COMM 337: Newswriting review -- the lede

I've decided we have two groups of people in Communications 337 who could use a quick-and-dirty review of COMM 209 (basic newswriting), at least the part on how to write a lede and "hang" a story from it.

First, the two types of people:

Students who haven't had COMM 209 yet and haven't studied how to organize a news story. The inverted pyramid is the basic building block.

Students who've had COMM 209 and have forgotten how to organize a news story. The inverted pyramid -- of course -- is still the basic building block.

Actually, now that I think of it, there's a third category:

Students who've had COMM 209, who remember the inverted pyramid and still could benefit from a review. And it goes without saying the inverted pyramid -- I'll bet you can see this coming by now -- is still the basic building block.

I think that covers all of us. So here goes.

For my money, the best, clearest explanation for beginners is by Lawrence Surtees of the Toronto Globe and Mail on the "SSN Newsroom" website for Canadian journalism students. Read it carefully, several times, too, and you'll understand how to organize a news story. You'll also start developing a feel for when to use a hard lede, when to use a soft lede and how to craft a lede that introduces the key elements of the rest of the story. Surtees also has an excellent tip sheet on "How to Write a Great News Story" that goes into this business of hard and soft news stories in a little more detail. I've assigned it once already, but it wouldn't hurt to read it again.

Here's something I learned from my first city editor, the late Dick Smyser of The Oak Ridger, a daily in Oak Ridge, Tenn. Dick told us to think of four or five keywords that had to be in the story. "Four die in flash flood," or "City council raises taxes." Those words would be in the lede.

Here's another link. A journalism student named David Cohn has an explanation of why some of us spell it "lede" in his blog DigiDave. It's basically so you don't get "lead" (the leading part of the story) it confused with "lead" (the metal). Cohn also has an example of what "Little Red Riding Hood" would look like with a hard news lede:

"A 10-year-old girl and her bed-ridden grandmother escaped death yesterday after a woodsman hacked open a cross-dressing wolf that swallowed them whole."

Try it. Choose a fairy tale or well-known story, and write a hard-news lede for it. Post it as a comment to this blog.

COMM 150, 207, 337, 393, etc. -- "30" and career advice

Cross-posted to all my blogs.

Found while surfing The San Francisco Chronicle's website SFGate, a "30 piece" by outdoors writer Paul McHugh with a bit of advice for any young people considering making journalism a career." He sums it up in three words:

Go for it!

The column, which ran in the print edition Thursday, was McHugh's last. He's retiring after 22 years on the outdoors beat.

"I'm about to fold my tent and take a hike," said McHugh. "And yes, I do mean that literally."

Like many journalists, McHugh said he's proudest of the stories that exposed abuses and helped correct them:

One great part of a newspaper job is that it awards permission to ask questions and seek answers. I've focused on trying to wield that power well, particularly while facing folks who didn't seem inclined to answer. This job hasn't been only about fun; I've striven to address real resource and public-access issues.

On a few occasions, I've been able to perform investigative work that's at the heart of our journalistic mission. I broke up a cabal of the heedless and malfeasant, helping Asilomar become a well-managed funding source for our state parks department. I ushered an abusive administrator out the door of the California State Parks Foundation, and helped that organization to revive. Fighting for the public felt fabulous. If any of you young folks out there should feel tempted to join the right honorable crusade of journalism, here's my best advice: Go for it! You are needed. Especially if you have the insight and multimedia skills to help journalism re-invent itself for this new century.

McHugh says, "Humanity's age of exploration, of adventure and of existential challenge is far from over," even though the present isn't very inspiring. Again, his advice sums up in three words: Go for it! He adds:

History's overarching lesson, as far as I can tell, is that a time of ease ought to be used in steady preparation for times of hardship or calamity ahead - which will come to us in their turn, as surely as sunrise. If periods of ease are used only to grow soft and indolent, then after calamity returns, you'll have to shoulder more blame than you might want.

Something worth thinking about.

But what's a "30 piece?"
Back in the days when newspapers received their news over the telegraph, the custom grew up of keying in "30" at the end of a transmission. So "30" came to stand for the end of the story, and a "30 piece" came to stand for a writer's last bylined column. Nobody ever types "30" at the end of a story anymore (except occasionally an overeager public relations intern ending their first press release), but it's a bit of nostalgia that still lingers. Like this:

-- 30 --

COMM 337: "Anatomy of a High School Dropout"

Don Murray, author of our textbook, is the subject of an odd story titled "Anatomy of a High School Dropout" in an online education magazine. (Odd for our purposes, at least, because it's written by an educator rather than a journalist.) It's by Jeanne Jacoby Smith, a specialist in rhetoric and composition pedagogy who decided "the very things that gave Murray grief in school were those that won him the Pulitzer Prize."

I was always interested in the story, because I like Murray and because I never saw a whole lot of point in school either, at least not till grad school (but that's another story and not a very interesting one). But I never looked in the Jacoby Smith piece for anything that might help my own writing until today. Then I needed to find something -- and find it quick -- for an in-class writing assignment when a half dozen students showed up without their textbooks. Smith's story was all I could think of, so I asked them to write about what they found in it that could help them with their writing as J-students.

Which means I had to go back and re-read the story for writing tips, anecdotes about Murray and other things that might help me as a writer, too. I was surprised how much I found.

For one thing, Murray bombed out in school because he'd get too interested in a project, and he'd let all the rest of the busywork slide. I used to do that, too, and it's one of the reasons I always hated school until I could do research of things that interested me in grad school. But the same habits that hurt Murray (and me) in school are the ones you need as a professional writer.

Jacoby Smith explains:

Murray hungered for in-depth immersion in a subject of his own choosing. What mattered were topics he cared passionately about. He was motivated for a career in writing, for meaningful work that would point him in that direction, but he was not motivated for high school, which did not expedite his cause. When topics of interest captured Murray's attention, days would pass until he surfaced again. He reflects on the situation, "I was a compulsive reader held back by my ... teachers since I read more, far more, than was required. I knew I could learn what I needed to learn." His sense of efficacy, the knowledge that he could do what he determined to do, is characteristic of resilient children.

Whatever Murray decided to do he did with passion. If he failed, he did so abysmally. If he passed, he excelled beyond expectations. His Latin teacher informed him that he was her best translator in class, but in grammar he failed. Today, Murray laughs, "I simply didn't care enough about past participle, intransitive ... verbs."

Wow! That's what I was like all the way through school. I didn't much care for grammar, either. Still don't.

But the way Murray threw himself into research is exactly what pays off in journalism. In a lot of workplace settings, as a matter of fact. Jacoby Smith says Murray is an example of a "resiliant child," a type of student she's trying to reach. I don't know about that, but he was a good enough journalist to get a job with Time right out of school and win a Pulitzer Prize.

The other part I liked has to do with Murray's emphasis on surprise. One reason he was a good writer (a good teacher, too, I think) is because he was always open to being surprised. In fact, he insisted on it. Jacoby Smith says Murray:

... passed most courses, but barely. In his words, "I couldn't make sense of the work if there was no mystery involved."

What is "mystery" for Murray?

Anything that involves surprise. To this day he writes about his craft as putting pen to paper "to write what I do not expect. I invite, encourage, cultivate, welcome, and follow surprise." Though he spent his life as a reporter, writer, and writing coach, he confesses to teaching that which cannot be taught. A writer, he says, hears the voice in his head creating, unraveling, revising, envisioning the writing as it comes. Writing has become an obsession to reveal that which he does not know -- a form of ultimate reality, his daily revelation. He authors faith at the point of a pen and talks about the "voice within, the voice of the text." He claims he can pick out a newsroom's best reporters by watching them silently (prayerfully?) voice the stories as they flow onto the page.

I'm leaving out a couple of footnotes here. You can check them in the original. To me, the main thing here is surprise. It's key to the way I'm trying to teach this whole course in advanced journalistic writing.

In fact, that's what happened when I assigned the Jacoby Smith article in class. I wasn't expecting to, and it was a pleasant surprise. But I guess that's the point.

COMM 337: Your first blogs, a note on grades

Time to close the books on the assignment I gave you last week, which was to create a blog and post your answers to the question about Donald Murray's last columns to the blog. I think we're off to a halfway decent start, although I do kinda think it might have been a better start if more of you had bothered to do the @#$%! assignment. Some overall observations after reading your responses.

What I like about your blogs.

When I assigned you to read stuff by and about an 82-year-old man, I wasn't sure whether his stuff was going to bridge the generation gap. And I'm never sure how much my students are going to like the same things I do. Sometimes you do, sometimes you don't. It's always a gamble.

This time I thought the gamble paid off.

Something I didn't expect: Most of you commented on Murray's way of life, the way he dealt with personal matters or the way his writing reflected his way of living. His writing tips are good, but I think what he really has to offer is in the attitudes he brings to the craft. And it sounds like you're picking up on that. Good! It's a surprise, but I like surprises (well, most surprises). And I encourage all of you to look for surprises, to delight in surprises as we go along. We'll deal more with surprise as we go along.

Some of your reactions that I liked:

"While reading all of Donald Murray's articles, I got the sense that he thoroughly enjoyed what he was doing," said Christina Ostermeier. "He brought his love of life and writing out in every word he wrote. Although at times I felt a hint of sadness in his writing when mentioning his wife, who passed away before him, I think he still just loved the fact that he got the chance to mention her in his articles."

Christina went on to say that's something in Murray's writing we can all model in our own, writing about the things and the people we know and enjoying it to the hilt. I agree 100 percent.

