,000 students.
The Daily News earlier this year won national online awards from the Columbia Scholastic Press Association and the Society of Professional Journalists. Opinion writer Derek Wilson was named the best college newspaper columnist in the country by the National Society of Newspaper Columnists.
The Ball State Daily News on Friday (Oct. 8) won 90 Gold Circle Awards for News from the Columbia Scholastic Press Association, including top awards for overall newspaper design, Page 1 design, and news and feature packages.
Former graphics editor Stephanie Cope, now on the staff of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, won half a dozen first-place awards, including top honors for Page 1 design and news-page design.
The international student press association, based at Columbia University, judged entries produced between mid-June of 2009 and the same period in 2010.
The newspaper’s online operation, bsudailynews.com, earlier this year won 15 Gold Circle Awards for Online Media, including all six places in the Interactive Graphics category. It was the paper’s best-ever showing in the online division.
Last month the Daily News was named a finalist for five national awards by American Collegiate Press, including the group’s highest honor, the Pacemaker for general excellence. Winners in that contest will be announced Oct. 30 at the National College Media Convention in Louisville.
If there were ever a time for a newspaper memoir, this would be it – a battered industry, diminished by nearly half its revenue and thousands of newsroom hands, ought to welcome a look to its more colorful past.
Dick Cady’s new book, “Deadline: Indianapolis, The Story Behind the Stories at the Pulliam Press,” (www.RiverviewBooks.com, $19.95), does what a good memoir should do – share stories.
Cady has four decade’s worth of tales. The former Indianapolis Star investigative reporter and columnist helped win the newspaper a Pulitzer Prize in the early 1970s for reporting on police corruption, along with more than 50 local, state and national awards, including the Associated Press Freedom of Information Award.
His book takes readers behind the scenes as those stories took shape, revealing formerly off-the-record information for the first time, in some cases.
Cady reflected on the changes in the city and its newspaper before a book-signing at Bookmamas in Irvington on Saturday (Oct. 2).
Readers of “Deadline” will find a tumultuous business as different from today’s newsrooms as a Wild West show is from a tea social.
Cady’s first day at The Star in 1962 reads like something Ben Hecht might have typed.
“The afternoon trickled by. I was in the men’s room when a craggy-faced gentleman in his sixties came in,” he writes.
“Ignoring me, he opened the towel dispenser, seized a bottle of gin and took a healthy gulp. ‘Arthritis,’ photo editor Don McClure explained. After restoring his medicine to its hiding place, he began telling me about his Navy days.”
The Indianapolis of nearly 50 years ago was a bleaker, monochromatic place with no professional sports and little downtown energy or nightlife, Cady says.
And while in recent years city police have made news in several lurid episodes, including a fatal alcohol-involved crash in broad daylight, the department is surely more serene than the force back then.
When it comes to police, “there’s a difference between institutionalized and systematic (corruption),” Cady said.
“Certain things with police officers and police departments are going to happen. But in the early part of the 20th century up to the 1950s and ‘60s, it became part of the system. It was pretty widespread and pretty entrenched.”
Today, the police are better behaved but the newspaper that watches them has fewer resources to do its job. Cady laments the changes in the news business.
“For most of my career in journalism, newspapers were the kings,” he writes.
“Then the rise of TV news, accelerated by cable and satellite, and the growth of the Internet doomed most afternoon papers and forced many of the morning dallies to change.
“To survive some of them adapted cereal-box formats, emphasizing style, color and graphics with shorter, puffier stories.”
While those changes occurred nearly everywhere, Cady focuses on his former newspaper and names the editors he blames for the decline. As a result, this is the kind of book that insiders open at the end first, looking for an index to see if they’re named.
There is no index, but the writer is thorough. If they were in charge, they’re here.
(Dick Cady’s next book-signing is at the Holiday Author Fair on Dec. 4 from noon to 4 p.m. at the Indiana Historical Society, 450 W. Ohio St., Indianapolis.)
The Ball State Daily News was named a finalist for five national awards this week by American Collegiate Press, including the group’s highest honor, the Pacemaker for general excellence.
Members of last year’s staff who were honored include former Editor-in-Chief Vinnie Lopes, nominated for top national sports story of the year.
Graphics Editor Stephanie Cope led the team nominated for multimedia sports story of the year on the newspaper’s website, www.bsudailynews.com/.
Designer Kyle Lewis was nominated for best front-page design and best illustration. And Design Editor Becky Rother was nominated for newspaper page of the year.
