Secrets of the City

I suspect a Kate Parry column telling us how hard it is to be a journalist may be in the works.

Now the Strib and PiPRess know what it’s like for a student writing a term paper with no sources but Wikipedia. Maybe they should get off their asses and go report for themselves sometimes.

I feel for Laura Billings: a whole column based on a bogus piece of information. Not good.

Its just extremely lame that both the PP (March 7) and the Strib (March just picked up this from the NYT (March 4) and ran with it with absolutely no research. This is why it’s stupid to even subscribe to the local papers, unless you can live without your daily Foxtrot. The regurgitate other stories from other papers if not copying outright.

Yes you do need to sign up for NYT stories.

Even Lamer is that the NYT article was a direct rip from the London Times from February 26th.

Where is my fat journalist salary. I’m pretty sure I can cut and copy stuff out of article from foreign press websites.

I feel for Laura Billings: a whole column based on a bogus piece of information. Not good.

But doesn’t that describe all of Ms. Billings’ columns?

Pretty weak. It wouldn’t have taken much to google something that on the surface seems so absurd.

I also think that these people could use a little brush up on basic genetics. Get out your Punnett Squares everyone and lets learn a little bit about recessive and dominate genes.

This is another instance where I say to myself, “Self, if you had done that in j-school you would not have earned your degree.”

P-a-t-h-e-t-i-c. Pathetic.

The sad thing is Kevin, that I’ve taught at the U of M J school, and I can tell you that there is not much barrier to getting a degree in “journalism.” I could show you some of the stuff written by my students over the years and it would make you cry.

On a related topic, anyone noticed the recent flap at the Village Voice about falsification of a story?

figures, i always assumed the strib just RSS’d off the AP to gather their news.

Isn’t the aim of the Strib to be the newspaper for people who don’t read newspapers?

I went to MSU Mankato and they are pretty good about making sure their students at least have a brain in their head.

Maybe this is new to some people, but if you look in most newspapers, a majority of the stories are wire stories from various news services and not written locally.

Exactly, Mpls Simpleton . We don’t say that other rare recessive traits (such as Tay Sachs or cystic fibrosis) are extinct, so why should a hair color gene become extinct?

Re: the Village Voice … a reporter fabricates part of a story, and he is only suspended? The paper’s reaction is curious. IMHO, they’re just as culpable as the guy that wrote the piece. I’d like to see the original story that slipped past their rigorous fact-checkers to be sure, but they’ve pulled it from the site.

I would like to know when men will stop being bald. Then I want to get myself frozen and wake up during that time, so I can have my luxurious head of hair back. Then I will have a pompadour!

I’m not surprised that the Strib doesn’t fact check the “little blue boxes” the way they check an actual story. Hell, they probably have an intern throw those things together. But the PiPress ran a whole column based on the bogus press release? That’s just sad.

Gawker is your hookup for Nick Sylvester coverage

Nick Sylvester is also a former Pitchfork “critic.”

Apropos of nothing, allow me to present this and this.

Tom,
Nice to know you still have the same contempt for J-school students that you showed during class.

The MSU Reporter fact-checker couldn’t keep Norm Coleman from becoming the governor of Minnesota, however…

http://www.msureporter.com/vnews/display.v/ART/2006/03/09/4410381e5d27c

Ricky: only some of them. I’ve hired four of my students, so far. I can post some of the work from the mag writing class if you’d like to see whether or not criticism of some of the others is justified.

Here’s one of my favorites: “The magazine closed its West Coast office as a result of the terrorist attack that tripped the economy like a model on a runway.”

Contempt is not exactly accurate, though. Dismay is a better description of my feeling on behalf of students who got to be seniors at a major American university without ever having their work critiqued and improved before they got to me teaching a 5-level course. I blame teachers who just move people through the system. That’s the low barrier I was talking about.