Other comments that I liked: Ben Harley said:

... What I truly learned from him, and I think I should try to integrate into my own life, I found in his obituary.

"My parents and teachers got together and decided I was stupid," he wrote last year. "My response was to develop a private mantra: 'I'm stupid but I can come in early and stay late.' Surprise. It worked. Good work habits will beat talent every time."

I try to use this idea at work too. This is just a great mantra. Hopefully I have talent, but in case I don't I can still succeed as a writer.

Agreed. Didn't somebody once say success is 1 percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration?

Michele Bearss said there was advice in Murray's columns she could use, but "I would only use it on a personal level." She added:

Within the columns that we were assigned to read it sounded almost like Murray's preparation to leave this world. Almost as if it was his last advice to his readers. Throughout his 82 years of life, Murray wrote a lot of articles and toward the end of his life they were focused mostly on the advice he would want to give to his young readers before he past. In the article titled, "Adventures Close to Home" Murray writes, "Do I stay at home or go out? Each invitation has its own challenge, peculiar to our combination of ailments, discomforts, indignities. The easy way is to stay home watching soap operas as my father did in his last years. But I want to live the life I have been unexpectedly given as fully as possible."

Amen. Good advice for all of us. I like the quote, too, and what he said about life being unexpected. Kind of like surprises.

If you want want to see a model for what a good blog item for class can look like, visit Robert Schwartz' blog. I'll just quote the whole thing:

The one thing I found interesting about Donald Murray's obituary was this quote:

"Each time I sit down to write I don't know if I can do it," he wrote. "The flow of writing is always a surprise and a challenge. Click the computer on and I am 17 again, wanting to write and not knowing if I can."

Even at age 82, he was never sure he'd be able to complete his next assignment. Not because of any physical ailment, but because of the uncertainty that comes with the blank page -- something that all writers share at some point or another, if not all the time. It's interesting to know that even someone of his age and experience would continue to face that problem up to his death.

That blank sheet of paper may turn into a blank computer screen with changing tecnhology, but it never goes away.

What I didn't like.

I would have been happier if more people had done the assignment. This is a writing course, and I don't know any way to learn how to write without doing some writing. If you don't write, you can't learn to write. It's not rocket science, is it?

A word or two about grades.

It would be a violation of federal law for me to post grades to the internet, but I am allowed to make some general observations. One is that you have to do the assignment to get a passing grade. If you don't do an assignment, you get a zero. If you do half the assignment (if you create the assigned blog but don't bother to post anything to it, for example), you get a grade of 50 percent. If you consult our syllabus for COMM 337, you will see the following notice in the section on means of evaluation: "The instructor's grading scale is as follows: A = 100-90. B = 89-80. C = 79-70. D = 69-60. E = 59-0." Do the math.

COMM 337: Wed. in-class exercise

I developed an instinct for story, the dramatic interaction between people that moved forward with cause and effect. -- Donald Murray

In Chapter 1 of "Writing to Deadline," Don Murray tells how he developed "an instinct for story," something he says every newswriter ought to have. Typically, he tells how he developed the story-telling instinct by telling a story ... the story of how he learned to tell a story. Wow. Kinda post-modern, isn't it? But he also lists several journalistic principles he learned -- things like accuracy, using verbs and nouns, "discovery," writing tight.

Read Washington Post staff writer Teresa Wiltz' Aug. 29 story "Still Singing Those Post-Katrina Blues" and analyze it in terms of Murray's principles. How does she practice the craft? By reading between the lines, what can you tell about the way she reported the story? How does it stack up in terms of accuracy, conciseness, order, clarity, voice and especially "discovery" and "voice?" What do you think Murray means by the terms? You probably won't be able to tell how Wiltz wrote earlier drafts of the story (I can't)! But you can analyze the voice that comes from working with the story and "adapt[ing] to the writing task and the music of the voice" (9). Look at her word choices, the rhythm of the words, the way she picks up a little bit of the New Orleans way of speaking. How can you use some of her techniques in your own writing?

Post your answers as comments to this blogpost.

COMM 337 - links to your blogs / FINAL LIST

Here's a roster of weblogs in COMM 337 so far, as complete as I can make it. If I don't have your address posted yet, please email it to me. If you want to change yours, correct me, please don't hesitate to let me know. Make a note of the *permalink for this post, because you'll be using it to keep track of class discussion, etc.

• Quinn Allen untitled (qa-vs-qsa)
  
  
• Michele Bearss untitled (writing4weenies)
  
  
• Jeremy Cook COMM 337 Advance Journalism
  
  
• Eric Craddock eric
  
  
• Shalon Davis untitled (shalonspot)
  
  
• Jeremy Dixon Jeremy D's Blog
  
  
• Whitney Drobnack untitled (com337mwf1200)
  
  
• Terah Ellison COM 337 Journal
  
  
• Jeff Hall Journalism
  
  
• Ben Harley untitled (vicious_apathy)
  
  
• Deanna Jones untitled (Ms. Jones)
  
  
• Zach Kirchner Advanced Journalism 337
  
  
• Mitch Ladd The Best Blog Names Are Taken
  
  
• Meghan McCarthy meghanmccarthy
  
  
• Gina Moscardelli Blogger Gina
  
  
• Christina Ostermeier untitled (5568blog)
  
  
• Robert Schwartz Advanced Journalism Writing
  
  
• Marqueta Stewart queta-marqueta
  
  

As the rest of you (the ones with a blank after your names) get your blogs created, please let me know the addresses so we can complete the class roster. This is an ongoing assignment that will not go away. If you haven't gotten around to posting your answer to the first question on the Donald Murray obit and columns in The Boston Globe, that one won't go away either!

_______________________
* A permalink is a permanent link for a blog post. Explains the techterms.com website, they allow us to bookmark a blog post so we can come back to it later, even after "the posting is outdated and no longer present on the home page."

COMM 337: Quotes, color in New Orleans story / READ!

Cross-posted from my HUM 223 blog ...

A by-lined story in The Washington Post this morning. Very complex. Very well written. Notice the way staff reporter Teresa Wiltz starts with a soft lede ... a word picture of jazzman John Boutte singing and counting money that leads her into the main point of the story, a nut graf that very simply says, "Nearly 4,000 New Orleans musicians were sent scattering after Hurricane Katrina hit on Aug. 29, 2005. Many of them have been trying to return ever since. Today the soul of the city -- its rich musical legacy-- is at risk."

Notice especially how she blends description -- which journalists like to call "color" -- and quotes with background. As you read it, can you imagine her sitting in cars taking notes, going to a night club in the 9th Ward, soaking up color and getting people's words down? As you read it, look for the way she reported the story, in other words.

Will the New Orleans music scene ever get back to what it was before Hurricane Katrina hit in 2005? Probably not, says an article in this morning's Washington Post. Read it (and read it now because The Post doesn't archive stories on its website forever). The spirit of the music will live on, but an awful lot has been lost. This story suggests how much.

Here's the the main point of the story, by staff writer Teresa Wiltz:

Nearly 4,000 New Orleans musicians were sent scattering after Hurricane Katrina hit on Aug. 29, 2005. Many of them have been trying to return ever since. Today the soul of the city -- its rich musical legacy-- is at risk.

"Everything is shrinking," says David Freedman, general manager of WWOZ-FM, a public radio station in the city. "In the clubs, you get the impression that all's back to normal. When you start scratching the surface, it's smoke and mirrors.

"So many musicians have not come back. How many can we lose before we lose that dynamic? To what degree do we just become a tourist theme park?"

By industry insiders' estimates, a third of the city's musicians [...] have found a way back home for good. Another third, like Lumar LeBlanc of the brass band Soul Rebels, are doing what he calls "the double Zip code thing," parachuting into town for gigs and then heading back to temporary homes in Houston, Atlanta, Los Angeles. The final third, like blind bluesman Henry Butler, stuck in Denver, have yet to make it back.

Among the double Zip-coders is Ivan Neville, singer, songwriter, keyboardist, son of Aaron. His mom's house was washed away. She passed in January. His dad settled near Nashville. Neville relocated to Austin, jetting in and out of New Orleans a couple times a month. As for making a permanent move back home?

"I don't see it," Neville, 48, says between sets at the Maple Leaf in the city's Uptown section. "Not in the near future. The spirit of New Orleans is alive. But it will never be the same again."

Wiltz notes that high schools lost their musical instruments, and 40 percent of their students. "With the loss of schools comes the loss of teaching jobs, work that musicians counted on to pay the rent between gigs," she adds. "With the loss of students comes the loss of a future generation of musicians."

I'm cross-posting this story to my advanced journalism blog, too, because it's so well written. See how Wiltz conveys the spirit of a little club in the 9th Ward, the part of the city hit hardest by the 2005 flooding:

But the hardest thing to preserve is something that can't be purchased. It is that which New Orleanians so desperately want to preserve: the feel of the city, that NOLA mojo, the likes of which can be found in Bullets, a crowded little Mid-City joint. Inside, trumpeter Kermit Ruffins and his band, the Barbecue Swingers, are jammed against the window. A steady stream of sports is playing on the TV, but no one pays much attention.

In spirit, Bullets is as far from the tourist-laden French Quarter as you can get. Here, it's buckets of Miller Lite and chicken wings served alongside Ruffins's gritty, greasy swinging "trad jazz" -- traditional jazz. The crowd is more boomer than youthful, with seasoned souls sporting tees that read "We Survived Hurricane Katrina" and "New Orleans: Proud to Call It Home." A grizzled gent leans over a newcomer, slyly uttering the post-Katrina pickup line du jour: "I really want to show you the Ninth Ward."