The entries were judged by professional journalists in the Washington area. Winners will be announced Oct. 30 at the National College Media Convention in Louisville.
American Collegiate Press is the oldest and largest national membership organization for college student journalists. The group’s member publications include more than 20,000 students.
This was the Daily News’ first finalist for sports story of the year, according to ACP records. The newspaper has had only two other finalists for best news story in the last 15 years.
ACP Finalists from Ball State Sports story of the year — Vinnie Lopes, FOOTBALL: Ball State nets record $800,000 for playing road game vs. Auburn http://www.bsudailynews.com/2.14293/football-ball-state-athletics-department-nets-record-800-000-for-saturday-s-auburn-game-1.2002518
Multimedia sports story of the year — DN graphics staff (led by graphics editor Stephanie Cope), 2010 Winter Olympics http://files.bsudailynews.com/WO_Flash/finalmain.html
Front page of the year — Kyle Lewis, Oct. 26 front page Newspaper page of the year — Becky Rother, Where the Wild Things Are (Oct. 15, 2009) Illustration of the year — Kyle Lewis, CHIRP vs. Ohio (Oct. 29, 2009)
Links to the lists of winners and other information:http://studentpress.org/acp/winners/mstory10.html http://studentpress.org/acp/winners/design10.html http://studentpress.org/acp/winners/story10.html
Former Ball State Daily News writer Derek Wilson has been named the best college newspaper columnist in the country by the National Society of Newspaper Columnists, which cited his command of the facts along with “crisp writing and punchy leads.”
The contest drew 110 entries, which were judged by Ben Pollock, the group’s vice president; and John Grogan, a former columnist for The Philadelphia Inquirer and author of the book, “Marley & Me.”
“Wilson demonstrates a sharp mind, solid reporting skills, and an ability to assemble meaningful facts to make his point,” Grogan wrote in his judge’s comments.
“He has something to say, which in commentary is half the battle, and he says it well. He does what a good columnist should do: challenges the powers that be. I forgot I was reading the work of a student journalist.”
Wilson was a senior finance and economics double major who graduated this month.
Students from the University of Kansas and Colorado State University placed second and third in the 2010 NSNC Scholarship Contest. The winners were announced in a news release from Russell Frank, NSNC education chair and associate professor of communications at Penn State University.
Pollock said, “Someday, Mr. Wilson is either going to be an honored editorial writer or a millionaire consultant. He can choose good numbers to highlight and can explain them to a general audience.”
This is the story of a family's loss and the love that helped them through the pain.
I told this during a radio broadcast from the Indianapolis Motor Speedway on Mothers Day in 2007, and people came up afterward to say thanks and talk about their own family stories.
I hope you get something from this. If you do, take a moment to share your thoughts.
Staffers for the Ball State Daily Newsand for Ball Bearings, the DN's online partner in student media, today won Mark of Excellence Awards from the Society of Professional Journalists.
Daily News Editor-in-Chief Vinnie Lopes, Jay Sowers, Jessi Smithson and Samantha Irons shared the top national award for Online Sports Reporting for "The Rise of Men's Volleyball."
The Ball Bearings staff won the award for Best Affiliated Website for ballbearingsonline.com/.
The awards were chosen from among more than 3,600 entries for work produced in 2009.
“Regardless of what else is happening in the industry, college students across the country are continuing to embrace journalism," SPJ Vice President Neil Ralston said in a news release.
“These students are excited about journalism, and they understand that a strong press is vital to our nation's future.”
The Ball State students and other winners were previously recognized with first-place awards in SPJ regional competitions. They will be recognized Oct. 4 at the 2010 SPJ Convention & National Journalism Conference in Las Vegas.
Earlier: The Daily News wins 15 Gold Circle Awards for Online Media from the Columbia Scholastic Press Association, including all six places in the Interactive Graphics category.
Day 1 Public Safety Notice: Assaults near Worthen Arena and Student Health Center Public Safety Notice Sent: Wednesday, April 07, 2010 10:49 AM To: MEmergency Broadcast
University Police are reporting two complaints of assault following incidents at approximately 8:00 a.m. this morning, April 7, in the vicinity of Worthen Arena and the Student Health Center. According to Assistant Chief Robert Fey, two women walking in the area reported being slapped on their buttocks by a white male as he rode past them on a bicycle. Fey urged anyone with information about these assaults to contact University Police immediately at 285-1111.