I could also go into how the U divvies up its budgets among departments. To some degree it works like this: The more majors, the more students, the more money. So, speaking purely economically, a department has a tremendous disincentive to make its undergraduate courses rigorous–and thereby discourage students from taking them. I’m not saying that goes on in the J-school, but you can draw your own conclusions about which departments draw the most majors. Finally, there’s the whole problem with undergrad and grad students. The faculty is a lot more interested in the grad students than they are in the undergrads. So, the undergrads get shoved into classes that are too big, with faculty who have to teach people who aren’t interested in their topics, with faculty who are required to do research as well as teach, and with faculty who mostly abhor teaching survey level courses. In professors’ defense, they also don’t like to assign too much work, because that makes more work for them. I had classes of 30 students and required up to seven short papers. That adds up to 210 papers I had to read. Would you like to read and critique 210 U of M undergrad papers for the equivalent of about $13/hour?

Undergrads are, in effect, largely cheated out of their tuition, in my opinion. The most meaningful education they get is what they get on their own. It sure isn’t coming from a TA.

On the rare occasion a student gets a demanding teacher, it’s a huge shock–mostly because it hasn’t happened before. I made a point of asking the student who wrote the sentence above what sort of grades he’d got before he got to me. He had a 3.6 average in journalism. I didn’t believe him, so I checked his departmental records. He wasn’t lying.

Ok, one more thing: most U students have to work to pay the outrageous tuition now being charged. They neglect their academic lives because they have to wait tables 40 hours a week to pay tuition and living expenses. It’s a shitty system. And it’s a system that turns out journalists who are trained, often but not always, to just get by. That’s the effect of the system. That’s American education. The degree matters, the education doesn’t.

I followed Corey’s link to MSU paper and got distracted by the Victoria’s Secret ad and forgot to read the story.

Odds are you’re going to wager going to live to regret that particularly quotable “google” comment, jderusha.

Glass houses, stones, etc.

I’d wager rather…

Have to agree on the cut and paste jobs on NYT stories though. Pretty much why I cancelled my subscription.

I majored in journalism at the U for the same reason I smoke cigarettes–because it makes me cooler than the other kids.

God damn, I read that thing about blonde hair in the Strib and immmediately thought it was bogus (or a joke), and I’m not even a journalist. What’s the matter with these people? The Strib and the Pi Press are crap newspapers. I feel I’m far better off reading the NY Times or the Wall Street Journal a few times a week and gettting the breaking news off the ‘net. The only reason to read the Strib regularly is for the baseball scores during the summer. Otherwise, that paper and the Pioneer Press are pretty much worthless.

Not2Sure, I am sure that you’re right. I’ve already issued a correction. I regret the error.

Tom,
Solid response.
You’re right on about the larger picture. But good things can still happen in a classroom even if students are under-prepared when they get there and are too busy when they leave.

The sentence you cited is awful, but what writing teacher can’t offer a horrid example of a student’s work?
I can only talk about my own experience, but I don’t remember my time at the U being as easy as you describe. Part of that is because I did a double major, waited tables and completed a couple of internships.

As you rightly mentioned, many students at the U are badly hindered by their schedules.
I’ve often wished I had put more time into some of my classes.
Instead of doing three things (work, school, internship) OK, I should have been doing one (school) well. It’s a shitty system because I couldn’t.

Still, some classes have better results than others.
J-School classes are hit or miss. Some are challenging and rewarding and others aren’t. Upper division writing classes really didn’t have extensive writing prerequisites, so I’m not sure how far along you expected your students to be.

I’m not a bitter ex-student with a grudge, in fact I liked the class I had with you and I like your mag.
But like the students’ preparation and the writing samples we dissected in class, it could have been better.
Hopefully, none of my work made you cry. You ripped the hell out of some of it and mildly praised it sometimes too, both rightfully so.
I think a little more encouragement, help with editing and a more positive atmosphere would have improved the class a lot.

I wouldn’t want to make $13 an hour grading papers either. But then again, I don’t want to make less than that as a full time reporter, but I do.
So don’t feel too dismayed on behalf of your former students. Like you said, the most meaningful education they get is what they get on their own.

Those that really want to have a solid journalism career will figure out a way to do it.