As the sun sets, a man comes in peddling homemade tamales; another hawks cellphone covers and disposable cameras. Tattooed white kids arrive, while a contingent of Creole matrons stands in the center of the room, arms folded, looking just a little bit aloof. Until they start to dance as one, getting down and dirty with the beat.

A man scratches away on a washboard as band members sing in Creole and English, catcalling and ululating. Everybody, it seems, knows the words, and they sing along, loud and strong, filling the tiny club with a sense of goose-bump-raising communion.

I cry Hey mama

In the morning time

Yi-Yi-Yi

"Only in New Orleans," Ruffins chants, laughing and laughing. "Only in New Orleans."

Wiltz doesn't explain how she happened to hear the "pickup line du jour." Maybe she doesn't have to.

When it comes to American music, New Orleans is the cradle. It's the Garden of Eden. It's where it all began. Wiltz' story conveys that, and in a few words -- a well chosen quote -- she conveys how much was lost in Hurrican Katrina.

This is the city that spawned Jelly Roll Morton and Louis Armstrong, Mahalia Jackson and Sidney Bechet, Randy Newman and Master P -- not to mention a long line of famous musical families: the Marsalises, the Nevilles, the Batistes, the Toussaints.

Folks like to brag that New Orleans is the northernmost tip of the Caribbean, a sentiment that has little to do with geography. It's a sensibility, evident in the food, the culture, in the French and Spanish surnames, in the old folks who cling to Creole, an Africanized French patois.

New Orleanians have always celebrated the mixing of genes, the blending of races and cultures into a potent ancestral gumbo. All this informs the music here, marinating it in nostalgia and a sense of defiant joy. New Orleanians are peculiarly tied to place, ever cognizant of history.

Drive by Congo Square, and without fail, a local will remind you that it was here that the slaves played their music on Sundays, drumming away their worries, and where a slave could earn enough extra money to buy freedom. Where the Creole orchestras played in brass band concerts -- many of whose members were the black sons of rich white fathers who sent them to Europe to be educated.

"In New York, you learn jazz, you learn the blues," Paul Sanchez says. "In New Orleans, you're born into it. Baby comes out the womb chasing the rhythm."

He's waxing lyrical as he tools around the Lower Ninth Ward, cruising in his green minivan.

"I tell you, this place is magic," Sanchez says. "I say this with sadness in my voice."

In another interview, with more well chosen quotes from a 21-year-old "jazz-funk-rock-pop" musician named Troy "Trombone Shorty" Andrews, she conveys what remains, how fragile it is and how important it is for the future. As you almost have to do in New Orleans these days, she approaches the future through the past:

When Katrina hit, Andrews was a 19-year-old wunderkind on break from touring with Lenny Kravitz. He fled with his family to Dallas, 10 crammed in his Volvo, wondering and worrying if other family members made it out, too.

He didn't stay away for long. New Orleans grounds him. Specifically, it is Faubourg Treme that feeds him -- reputed to be America's oldest black neighborhood, which nurtured the musical talents of the Rebirth Brass Band, 19th-century Creole classical composer Edmund Dede, Kermit Ruffins and Louis Prima. The neighborhood that nurtured Andrews.

Here, high-water marks along the wooden shotgun houses and shuttered nightclubs give mute testimony to the flood. Few residents returned, but today, under a highway overpass, against a backdrop of murals of long-gone jazz greats, a group of men gathers as it does every day, sitting on metal folding chairs, trying to reclaim a little bit of community. Most of them don't live here any longer.

"These," Andrews says, pointing at the men as he pulls up alongside them in his oversize SUV, "are the last that's left. This is the soul of the neighborhood."

He rolls down the window. "Hey, Dad. Do you need anything? You hungry?" His father, James, smiles at him, shakes his head.

This is where Trombone Shorty comes to touch base, to get his "laugh on," to run errands for his elders. To remind himself not to get a big head. To remind himself of the importance of reaching back, to pull along other musicians who aren't as fortunate as he.

"New Orleans made me who I am," Andrews says. "I can't leave it.

"I need New Orleans. And New Orleans needs me."

COMM 337: Ground rules/Fri. assignment

On Friday we will cover a talk by two Catholic priests who have experience in Iraq. As it now stands, it will be in the Presidents Room (L15) at noon and it will replace the Friday writing assignment I mentioned previously. Any updates I will post to this blog.

We have been asked to abide by certain ground rules regarding identification of the speakers or the agency sponsoring the talk: (1) we don't identify the speakers by name in what we write; and (2) we don't identify the sponsoring agency in anything we write. No pictures and no sound recordings, either. You wouldn't think about this at first, but both can be used to identify people. So we don't use either.

Normally journalists are very reluctant to quote anonymous sources. But where there's good reason, it is not an uncommon practice. Given what is happening in Iraq, failure to abide by ground rules could literally get somebody killed. So we will be attending the talk "on background" and following Associated Press ground rules on the use of anonymous sources.

COM 337: Read and post to blog

Do this assignment after you open your blog and post the address to the COMM 337: Class blog addresses" comments field. Due Friday so I can read them and evaluate them over the weekend.

Donald Murray, author of our textbook "Writing to Deadline" and columnist for The Boston Globe," died at the end of last year. He was 82.

Here's what I want you to do:

1. Read Murray's obituary in The Globe and the last few columns he wrote, which are still available on the newspaper's website. (Talk about a guy who kept going right up to the end. He turned in his last column on a Friday, he died Saturday and the column appeared in Tuesday's paper.) Pay special attention to his last column, headlined "Friends' caring, sharing shows the way," and the column headed "Finding pleasure in the challenge of a blank sheet" that ran Dec. 26.

2. Write an answer to the following question(s) and post to your blog. (Especially if you're not used to blogging yet, I would recommend drafting your answers in Microsoft Word and copy-and-pasting them to the blog. If you post links, see this important *warning at the bottom of the page. If you're not posting links yet, it'll just confuse you. That's why I'm putting it at the bottom like an old-fashioned footnote.) Here's the question:

Donald Murray was 82 years old when he did. Is there anything in his last few columns that you can learn from in your own career as a professional writer?

No right answers here, although I do want you to think about these columns and see if there's anything in them you can use in your own writing. You all have different goals, and different ways of writing, so you'll get different things out of the columns and/or the obituary ... something he says about writing and the craft of writing, the way he handled his career, the way he writes, his style, word choices, etc., whatever. It's up to you, but I think he'll have something to say to all of us as writers.

An example: If I were doing this exercise, I might post a blog on the way he kept churning out columns in old age when life was obviously getting difficult for him and he had a good excuse to just sit back and not put in the effort, but clearly it was important to him to keep meeting deadlines. His daughter said something about how he lived through his writing. But I also like what he said about people might think he's stupid (although I seriously doubt anybody really did), but he could work harder. And it blows me away his last column was thanking his friends for being there for him. Did he know it was going to be his last?

No wrong answers, either. Although "die young and leave a good-looking corpse" might come close to being one.

* Warning footnote on hypertext links. Here's something I found out the hard way: If you type out hypertext -- that stuff that goes "a href equal-sign quote" you used to link to your blogs -- in Microsoft Word, Bill @#$&ing Gates will put "curly quotes" in automatically, and Blogger won't know what to do with them. I just put x's in the draft and type in the hypertext later in Blogger.

COM 337: Class blog addresses

As soon as you've opened your blog, you need to let the rest of us know your address. So I've set up a handy-dandy place you can do that. It's this post. Here are the steps:

1. Go down to the end of this post where it says "posted by Pete # 3:20 PM 0 comments" (except the number of comments will change as you follow the rest of the instructions), and click on where it says "___ comments." That will open up the comment field.

2. In the comment field, write a message telling us what you're naming your blog and creating a link to it (which is why the number of comments will change, but you've figured that out already so I don't need to tell you, right)?

Here's how you do a link. You'll have to use the angle brackets, the keys that look like "less than" and "greater than" from math class that you'll find as the shift of the comma and the period on your keyboard. Stuff that's enclosed in angle brackets is called an HTML "tag." (And HTML is short for Hypertext Markup Language. But I'll bet you already knew that, too.)

3. Start your link by entering <a href=" Then copy your blog's address (or URL) from the "Address" field on your browser and paste it in right after the quote mark. Follow it with another "> so it looks something like this <a href="yourblog.blogspot.com"> all run together with no spaces.

4. Next you need some text that you highlight so it'll take readers to your blog when they click on it. That's called hypertext. If you're doing this for the first time, it's easiest to say something like: Click here for the link. And highlight the word "here." It'll look like this: Click <a href="yourblog.blogspot.com">here</a> for link.

5. Make sure you put your address in the message. Just type it in normally without any of the angle brackets.

You may get all of this right the first time. You may not. (Don't feel bad if you don't! Just keep trying.) Pretty quickly, you'll get used to it. And it's an important thing to know because you'll be doing a lot of linking on your blogs as you get under way.

Once you've made the link, save the comment to this blogpost and make a note of the headline, the date, the permalink address of this post or whatever. We'll be coming back to it.

So the next time you're sitting at a bar and you notice somebody next to you staring into their beer and muttering "angle bracket a space href equals quote URL quote angle bracket," you'll understand why. Buy 'em a round. They may need it.

COMM 337 assignment: Starting your blogs

You'll notice on your syllabus for Communications 337 I'm requiring you to create a blog and do a lot of your work in the form of posts to that blog. I think you will enjoy this part of the class once you get used to it.