Police Chief Gene Burton also took the opportunity to again stress to all members of the university community that they remain alert to their surroundings at all times and, especially at night or in early morning darkness, refrain from traveling alone. As appropriate, he said, students and others should make use of Ball State’s free shuttle service for convenient and safe transport across campus.
University president reacts President's Perspective: April 9, 2010president@bsu.edu [president@bsu.edu] Sent: Friday, April 09, 2010 10:08 AM
President Jo Ann M. Gora As most of you know, there were assaults on women near Neely Avenue Wednesday morning. Yesterday The Ball State Daily News reminded the campus community that assault is not something to laugh about. I commend the Daily News for its stance. I also appreciate that two victims stepped forward to file police reports. This will allow our university police to pursue a resolution. The police responded appropriately with a public safety notice that asked for the community's help in identifying the perpetrator. The purpose of these notices is to elevate awareness about such incidents on campus and provide official information to mitigate misinformation.
I am disappointed by the reaction of a portion of the student body. The creation of a Facebook page mocking these incidents and inviting similar behavior for fun goes beyond poor judgment. Such mimicking and mocking has the effect of condoning strangers to violate personal space and touch others without warning. It is both insensitive and disrespectful to anyone who has ever been assaulted, including the victims, and to the entire Ball State community. This attempt at humor misses the mark badly and is an embarrassment to the university.
The personal safety of every member of our Ball State community is important. While I believe the incidents on Wednesday were isolated, the only way to ensure that is to work together as a community in a respectful manner.
Other stories: United Press International Fort Wayne Journal-Gazette WTHI-TV, Terre Haute WANE-TV, Fort Wayne WIBC-FM, newsradio, Indianapolis WBBM-AM newsradio, Chicago The Daily Show, online forum Dave Barry Blog, Miami Herald Fark.com Deadspin.com
In any revolution one of the biggest fights begins with language.
Today for instance, in a 24/7 world of print, cable, broadcast and Web updates, what exactly is "journalism"? Does it cover both The New York Times and my neighbor's blog?
Jan Schaffer says there's a difference between journalism and "news work." And the people we call citizen journalists, she says, might be better described as "citizen media makers."
She credits Columbia University doctoral student Chris Anderson with terms like news work and "fact entrepreneurs" - bloggers like Matt Drudge, for example.
Journalism is about collecting, validating, producing and publishing news, Schaffer said. "News work is bigger than journalism. It is sharing information, facilitating conversation, crowd-sourcing stories, smart curation and aggregation, data-mining and visualization ... social shout-outs."
It's less fun to talk about but I'm glad the business of news is getting some attention, too.
"As I look at how the media ecosystem is evolving in communities large and small across the United States, I am more optimistic than pessimistic that citizens will get their information needs met," she said then.
"I also think that traditional journalists will play a smaller - albeit still important - role as the gatherers and disseminators of news.
"Others, though, will have increasingly important roles to play. They include citizen media makers, but also fact entrepreneurs, creative technologists, philanthropic foundations, universities, advocacy groups and even governments."
The J-Lab has been funding news startups around the country. Schaffer refers to "the promises and perils of this new breed of citizen journalists."
"They are not merely bloggers, inveighing against something they don’t like," she said at USC. "They are more than photographers or videographers, bearing witness to some catastrophe or breaking news event. They do more than post tweets shouting out some bit of news.
"These people have deputized themselves to systematically cover town news as best they can. Some have “beats;” they have formulated rules of governance for their news enterprises; they have guidelines for content; many have sought nonprofit status from the IRS. They edit content that comes from other contributors. They moderate comments on their sites. Many buy libel insurance."
Aside from grants, how does this work get funded?
"For the most part, they are doing this as a labor of love," Schaffer said.
"They are lucky if they can raise enough money to get reimbursed to drive to a town meeting or pay for a babysitter. They are looking to do more than just dispassionately cover their communities. They are seeking to connect and inform people in ways that might help their communities do well."
That economic angle haunts me because I teach journalism to college students. The work they're preparing for is hard, and they deserve to be paid.
Projects like J-Lab do a great job of helping us think through the nuts and bolts of content creation. The startups they fund are helping point the way to a future clouded for now by tough economic times.
We also need something like an "S-Lab," as in sales, to find economic support.
The future of news won't be decided by people who do it as a labor of love. There aren't enough volunteers for the endless hours of commitment it takes to produce serious enterprise reporting.
