Journalist Malcolm Gladwell: "Stop going to journalism programs"

Author/journalist Malcolm Galdwell ("Tipping Point," "Blink," "Outliers")gave this advice to young journalists in a 2009 Time interview:

The issue is not writing. It's what you write about. One of my favorite columnists is Jonathan Weil, who writes for Bloomberg. He broke the Enron story, and he broke it because he's one of the very few mainstream journalists in America who really knows how to read a balance sheet. That means Jonathan Weil will always have a job, and will always be read, and will always have something interesting to say. He's unique. Most accountants don't write articles, and most journalists don't know anything about accounting. Aspiring journalists should stop going to journalism programs and go to some other kind of grad school. If I was studying today, I would go get a master's in statistics, and maybe do a bunch of accounting courses and then write from that perspective. I think that's the way to survive. The role of the generalist is diminishing. Journalism has to get smarter.

In a 2011 Nation piece, Michael Tracey wrote: "...if you take a full major’s worth of journalism classes, that’s about twelve (or however many) less classes in the humanities that could’ve equipped you with an intellectual framework from which to approach your work."

Why don't we have independent public TV like this in US?

Weeks before the Iraq invasion, the BBC's Jeremy Paxman and skeptical British citizens literally cross-examined Prime Minister Tony Blair about evidence/reasons/legality behind the invasion -- an interview whose transcript became part of last year's official Iraq inquiry in Britain. (Here's another tough Paxman interview of Blair having nothing to do with Iraq.)

In our country, bullying from politicians + lack of insulated funding = embarrassing timidity at so-called "public television"...as evidenced by PBS surgically removing Tina Fey's comedic swipes at Sarah Palin from a broadcast in November 2010.

Country by country comparisons of spending on public broadcasting here. 

Public Access TV Channels

...have offered diverse and local voices, launched careers, and led to Saturday Night Live spoofs from Mike Myers -- such as "Wayne's World" and "Coffee Talk with Linda Richman."

New indy website in Mexico called "Mundo Narco" (H/t Elma).

Nice blog post headline from Natalie on Northwestern University law and journalism students who freed an innocent man from a life sentence for murder.

Rupert Murdoch gives thanks this holiday season to Obama's FCC

Is Obama's Federal Communications Commission about the weaken "cross-ownership" rules to allow Murdoch to buy the L.A. Times and Chicago Tribune?

Fast and open Internet fading in USA?

USA is behind other countries when it comes to broadband access (15th place) and Internet speed (23d place).

There's a digital divide in our country whereby middle-class kids like my daughters grew up with fast Web-accessed computers in the home, while kids in rural areas and inner cities don't have computers or fast Internet.

In 2009, big Internet providers such as Verizon, Comcast, AT&T DID NOT APPLY for any of the billions in federal stimulus grants for expanding broadband infrastructure, according to the Wall St. Journal, because recipients of our tax money had to agree to respect Net Neutrality or Internet non-discrimination.

In August 2010, Keith Olbermann did a segment about Net Neutrality on his now-defunct show on MSNBC. Olbermann exited MSNBC as it was being taken over by Net Neut-foe Comcast. (Here's Jon Stewart's Net Neutrality segment from the same period.)

P.S. I was asked to appear on a talk-radio show on a big city station to analyze Oblermann's January 2011 exit from MSNBC; when I suggested a link to the Comcast takeover and criticized Comcast's opposition to Net Neutrality, a producer asked me during a commercial break to stop the "Comcast-bashing" because "they're our biggest sponsor."

Blog puts video distortions into mainstream media

The late Andrew Breitbart, a former Drudge Report staffer, ran BigGovernment.com. In July 2010, the Obama White House fired US Dept of Agriculture employee Shirley Sherrod soon after BigGovernment posted a 100-second video excerpt purporting to show that, during a speech to the NAACP, Sherrod had boasted about discriminating against a white farmer while she was a federal employee during the Obama administration. Actually, as Breitbart later corrected, Sherrod was describing events in the 1980s when she was Georgia field director for the Federation of Southern Cooperatives, a nonprofit that had grown out of the civil rights movement to help Black farmers. MORE IMPORTANTLY, a fuller version of the speech aired by CNN showed that Sherrod told the story to illustrate how she had overcome her racial hostility toward whites and ultimately helped the white farmer save his farm.

Months earlier, other selectively-edited tapes distributed by BigGovernment.com (played repeatedly on Fox News and elsewhere) helped put the anti-poverty group ACORN out of business. Rachel Maddow dissects the distorted presentation that doomed ACORN. (Fox News had goaded others in media for not doing enough ACORN-smearing.)

It wasn't just Fox News that promoted BigGovernment.com's misleading ACORN story. The Public Editor of the paper of record, the New York Times, went to absurd lengths to defend his paper's inaccurate coverage

Drudge "Exclusive": Readers Beware

Perhaps Matt Drudge should stick to aggregating content from elsewhere (with revved-up headlines) rather than "report" -- as demonstrated by this 1999 "world exclusive," which helped push the story into some mainstream outlets.

And as demonstrated by his 2007 "exclusive" in which he accused CNN reporter Michael Ware of "heckling" Republican senators during a news conference in Iraq and "laughing and mocking their comments." Drudge's evidence-free charge -- based on an anonymous "official" -- was picked up by rightwing blogs and the Washington Times.

Undercover video-taping of farm animal abuse...

...has prompted food libel laws in a dozen states, aimed at protecting powerful agribusiness interests that apparently have much to hide. Here's a video report from U.C. Berkeley News21 students.

Election 2008: Mayhill Fowler & HuffPost 'Off the Bus'

Mayhill Fowler says she didn't hide that she was recording ex-President Clinton's angry words ("sleazy" . . . "slimy" . . . "dishonest" . . . "scumbag") about a Vanity Fair reporter, while he greeted voters in public as he campaigned for his wife in June 2008. BUT Clinton obviously did not know Fowler was a HuffPost "citizen journalist." Should she have ID'd herself? (She clearly got a more honest take from Clinton than if he'd known she was a journalist.)

Shouldn't public figures know nowadays that anything said in public -- especially rants (or racism) -- will be recorded and on record forever? Exhibits A and B.

Mayhill Fowler's earlier reporting scoop that launched "Bittergate" uproar. This year's bittergate: "47%-gate."

Blogger Takes an Ethical Step

Here's an example of a blogger acting professionally and ethically as per SPJ Code of Ethics. Blogger Ken Krayeske -- who gained fame by questioning University of Connecticut's basketball coach about his huge taxpayer-paid salary -- announced (in Oct. 2009) that he wouldn't be covering Hartford City Hall because his girlfriend had a job there. (Photo is of Krayeske and then-governor of Conn.)

Can bloggers & columnists with strong viewpoints . . .

. . .still engage in independent commentary (as opposed to partisan propaganda)? Here is some critical commentary from the conservative National Review Online within hours of John McCain choosing Sarah Palin as his running-mate in August 2008.

"Video the Vote"

Worried about voter suppression (of the kind that blocked young voters and African American voters in Ohio in 2004 presidential race), some liberals are encouraging voters to become citizen journalists and video-record anything fishy at the polling place.