A couple of places to look to begin with:

1. There's a good brief (500 words) definition of blogging by Jill Walker Rettberg, an associate professor at the University of Bergen in Norway. She's writing a book on blogging and also has an academic research blog on blogging called jill/txt. Some of her discussion is way over my head, but she's one of the best people I've read on the theory behind the phenomenon.

2. To see what a major metro newspaper does with blogs, go to The Chicago Tribune's homepage and look for the "Latest from our blogs" box. Today's is in the middle of the page, a little to the left and directly below the chicagotribune.com nameplate. It'll probably be in more or less the same place tomorrow (Monday) when you see it. Read several of the blogs, and they'll give you a good idea of some of the possibilities.

We'll look at several other blogs in class, and you'll link to several in one of your first posts. So start looking for blogs that you can model yours after. See what interests you and what doesn't. One thing you can do is express your personality (although maybe not in the same way(s) as MySpace) in a blog. So look around and see what appeals to you and what techniques you can use in your own blog.

By the end of the week, you should be ready to start your blog. I suggest Blogger. It's relentlessly user-friendly. But you may have another host that you like better. If so,

One warning, though: Blogging is a form of publication. One of my old bosses, an elected state official, used to say: "Never put anything in writing you wouldn't want to see leaked to The [Chicago] Trib or The Sun-Times." Good advice! Never put anything on your blog you wouldn't want to see printed out and clipped to your resume before a job interview. But you can -- and should -- express yourself more informally in a blog than you do in a college paper. In evaluating your blogs, I'll be guided by the applicable standards in the Writing Assessment Rubric linked to my faculty page.

Grammar rules!

Ever think typos aren't important? Oh, people will know what I meant even if I didn't dot all the I's and cross all the T's? Well, take a look at the mess the Arkansas state legislature has to clean up. It all began when an extra "not" crept into a law on the age of consent. Here's the story, as reported by Andrew DeMillo of The Associated Press:

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — A law passed this year allows Arkansans of any age — even infants — to marry if their parents agree, and the governor may call a special session to fix the mistake, lawmakers said Friday.

The legislation was intended to establish 18 as the minimum age to marry but also allow pregnant teenagers who are younger to marry with parental consent, bill sponsor Rep. Will Bond said. An extraneous "not" in the bill, however, allows anyone who is not pregnant to marry at any age if parents allow it.

So Arkansas got worldwide headlines when DeMillo's story was picked by AP members who couldn't resist it. The Seattle Times' was typical: "Law lets even babies marry with parents' OK."

AP's original headline was probably something like this: "Mistake in Ark. law allows toddlers to marry with parental OK." Several papers and TV stations, starting with The Commercial in Pine Bluff, Ark., used that headline Friday. And The Boston Globe, ABC News and The Guardian in London, England, had, "Mistaken Ark. law would let toddlers wed."

Other headlines: "State allows babies to marry ... with parental consent" -- USA Today. "Arkansas accidentally cuts legal age to wed to nearly zero" -- The Statesman-American in Austin, Tex. "Arkansas law lets toddlers tie the knot!" in The Times of India. I don't know if that's pun on the extra "not" or not. But how about this in The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette? "Deletion of ‘not’ in marriage-age law knotted up."

Not the image you want to project of your state, or your legislature! (And that "not" belongs where it is.)

Here's how it happened. With the extra word, the law reads like this: "In order for a person who is younger than eighteen (18) years of age and who is not pregnant to obtain a marriage license, the person must provide the county clerk with evidence of parental consent to the marriage."

Well, think about it. Babies are under 18, and they're rarely pregnant. So all they need is parental consent. Right? So a code-revision commission -- which fixes typographical and technical errors in laws -- tried to correct the mistake, but The Arkansas Legislative Council ruled Friday the commission went beyond its powers.

"You're either pregnant or you're not pregnant," said Sen. Dave Bisbee, a Republican. "Rarely will that be a typographical error."

Bisbee is a quotable guy, by the way. Here's what he told The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette before the legislative council met Friday:

“Did your mother explain to you the difference between being pregnant and not being pregnant ? It’s not technical,” he said in an interview.

Arkansas lawmakers are worried about having the state become a pedophile magnet (which seems unlikely to me but not something I'd want on my resume if I were a co-sponsor of the age-of-consent bill). Me, I'm worried about all the poor slobs who were supposed to be proofreading bills before the House and Senate passed them and the governor signed them. How did they let this one slip by? Are their next jobs going to be with Wendy's or Burger King?

HUM 221 223 -- culture and cuisine

Here's something to think about as we consider the cultural values that influence artistic expressions as different as blues, jazz, hip hop, powwow dancing, Native American poetry and storytelling. Culture also determines what we like to eat, as BBC News correspondent Richard Black notes in this account of why the Japanese consider whale a delicacy. Black reports:

... I was in a waterfront cafe in Shimonoseki, a long-time whaling port.

In front of me was whale meat, from an animal which it is simply unthinkable to eat in Britain - so unthinkable that I had to promise my daughters I would not touch a morsel of it during my time in Japan.

Yet once in Japan, nothing seemed more normal.

This leads him into some fascinating interviews, with a retired Japanese whaler, with an Australian who hunts kangaroos for sport ... well, read it, I can't do it justice in a summary.

Which in turn leads Black into some heavy-duty philosophizing about what we eat -- and don't eat -- and why:

Back in Tokyo, I sat one evening in a sushi restaurant dining with a young, modern urban Japanese lady who was tucking into some raw whale.

I asked whether she would ever eat dog. She looked shocked. No, no, she told me, it would be unthinkable - but her whale was delicious.

A few years before, in Vietnam, I had seen restaurants with cooked dogs hanging up outside, much as Chinese restaurants in Western cities display cooked ducks and slabs of roast pork.

So would Vietnamese people ever eat whale? Apparently not, I am told - it would be unthinkable.

So why the contradiction? Why is it OK to eat horses in France and Italy but not in Britain? Why do Finns proudly serve reindeer, and Icelanders puffin, while others recoil at the thought of eating them?

Does every society concoct its own list of what is acceptable and what is not?

Does every individual do the same? Is it just culture? And if it is, is there any hope of securing agreement between different camps on issues like whaling? Is it even right to try?

What do you think? Ever eaten grasshopper? Rattlesnake? Frog's legs? Ever think about what goes into a hot dog? How does our culture determine what we eat -- and don't eat -- and what we listen to and don't listen to?

Disclosure. I probably shouldn't admit this in public, but I've eaten whale. In Norway, which like Japan is a whaling nation. It tasted a lot like beef. (Which came as a surprise, but shouldn't have. Whales are mammals.) I've had reindeer sausage, too, in Alaska. Not bad. It tasted about like summer sausage.

HUM 221, 223: Fr. Michael Oleksa on culture

Fr. Michael Oleksa, Alaska educator and Russian Orthodox priest, has a talk on cross-cultural communication on Alaska LitSite. It's an edited transcript of a speech he gave at a conference on The Future of Alaska sponsored by the Alaska Humanities Forum and the First Alaskans Foundation.

I need to link it to my syllabuses for the interdisciplinary humanities courses.

Some highlights:

• A definition of culture. What’s your culture? It’s a hard thing to define, isn’t it? Look it up in the dictionary -- Webster is of absolutely no help. They’ll start with bacteria for one thing … But when we ask, “What is your culture?” how do you define that? How do you conceptualize it? Talking about your own culture is one of the most difficult things to do, because your culture is the air you breathe. It’s the aquarium into which you were born, and it’s very hard to imagine what life would have been like if you had been born in a lake or in the ocean. Your aquarium is your world. That’s one way of thinking of culture, but that’s limiting.
  
  I’d like to think of culture as the way you understand the game of life. All games have certain rules and regulations that govern them, basic skills that have to be learned in order to win. If you were born into the culture that organizes conferences like this, you were born into a culture that takes time very seriously. It measures time. You have proverbs like “time is money,” and “don’t waste time.” You talk about time as if it were a quantity or a location. Time is something you can be on or ahead of or behind, and that’s why you have to kill a lot of time before it gets you.
  
  If you were born in rural Alaska, however, you don’t necessarily have that sense of time at all. It’s a different ball game, and that’s the first point I want to make. If your culture is the game of life as you play it, because it’s the only aquarium you’ve ever been in, we often assume that our ball game is the only ball game there is -- that everyone plays life the same way, according to the same rules, with the same presuppositions and with the same goals. Then, when you go to another culture, you’re suddenly up against another ball game and you realize not everybody’s playing on the same field with the same equipment, using the same skills to score the same points.
  
  


• A sense of place, culture and story ... For a newcomer to Alaska flying over our gorgeous wilderness territory, one mountain’s the same as another. They’re all pretty, but none of them strike the viewer, the tourist, as more significant than another one. But ask the Native population who lives in that ecosystem about that terrain, and some places have greater significance than others. There are stories behind those mountains. There are stories on that lake, on the lake shore.
  
  A few months ago at a conference out on the Alaska Peninsula, I tried to get some guys to talk about their village and why it was important to them. I asked them, “Tell me a story about a place near the village.”
  