We'll always have blogs or outlets like them. Civic-minded volunteers will play an important role in crowd-sourcing, local-local coverage and community organizing. But if we want dispassionate beat coverage and enterprise reporting we'll need the kind of money that comes from self-sustaining businesses.
We're working on it: Online revenue is growing again, and the Web sites at some metro newspapers generate enough cash to equal newsroom payrolls. Some of us are experimenting with inexpensive multimedia tools to produce cost-effective online ads.
Ultimately, the same kind of energy and creativity we direct to the editorial side will help us through the business challenges.
We'll do the vital news work we need to do - and pay people fairly for doing it. - John Strauss, jcs1122@yahoo.com
I was presenting at a conference for citizen journalists this weekend, talking about the "Marlboro Marine" story on the fascinating multimedia site Mediastorm.com.
The Mediastorm audio slideshow, here, recounts the story of Lance Cpl. James Blake Miller, whose photograph by Luis Sinco of The Los Angeles Times became an icon of the Iraq war.
The Mediastorm piece is a very powerful story of post-traumatic stress disorder, and Sinco not only took the photographs but befriended the young Marine and tried to get him help.
Sinco's work has been widely hailed, so I was surprised when one of the people at the conference, a woman whom I later learned writes for the Web site Daily Kos under a pen name, raised her hand to ask this question:
"What do you think about the way that cigarette was Photoshopped in?" she said.
I'm not aware of that, I said, and moved along to the next topic in the presentation.
Afterward I asked her about this claim that one of the best-known photos from the Iraq War was a fake.
"It's on Snopes," she said, referring to the myth-busting Web site, Snopes.com.
As we talked I did a Google search with my iPhone but couldn't find anything.
"It's on there," she insisted. "You have to go to Snopes and do the search from there."
By then the next session was starting, and I had to go back inside. But when I got home, I looked again. In fact, a check of Snopes - and everywhere else I could look on the Web - turns up nothing. The photo and Sinco have been widely acclaimed, and as best I could tell no one has seriously charged that the image was faked.
Miller, who according to media accounts accepted his fame only reluctantly and in no way celebrated his appearance in the photo, has never challenged its accuracy. Again neither has anyone else, as best I could tell.
Which made me wonder why someone would raise an accusation of journalism fraud in the middle of a journalism workshop on such shaky grounds - if any grounds at all.
I wanted to ask the woman that, and looked her up on the Daily Kos site. Three things struck me:
- The Web site allows its writers to publish anonymously.
- There's no contact information that I could find for the person.
- Kos is the nickname of the Web site's publisher. Accuracy doesn't appear to be a big concern. If a reader wanted to point out an error in one of the pieces on his blog, he offers this advice on the site's "Contact" page:
"I only write those posts written by "kos". Please do not send feedback on other posts since, well, I didn't write them."
Get it? If you think something's inaccurate here, the publisher doesn't want to know about it.
I couldn't find any contact information for the woman who attended the seminar and impugned the photographer's integrity. So I left her a note in care of Kos, asking for more information about the Photoshop claim.
Bottom line: It's good that we're hearing more media voices, and I'm happy to help train them. But maybe along with the lessons in audio, video and interactive graphics we need to stress the highest value of all.
The Ball State Daily News won 15 Gold Circle Awards for Online Media on March 19 from the Columbia Scholastic Press Association, including all six places in the Interactive Graphics category.
It was the DN's best-ever showing in the CSPA online division. The newspaper's online sister publication, Ball Bearings, added a trio of awards for Online Magazine Design and Multimedia Presentation.
The Daily News won first, second and third place, and all three honorable mentions in the Interactive Graphics category for stories about utility bills, a plane crash, astronomy and other topics.
The newspaper took first and second place, and an honorable mention for Multimedia Presentation for stories on the Peru Circus, energy drinks and Ball State men's volleyball attendance.
Other awards included:
- Second place, Secondary Coverage, for "Flight Path," the newspaper's explanation of a light plane crash that occurred after the pilot lost consciousness.
- Second place, Breaking News, for coverage of a bomb threat at LaFollette Complex.
- Second place for News Site Design
- Two honorable mentions in the Photo and Audio Slideshow category.
- One honorable mention in the Video category.
Here is a list of all the Online Media awards presented by the CSPA today:
Journalist now serving as senior editor for an Indianapolis foundation. Specialist in digital content, public media, teaching, citizen journalism. I'm at johncstrauss@gmail.com (Thanks: Professor Dom Caristi)