  One of the men in the group said, “I’ve got one. When I was a boy, I went out on my first moose hunt with my uncle and he took me to a particular place down the river and such. We got to a certain location and we looked further down, and on the hill beyond us a moose emerged from the brush. My uncle said, 'It’s yours, this is your moose hunt, this is your moose.' So I raised my rifle and I shot the moose. It went right down and my uncle was so proud of me. He congratulated me on my first successful moose hunt, and we started moving our boat closer, but the moose stood up again. My uncle slowed the boat down. He said, 'You better shoot again.' So I shot a second time, but we couldn’t believe that moose was that strong to survive the first shot. We got to the hill itself, and as we were climbing the hill, that moose stood up a third time. My uncle said, 'Well, better do it again.' The third time, the moose went down and stayed down. When we got to the top of that hill, boy, were we surprised -- three moose!' No one’s ever written that story down. He said, “Every time I go past that bend in the river, every time I look at that hill, I think Three Moose Hill.”
  


• Language, culture and schools Public schools were founded over a century ago to assimilate the immigrants who were pouring into the United States, passing the Statue of Liberty, being processed in a day or two at Ellis Island, and flooding the east coast of our country. These immigrants spoke, but probably didn’t read or write, their native languages. Almost none of them spoke English. They were of diverse languages and cultures and religions, and had very little formal education and few job skills. Public schools took them at the turn of the last century and helped their children become Americans who could function as productive citizens in society.
  
  That was the focus of public education at the turn of the last century. If we could do that then, what we need to do now is focus on helping us bridge the gaps, respecting and delighting in each other, understanding that we all have something to learn from other people precisely because they don’t play the game of life the same way we do. They don’t see reality the same way we do. We don’t want to stamp that out of them. We want to be enriched by it. It’s a very different approach -- from the melting pot to the salad bowl.
  


• Melting pot vs. 'salad bowl' The melting pot, by Supreme Court decision, had to be abandoned. The melting pot declared one particular culture to be the national norm -- it was White, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant male. If you could be that or pretend that you had actually come on the Mayflower instead of recently through Ellis Island, you were in. If you couldn’t, you were out.
  
  Finally, by the 1970s, our country reached the stage where it quit trying to put the whole salad into a blender and push the liquefy button. We recognized that we need to take delight in the fact that, in our salad bowl, the onions are onions, and the green peppers are green peppers, and the cheddar cheese is cheddar cheese, and the Romaine lettuce is the lettuce, and the tomatoes are the tomatoes -- and they all have to be themselves, because they all add flavor and color and texture and make it a better salad. But then what holds it together?

HTLM exercise D R A F T

Are you Web savvy? Or for all you know, do you think HTML might be a short-order cook's abbreviation for a ham sandwich with letuce and tomato? Here's an exercise designed to give you a taste of HTML. (OK, OK, you read the assigned chapter, and you already know HTML stands for hypertext markup language. Right?) Anyway, today we'll give you a taste of HTML on The Mackerelwrapper blog, taking advantage of a feature of Blogger that lets you use simple HTML tags in the comments field.

HTML tags come in pairs. There are a few exceptions to this rule, but 99 percent of the time you have to use them in pairs. The first consists of angle brackets -- the "less than" (<) and "greater than" (>) signs you remember from math class -- around a code. And the second consists of a "less than" angle bracket and a slash -- which looks like </ -- and a "more than" angle bracket around the same code. It tells the computer to stop doing whatever the first tag told it to do. For example, the first sentence of this paragaph would look like this in HTML: <b>HTML tags come in pairs.</b> The first tag tells the computer to start setting in boldface type, and the second tag tells it to stop.

OK, let's get started. What I want you to do is to choose something to write a brief paragraph about, and post it as a comment to this blog post. Something you won't be embarrassed to publish to the World Wide Web. Cats, dogs, ferrets, the Cubs, the Cardinals, quadratic equations, dumb in-class assignments, whatever. For demonstration purposes, I'll choose butterflies.

1. Start by writing a headline. To make the type big, enclose your headline in these tags: <h1> at the beginning and </h1> at the end. In HTML it will look something like this: <h1>Flutter by, butterfly.</h1>

2. Next, write something about your subject. It doesn't matter what. But here's what does matter: I want you to find a website that explains something about your subject, and create a hypertext link to that website. Here's how it might work: As I surf the Web looking for stuff on butterflies, I come across the legend of the Chinese philosopher Chuang Chou (or Zhuangzi), who once dreamed he was a butterfly. But, according to the legend, when he woke up "he didn't know if he was Chuang Chou who had dreamt he was a butterfly, or a butterfly dreaming he was Chuang Chou." Great story, huh? Really gets you thinking. I found it in the online encyclopedia Wikipedia, so I'll create a hypertext link to it.

The HTML tag for a hypertext link starts with <a href=" and the address or URL (which stands for Uniform Resource Locater, right?) followed by "> ... so I highlight the Wikipedia page's address and copy it, then paste it into the tags so it looks like this: <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhuangzi"> ... then I'll write a few words that I want in the link and I close it with </agt; (see how it picks up the "a" from the opening tag)? Here's what my text might look like: The ancient Chinese philosopher Chuang Chou <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhuangzi">once dreamed he was a butterfly.</agt; When he woke up ...

Flutter by, butterfly

Butterflies don't make butter, but they do fly. And sometimes they make philosophy. The ancient Chinese philosopher Chuang Chou once dreamed he was a butterfly. When he woke up ...

See how the words "once dreamed he was a butterfly" are converted by the HTML tag into hypertext? There are quite a few other tags to learn in HTML (although most of us get started by pasting them in from a list of tags we find through a Google search). But this <a href=" hypertext tag is the basic building block of the World Wide Web.

Now it's your turn. Think of something to write about. Find a Web page about it. And post a hypertext link to it. You may post as a comment to this blog post.


Why don't you start by writing a headline.

Jan Morris: pendulum swing on U.S. "swagger"?

Jan Morris, British travel writer and author of a provocative book on Lincoln, has a piece in today's Guardian with any number of provocative insights on the "idea of America" -- and an evident love of Broadway show tunes.

For myself, I responded to them all too sentimentally. Like Walt Whitman before me, I heard America sing! I relished the hackneyed old lyrics - Mine eyes have seen the glory, Thy word our law, Thy paths our chosen way, Oe'r the land of the free and the home of the brave, God bless America, land that I love ... Most of the words were flaccid, many of the tunes were vulgar, but as I heard them I saw always in my mind's eye, as Whitman did, all the glorious space, grandeur and opportunity that was America, Manhattan to LA. Sea, in fact, to shining sea.

In those days we did not think of American evangelists as prophets of political extremism - they seemed more akin to the homely convictions of plantation or village chapel than to the machinations of neocons. We bridled rather at the American assumption that the US of A had been the only true victor of the second world war, but most of us did not very deeply resent the happy swagger of the legend and danced gratefully enough to the American rhythms of the time. We thought it all seemed essentially innocent.

Innocent! Dear God! Half a century, and nobody thinks that now. Far from being the most beloved country on earth, today the US is the most thoroughly detested. ...

A lot of it is standard (although I don't think Morris mentions President Bush by name), what what's evident is Morris' essential affection for Americans of 50 years ago:

A generation or two ago, most of us, wherever we lived, loved the generous self-satisfaction of it, if not in the general, at least in the particular. The GI was not then a sort of goggled monster in padded armour, but a cheerful fellow chatting up the girls and distributing candy not as a matter of policy, but out of plain goodwill - everyone's friendly guy next door. To millions of radio listeners around the world, the Voice of America was a voice of decency, and one could watch the lachrymose patriotic rituals of America - the hand on heart, the misty-eyed salute to the flag - with more affection than irony.

Morris says he hopes a new president, an artist no less, will come out of the 2008 elections, and restore what used to be:

All it needs is someone with a key to unlock that Idea again, and I hope it will be that next president, whoever it is, even now gearing up for the election. Please God, may it be a poetic president. Inspiration has been the true engine of American success, and all its greatest presidents have been people with a divine spark. The dullards may have been efficient, respected or influential, but the Jeffersons and the Roosevelts, the Lincolns and the Kennedys have all been, in their different ways, artists.

So may it be a president with the key of original inspiration who can release the Idea from its occlusion. All the ingredients are still there, after all - the kindness, the imagination, the merriment, the will, the talent, the energy, the goddam orneriness, the plain goodness - all there waiting to burst out once more and bring us back our America, blessed and blessing too.

"Give our regards to old Broadway", sang Cohan, "And say that I'll be there ere long." So will we, so will we, just as soon as America comes home.

Good high-school journalism course

An excellent-looking distance learning high school journalism course from Oregon, part of the COOLSchool website ... accredited by the Northwest Association of Accredited Schools.

A table of contents, with comments from Sue and Dean Barr, of Eugene, who copyrighted the curriculum:

Lesson 1. An Introduction. You'll be introduced to journalism through this first lesson when you write up a get-to-know-you profile as you learn the first rules of journalistic style.

Lesson 2. History of Journalism. Where we've been is important to knowing where we are going. The same is true for journalism. Journalism history will show us why we live with some of the protocols and constraints that we have today.

Lesson 3. Functions of Mass Media. In this unit you'll learn the qualities of a successful journalist and the functions of mass media in our society and its influence on our lives.

Lesson 4. Newswriting Qualities & Elements. It is important to be able to understand how a news article differs from other forms of writing, and how to distinguish between fact and opinion.

Lesson 5. Journalistic Style. If a news article is to be professional and consistent in its approach to titles, capitalization and abbreviations, it is extremely important that journalists learn and apply the rules of journalistic style.

Lesson 6. Interviewing & Gathering Information. You cannot write a complete article unless you know how to interview news sources and gather information from written sources and from the Internet.

Lesson 7. "Lead" Writing. Perhaps the most important part of the news story is the opening, called the "lead," which tells the reader what has happened. You must be able to evaluate information, select what needs to be included, and write a clear, concise lead.

Lesson 8. Newswriting. It is time to get to the real purpose of this course: to learn to write complete news articles. You'll be writing a number of different stories that will help you become a proficient journalist.

Link here to Iraqi blogs

Today's San Francisco Chronicle has an interesting overview of blogs being written from Iraq -- or, in the case of refugees -- about Iraq by Iraqis. The headline tells the story:

BAGHDAD BLOGGING
Bloggers in the war zone write both about the devastating effects of the conflict and about the events, relationships and frustrations that occur in their everyday lives

At the bottom of the story are links to Riverbend and other blogs. Riverbend is the best known in the West, perhaps, but they're all complelling because they give us a viewpoint -- a variety of viewpoints, really -- we don't get from our media in the U.S.

Chief Illiniwek 'honored' with racist webpage

American Indians have now been "honored" with a racist webpage. It was on Facebook, and it was called "If They Get Rid of the Chief I'm Becoming a Racist." It contained comments by University of Illinois students -- or people who said they were students -- about the controversy over the U of I's Chief Illiniwek.
And it demonstrated pretty conclusively the kind of trouble that racist sports mascots can lead to.

By far the most detailed and balanced report is in Inside Higher Ed, an online newsletter that covers colleges and universities. The headline, "Ugly Turn in Mascot Dispute," says it all. And the story links to a screen grab from the Facebook site. It was taken down last week after Native American faculty noticed it and grew alarmed because it threatened violence.

According to a Jan. 10 story in the Champaign News-Gazette, the offending comments were posted a month or two ago:

Late in November, according to the UI Native American House and opponents of Chief Illiniwek, one UI student reportedly wrote, "there was never a racist problem before ... but now i hate redskins and hope all those drunk, casino owning bums die." (The punctuation and spelling are as reported by the Native American House.)

About two weeks later, another UI student posted, "that's the worst part! apparently the leader of this (anti-chief) movement is of Sioux descent. Which means what, you ask? the Sioux indians are the ones that killed off the Illini indians, so she's just trying to finish what her ancestors started. I say we throw a tomohawk into her face."

It's hard to tell. Were the kids who posted this stuff being playful? Sounds like maybe they were. But when people threaten violence, you can't be too careful.

It's like a bomb scare. Even if you hear children giggling in the background when they phone the damn thing in, you don't take any chances. You evacuate the building.

So on Jan. 10, the U of I felt there'd been a little too much "honoring." The News-Gazette has the fullest account of the university''s reaction:

In an e-mail to students, faculty and staff Tuesday afternoon, UI Chancellor Richard Herman said he would not tolerate violent threats, and the university "will take all legal and disciplinary actions available in response to the threatening messages."
Herman declined to say if the university has forwarded the threats to any law enforcement agencies.

The chancellor learned of the postings earlier this week and became appalled after reading them, he said. He called the messages racist.
"From my point of view, it (the Web page) clearly promotes divisiveness and singles out people," he said, adding, "I need to make clear this sort of behavior, whether legal or illegal, is unwelcome."

In his e-mail to the UI community, Herman wrote the idea that the debate over Chief Illiniwek "could degenerate to personal attacks that threaten the physical safety and well-being of members of the campus community is something that all of us should find truly abhorrent."

Inside Higher Ed has a few more details, including the fact the website targeted (although not by name) a specific student of Lakota (Sioux) ancestery.

Stephen Kaufman, emeritus biology professor, spoke to Inside Higher Ed of "an atmosphere of intimidation on this campus.” He was concerned for the Lakota student, of course, but he knows something about intimidation himself. Inside Higher Ed reported:

Kaufman became the target of campus protest last fall when a student started an online petition rallying students to get him to resign for sending letters to high school athletes that the university was seeking to recruit.
The petition against Kaufman received over 3,300 signatures.

No doubt they were "honoring" Kaufman.

Since I teach a Native American cultural studies course at a nearby college, I hear a lot about Chief Illiniwek from my students. And I believe them when they say they really don't think anyone intends for the mascot to be racist, and they truly can't understand why others think it is.

Me, I think it's kind of like beauty. Remember the old sayings? Racism is in the eye of the beholder. And here's another that fits even better. Racism is as racism does.

More stuff for COMM 317 syllabus

How to study court cases in class? Here are links to a couple of very helpful webpages by Princeton Review, the test prep company (not affiliated with Princeton University). One is on how to study a casebook and the other is on the Socratic method, which we will use in class -- at least some of the time. The University of Chicago Law School also has several pages and links on Socratic method. Read them and be ready to join in a Socratic discussion in class.

More COMM 317 links

Would voters OK the First Amendment today? The First Amendment to the U.S. Constition says "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances." Read the introduction to the First Amendment by Doug Linder, professor at the University of Missouri-Kansas City Law School, and be ready to answer the questions at the bottom of the webpage.

'To keep the waters pure': Jefferson on media. From a webpage of quotes about the press taken from Thomas Jefferson's writings. On a website called Thomas Jefferson on Politics & Government: Quotations from the Writings of Thomas Jefferson maintained by the University of Virginia.

Here's one: "The only security of all is in a free press. The force of public opinion cannot be resisted when permitted freely to be expressed. The agitation it produces must be submitted to. It is necessary, to keep the waters pure." --Thomas Jefferson to Lafayette, 1823. ME 15:491.

And another, more frequently quoted: ""The basis of our governments being the opinion of the people, the very first object should be to keep that right; and were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter. But I should mean that every man should receive those papers and be capable of reading them." --Thomas Jefferson to Edward Carrington, 1787. ME 6:57."

The abbreviation "ME," if you're interested in this kind of thing, refers to the location in The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, (Memorial Edition) Lipscomb and Bergh, editors.

What do the Thomas Jefferson quotes suggest to you about the role of the press in the American Revolution and the early Federalist and Republican periods?

COMM 317 -- common law and Lord Coke

Some more links for the COMM 317 syllabus"

'Stork didn't bring our rights.' Read the essay on "Legal Foundations of Press Freedom in the United States" by Jane E. Kirtley, media ethics professor at the School of Journalism and Mass Communication, University of Minnesota, explains how judges going all the way back to Merrie Olde England brought us our rights. Also read about Sir Edward Coke, legal scholar and judge of the English courts of Common Pleas and King's Bench in the 1600s. Lord Coke is one of the guys who most influenced our system of law, our way of thinking about legal issues and therefore the rights we enjoy as American citizens.

Wisdom from Lord Coke. Several passages from a collection of quotes by The ... Institutes of the Lawes of England Sir Edward Coke (1552-1634), Chief Justice of the King's Bench under King James I:

There be three kinds of unhappie men. 1. Qui scit & non docet, Hee that hath knowledge and teacheth not. 2. Qui docet & non vivit, He that teacheth, and liveth not thereafter. 3. Qui nescit, & non interrogat, He that knoweth not, and doth not enquire to understand. Sect. 232b.

The reason of the law is the life of the law; for though a man can tell the law, yet if he know not the reason thereof, he shall soone forget his superficial knowledge. But when he findeth the right reason of the law, and so bringeth it to his natural reason, that he comprehendeth it as his own, this will not only serve him for the understanding of that particular case, but of many others ... Sect. 183b.

Law temporall ... consisteth in three parts, viz, First, on the common law, expressed in our bookes of law, and judiciall records. Secondly, on statutes contained in acts and records of parliament. And thirdly, on customes grounded upon reason, and used time out of minde; and the construction and determination of these doe belong to the judges of the realme. Sect. 344a.

I like Coke.

COMM 317 -- links

A couple of resources on the World Wide Web that I can use in the first couple of weeks of the mass media law course:

1. How to think like a lawyer: A website called LawNerds.com has a six-part tutorial for law students and pre-law students on how to cultivate a legal frame of mind, legal reasoning and the case method, among other things. Since we will use the case method in COMM 317, read those three sections. If you think you might want to go on to law school (an excellent career choice for communications majors, by the way), take a look at section 4 on what it's like to go to law school, too.

2. Briefing cases. Since we'll be using the case method to study media law, you'll need to learn how to brief a case. It's a special kind of abstract, or summary, that law students learn. And doing it will teach you more about logic than all the liberal arts courses in the world. Start with the basics of "How to Brief a Case" at 4lawschool.com, a website designed, logically enough, for law school students. Follow the links at the bottom to an excellent guide to writing case briefs from the University of Virginia Law School and an even better guide from the John Jay School of Criminal Justice of the City University of New York.

HUM 221 syllabus paste-in revision

Week 2

 

Myths of origin and of endurance. Read Zimmerman and Molyneaux, "Disposession,"
pp. 20-35. In Here First, we will read Evelina Zuni Lucero, "On the Tip of My Tongue," pp. 247-61, and Luci Tapahonso, "They Moved Over the Mountain," pp. 337-51, along with her poem "In 1864." On the Web, we will look at: (1) the Haudenosaunee
creation myth at http://sixnations.buffnet.net/Culture/?article=creation
; (2) some traditional Cherokee stories on how things came
to be the way they are; and (3) the "First Thanksgiving"
myth, including (a) an overview in The Christian Science Monitor
at http://www.csmonitor.com/2002/1127/p13s02-lign.html,
(b) the primary historical sources at http://members.aol.com/calebj/thanksgiving.html,
(c) a newspaper story on at what Alaska Natives eat along with
their turkey at http://www.adn.com/life/taste/story/8435558p-8329710c.html
and (d) an essay by folklorist Esaúl Sánchez at
http://www.upenn.edu/pennnews/features/1995/112195/abrahams.html
suggesting one thing the myth does for us. Finally, we will read "A Story of how a Wall Stands" and other poetry by Acaoma Pueblo writer Simon Ortiz linked to the Internet Public Library.

HUM 223 -- today's presentations

Class is cancelled today. I can't get an answer when I call SCI, but we're on the Channel 20 list of school closings. Those of you who had presentations scheduled today won't have to give them -- I will just count your grade on the written part of your research project.

I'm posting this message to my blogs and the Message Board linked to my faculty page. If you see other students who are in our class, please let them know. And you'll turn in your final exam papers in the Presidents Room at the regularly schduled time Wednesday morning.

If you have questions, please contact me at pellertsen@sci.edu or my email account at peterellertsen@yahoo.com.

-- Doc

New office -- directions

I'm getting moved into my new office now, so I'm cross-posting directions to my class blogs and the Message Board linked to my faculty page.

I'm in Beata Hall (the old Ursuline convent) across Eastman Street from St. Joe's parish and school. Either Room 31, if you go by the list of room assignments I've been given, or Room 8, if you go by the numbers on the doors. I've also attached my business card to the door.

To get there from Dawson, go out the south entrance and take the walk past Ursuline Academy. You'll go between the buildings, with the old building on the right and the gym on the left. Keep going through the parking lot, and there'll be a porch on the right (women's housing is straight ahead). On the south end of that porch, there's a door with a Christmas decoration. Go in the door, take the stairs just to the left and you'll be on the floor with faculty offices. They're in the hallway to the left at the top of the stairs. It takes a little less time to walk it than it does to give the directions!

Computer and phone are now hooked up ... you can reach me, as before, by phone at 525-1420 ext. 519 and by email at pellertsen@sci.edu. Email is usually better, but the voice mail in my office is working again.

Nov. assessment newsletter -- ARCHIVE

NUTS & BOLTS

An electronic assessment newsletter
Springfield College in Illinois
-----------------------------------------
November 2006
Vol. 7 No. 4
-----------------------------------------
Editor's Note. Over the holidays, I hope to reconnect
the assessment pages to SCI’s website. Until that
time, I am publishing the assessment newsletter by
email to faculty and staff and archiving it on my
personal weblog at
http://www.teachinglogspot.blogspot.com/. -- Pete
Ellertsen, assessment chair

Santa has your assessment
questionnaires

A couple of quick reminders to get out in the November
newsletter, with the end of the month and the end of
fall semester classes both coming up this week. Also
an update on ominous developments in Washington, D.C.


Classroom assessment forms

Sometime this week, if the disruption from this
month’s move of faculty offices permits it, I hope to
have Classroom Assessment Questionnaires in the
faculty mailboxes at Dawson Hall.

This semester’s questionnaires will give us important
data that will help us devise ways to assess for the
Common Student Learning Objectives we derived from the
SCI mission statement in 2004, so it’s important for
everyone to fill them out and document any changes in
instructional methods.

If you have questions, comments or suggestions, please
contact me by email at pellertsen@sci.edu. As my phone
is hooked up and I learn my new office number, I will
post other contact information to the newsletter.

Feds still push standardized tests?

Speculation over mandatory standardized testing on the
order of the federal No Child Left Behind program
refuses to die down. Even though both houses of
Congress are about to change party leadership, it now
appears the U.S. Education Department may push for it
through the process of negotiating federal
regulations.

We’ll know more early in December, but The Chronicle
of Higher Education reported Nov. 24, “Margaret
Spellings, the education secretary, has decided to
focus on accreditors as part of her ‘action plan’ to
begin the most urgent changes proposed by the
commission. … Next week Ms. Spellings will meet here
with a few dozen accreditors, higher-education
officials, and business leaders in what is being
called an Accreditation Forum to discuss ways to make
the measurement of student learning central to
accreditors' oversight of colleges and universities.”

What’s ominous about this, the Chronicle notes, is
“[i]n the wake of the Democratic takeover of Congress,
the accrediting system is one of the few vehicles Ms.
Spellings almost totally controls to drive her
agenda.” The Chronicle’s headline sums up the story’s
tone: “Spellings Wants to Use Accreditation as a
Cudgel.”

“Many accreditors and college officials view next
week's one-day gathering with varying degrees of
suspicion, especially since several of them were never
formally invited,” reports Chronicle staff writer
Burton Bollag. “Some fear that in the name of
increased accountability Ms. Spellings will try to use
the forum to promote solutions they think are
simplistic, like comparing institutions on the basis
of a few easily quantifiable indicators.”

That sounds like federally mandated standardized
tests. Perhaps more troubling, at least for those of
us who do assessment, is what appears to be an
assumption on the part of the Bush administration
that, well, we aren’t doing assessment.

The Chronicle’s discussion of the issue is worth
quoting at length:

In particular, the agenda circulated for
next week's meeting has caused an uproar among the
accreditors, who say it contains certain incorrect
assumptions. For example, the day is set to kick off
with "a panel presentation by leading experts who will
build a case for change from inputs to outputs."

Critics say that ignores a major shift in accrediting
standards that has been under way for more than a
decade, as accreditors have moved from examining
elements like curricula and the portion of faculty
members with terminal degrees to looking at indicators
of what students have learned. In 1992, as part of the
reauthorization of the Higher Education Act, Congress
required accreditors to take into account student
achievement. In 1998, in another edition of the Higher
Education Act, lawmakers made it the most important
factor for accreditors to consider.

"I'm offended," Steven D. Crow, executive director of
the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools'
Higher Learning Commission, says of the panel on
outputs. "I'm doing that already."

Mr. Crow leads the largest of the six regional
accrediting groups, which together accredit nearly
3,000 institutions. "There is a perception — Secretary
Spellings and [commission] chairman [Charles] Miller
have expressed it in recent speeches — that is over 25
years old, that assumes we're just counting books and
square feet."

It’s hard to figure out what all this may mean for us
at SCI, since, as so often happens, the politicians
are speaking in code words, hints and whispers. But it
all still bears watching.

Reference: Bollag, Burton. “Spellings Wants to Use
Accreditation as a Cudgel.” Chronicle of Higher
Education 24 Nov. 2006.
http://chronicle.com/free/v53/i14/14a00101.htm

Email joke gets Bush's number?

Here's a joke that was going around on the internet just before Tuesday's congressional elections. It's a little out of date now, since President Bush announced U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's resignation the morning after the elections, but still worth recording exactly as it came in my email.

> Donald Rumsfeld briefed the President this morning.
>
> He told Bush that three Brazilian soldiers were killed in Iraq. To
> everyone's amazement, all of the color ran from Bush's face, then he
> collapsed onto his desk, head in hands, visibly shaken, almost
whimpering.
> Finally, he composed himself and asked Rumsfeld, "Just exactly how
many is
> a brazillion?"

Most of the Bush jokes I've seen are too hostile or edgy to be really funny. This one, maybe because of the egregious pun, is cute.

test test

Let's insert an image and see if it appears.

Humanities 223 term paper

HUM 223: Ethnic Music

Springfield College in Illinois

Fall Semester 2006

http://www.sci.edu/classes/ellertsen/humanities/hum223syllabus.html

Music is your own experience, your own thoughts, your wisdom. If you don't live it, it won't come out of your horn. They teach you there's a boundary line to music. But, man, there's no boundary line to art. -- Charlie Parker

Term Paper – Fall 2006

One of your requirements in Humanities 223 is to write a documented term paper (at least 2,000 words or eight pages in 12pt type) and deliver an oral report on some aspect of cultural and artistic expression in traditional music or a commercial genre derived from traditional music. This handout tells you how to do it. The instructions, and updates, will be posted to my teaching blog at http://www.teachinglogspot.blogspot.com/ -- Pete Ellertsen, instructor

Your overall assignment. Choose a musician, band or group whose work you enjoy or whom you want to know more about, and write a paper about their artistic influences; how their culture, their musical genre and/or artistic vision shaped their life and career; how they dealt with issues of commercial and artistic success; and their place in the history of American popular music. You may choose your own topic. But since this is an interdisciplinary humanities/cultural studies class, you will do best if you choose a historical figure or a contemporary musician who has been influenced by long-term musical genres (e.g. country, gospel, blues, jazz and the Anglo-Irish or African American cultural traditions they grew out of). Be sure to clear your topic with me before you begin your research. Your opinions and your response to the artist’s music are an important part of the paper, but you need to research your artists’ careers and respond to their music in order to support your opinion. You may use either MLA or APA style. A “Citation Machine” to help you with correct MLA or APA form is available on my faculty website at http://www.sci.edu/classes/ellertsen/facultypage.html .

How to approach your paper. In researching and writing your paper, you’ll want to address the following points. Not all of them will be appropriate for every paper you write (for example you don’t need to spell out for me that gospel singer Mahalia Jackson wasn’t a drug addict), but you’ll want to touch these bases in your research:

1. Some biography of your artist or band members, including musical influences, artistic vision (i.e. anything they said about music, like the quote from jazz saxophone player Charlie “Bird” Parker above), and how they made a living from their music. How did they handle the stresses of a musical career, including drug use, road trips, etc.? What compromises, if any, did they make between their artistic vision and commercial success? How successful were they, both artistically and commercially?
2. How were your artists received in their time? By later generations? By the public? By other musicians? How do you, personally respond to their music? Choose a song, or piece of instrumental music, and ask yourself: (a) What about this music stands out in my mind? (b) What in my cultural background, values, taste and interests makes me react to it that way? (c) What specifically about the music makes me feel that way? Consult my handout on literary reader [or listener] response papers and the sample essay on Kinky Friedman at http://www.sci.edu/classes/ellertsen/rosenblatt.html.
3. What does your artist’s career tell you about music and the arts, the communications media, the entertainment industry and/or marketing economics in American society? What does it tell you about American popular culture? How well does their music transcend the limitations of its particular genre or cultural background?
   

In researching the paper, you should both read up on the musicians and listen to some of their music. You will find some sources in the library, others on the Internet. If you have trouble tracking down recordings or sound files, see me and I’ll help out.

Robert M. Seiler of the University of Calgary suggests when his students write around music, they actively listen for the sound of vocals or instrumentals, and the “dynamics or the intensity of the sound, in terms of loudness, uniformity, and change.” He also suggests they listen for:

a. the movement of the piece, i.e., concentrate on its rhythm, meter, and tempo,

b. the pitch, i.e., in terms of its order and melody, and

c. the structure of the piece, i.e., its logic, design, and texture.

Seiler’s tip sheet is available at http://www.acs.ucalgary.ca/~rseiler/music.htm -- his examples are from classical music, but his suggestions work for blues or rock, too. They’re excellent.

Writing about music is a lot like writing about a poem or a play in English classes. In other ways, it's different. Here's what Dartmouth University has to say about one type of music paper:

In a review, you should focus on the form of the music. What sounds make up the music? How does the composer or performer fuse together these different sound elements? How do the different movements work together to create the music's overall effect? Remember to stay away from comments beginning with "I" that reflect only how the music affected you. Instead, question the music using criteria by which we judge excellence, and provide insight into those elements of excellence.

Dartmouth's tip sheet is available on line at http://www.dartmouth.edu/~writing/materials/student/humanities/music.shtml. I recommend it highly.

Who to write about? Any of the artists we have talked about in class are fair game. You can find plenty of information on historical figures like Stephen A. Foster, the Fisk Jubilee Singers or Scott Joplin. Blues and/or jazz vocalists like Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith and Billie Holiday would be good subjects, as would jazz musicians like Louie Armstrong, Charlie Parker or Miles Davis. You can write about gospel singers like Mahalia Jackson, Thomas A. Dorsey (who also sang blues as “Georgia Tom”) or more recent evangelists like Kirk Franklin who mix the music of today with roots music. As you read “Deep Blues” by Robert Palmer, you will learn a lot about Delta and Chicago bluesmen Charlie Patton, Robert Johnson, Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf, as well as the rock artists like Eric Clapton, Stevie Ray Vaughan or the Rolling Stones who emulated their music, and you can use Palmer's book as a starting point for your research. You will get other ideas as we watch “Feel Like Going Home” and other DVDs from Martin Scorese’s PBS series “The Blues” during the remainder of the semester. Just be sure to clear your topic with me first.

What are your deadlines? There are three. You will give me a two-page typewritten proposal by Friday, Nov. 3, in which you tell me which performer(s) you will research and what your tentative thesis is; and list, in MLA or APA format, three to five specific sources you have consulted. Your papers will be due by the week of Thanksgiving, which is the week of Nov. 20-21, but I will schedule your oral presentation, on a first-come-first-served basis, when you turn in your paper. So you are allowed to turn it in early. The presentations will be three to five minutes long, and they will be given during the week after Thanksgiving, Nov. 27-Dec. 1.

If you have questions please don’t hesitate to ask me. The quickest way to get hold of me is to email me at pellertsen@sci.edu.

october assessment newsletter ARCHIVE

NUTS & BOLTS

An electronic assessment newsletter
Springfield College in Illinois
-----------------------------------------
October 2006
Vol. 7 No. 3
-----------------------------------------
Editor's Note. Until I am able to post to SCI's assessment website again, I am publishing the newsletter by email and archiving it in the interim on my personal weblog at http://www.teachinglogspot.blogspot.com/. -- Pete Ellertsen, assessment chair

Of CATs, Professorenzetteln and assessment

Assessment and government intrusion into the classroom are nothing new. In fact, a recent book by historian William Clark makes a good case they have changed the way we think in Western society over the centuries. The book is “Academic Charisma and the Origins of the Research University,” and it is reviewed in the current issue of The New Yorker.

The review, by Anthony Grafton, makes me want to read the book. It also makes me think his students – and faculty colleagues – at Princteon are a lot like ours at Springfield College and Benedictine.

“Anyone who has ever taught at a college or university must have had this experience,” Grafton begins. He continues by describing the experience:

You’re in the middle of something that you do every day: standing at a lectern in a dusty room, for example, lecturing to a roomful of teen-agers above whom hang almost visible clouds of hormones; or running a seminar, hoping to find the question that will make people talk even though it’s spring and no one has done the reading … Suddenly, you find yourself wondering … [w]hy, in the age of the World Wide Web, do professors still stand at podiums and blather for fifty minutes at unruly mobs of students, their lowered baseball caps imperfectly concealing the sleep buds that rim their eyes? Why do professors and students put on polyester gowns and funny hats and march, once a year, in the uncertain glory of the late spring? … These activities seem both bizarre and disconnected, from one another and from modern life, and it’s no wonder that they often provoke irritation, not only in professional pundits but also in parents, potential donors, and academic administrators.

Well, I can’t speak for anyone else, but I’ve certainly had that experience. And I know what it’s like to try to describe what we do, and why we do it, to outside stakeholders.

Clark’s thesis is that American research universities evolved out academic traditions in 19th-century Germany, and they in turn evolved out of – get this! – bureaucratic policies and procedures in the petty electorates and principalities of the Holy Roman Empire during the 16th and 17th centuries. As Grafton paraphrases him, Clark notes:

Gradually, the bureaucrats devised ways to insure that the academics were fulfilling their obligations. In Vienna, Clark notes, “a 1556 decree provided for paying two individuals to keep daily notes on lecturers and professors”; in Marburg, from 1564 on, the university beadle kept a list of skipped lectures and gave it, quarterly, to the rector, who imposed fines. Others demanded that professors fill in Professorenzetteln, slips of paper that gave a record of their teaching activities. Professorial responses to such bureaucratic intrusions seem to have varied as much then as they do now. Clark reproduces two Professorenzetteln from 1607 side by side. Michael Mästlin, an astronomer and mathematician who taught Kepler and was an early adopter of the Copernican view of the universe, gives an energetic full-page outline of his teaching. Meanwhile, Andreas Osiander, a theologian whose grandfather had been an important ally of Luther, writes one scornful sentence: “In explicating Luke I have reached chapter nine.”

The upshot, according to Clark, was universities evolved ways of measuring learning that satisfied the bureaucrats, when they pushed for “results that looked rational: results that they could codify, sort, and explain to their masters.” During the Middle Ages, testing was largely done in debates known as academic disputations. They came to be replaced by printed dissertations and formal examinations, “exercises that were carefully graded and recorded by those who administered them.” In the language of our own historical era, we might say the new exams and dissertations offered greater transparency to outside stakeholders.

So when we fill out our Classroom Assessment Technique questionnaires at the end of the semester or ask our SCI sophomores to take a fill-in-the-bubble standardized test in the spring, we’re taking part in a government ritual that goes back to the Professorenzetteln of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation.
There’s a lot more in Grafton’s article than assessment. For example Mark Twain’s description of the time a thousand students “rose and shouted and stamped and clapped, and banged the beer-mugs” when a historian named Theodor Mommsen walked into a Berlin banquet hall in 1892. Or Clark’s new take on the old story of Abelard and Heloise, and its implications for the way we think today. Or what a doctoral exam was like at the University of Göttingen in 1787. Trivia? Sure. But fascinating trivia. And in the end, it helps us answer Grafton’s question – why do we pontificate in front of classrooms, dress up in caps and gowns and, in general, do the things we do in academic life.

Grafton’s article, headlined “The Nutty Professors,” was in the Oct. 10 issue of The New Yorker. It’s fascinating, and it’s still available on line at http://www.newyorker.com/critics/books/articles/061023crbo_books

Assessment committee empaneled

Members of this year’s Assessment Committee are Bob Blankenberger, Brian Carrigan, Dave Holland, Barb Tanzyus and Pete Ellertsen (chair). Student Affairs Dean Kevin Broeckling and Academic Affairs Dean John Cicero are ex officio. Standing meeting time has been tentatively set for 2 p.m. the second Tuesday of the month in the Brinkerhoff Conference Room.

No commission left behind?

The Spellings Commission, named for President Bush’s education secretary Margaret Spellings, has issued its final report. Its recommendations were unchanged from earlier drafts issued in the late summer. Spellings outlined the findings of her Commission on the Future of Higher Education at a Sept. 26 luncheon of the National Press Club and called on Congress to act on a higher ed reform package. The Associated Press and a couple of major metro newspapers including The Christian Science Monitor apparently sent reporters, or assigned them to work the phone a minute or two and get a story. Local reaction stories ran in media markets like Austin, Tex., and Roanoke, Va. And several student publications, including The Cavalier Daily at the University of Virginia and The Daily Star at Northern Illinois University, also ran stories.

But other than that, the commission’s report was greeted by an almost total lack of coverage. It may be significant that during the week of Spellings’ speech a major congressional sex scandal broke out, former U.S. Rep. Mark Foley, R-Fla., resigned his office and Congress recessed until after the November elections.

Inside Higher Ed had a good summary of the report Sept. 27, the day after it was issued. On line at http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2006/09/26/spellings