With your shield, or on it

This morning brings a couple of news items from the journalism front. Time magazine has decided to turn over files in the Valerie Plame case, saving its reporter from jail. No word yet on whether the New York Times will act in the same manner.
The Supreme Court earlier this week declined to interfere with the lower court's ruling that the journalists could be jailed for refusing to testify as to the person who leaked a CIA agent's identity. The strange thing about this case: Robert Novak, the conservative pundit who actually reported her name, remains a non-participant in these legal games, while the federal prosecutor has been pressuring Judith Miller of the Times - who didn't write about the agent - and Matthew Cooper of Time, who did so only after Novak's report.
This case and a Tuesday lower-court ruling against a reporter in the Wen Ho Lee case are cast against the heroic but fading shadow of Watergate and the "Deep Throat" revelations.
Journalists who would have scoffed at the idea of "shield laws" and government protection back then are reconsidering, in light of these cases and others that seem to march to the martial tune of national security. The Christian Science Monitor has this article on the debate: http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0630/p02s02-usju.html
Reporters aren't much trusted today, after reports of plagiarism, fabricated documents, bogus sources and more. As one of the generation who entered journalism school inspired by Woodward and Bernstein, I've watched the graphs move year by year - ethics down, competition up; news content down, entertainment up.
I emphasize ethics in the classroom. "Do the right thing" is the mantra. Seek justice and treat people fairly.
Is this enough?
When students are faced with the use of anonymous sources, I refer them to the Post's decision in the Watergate investigation: three independent sources must verify for anonymous material to be used.
Is this enough?
And if state shield laws become national, who decides which journalists are worthy of protection?

Bloggerguilt

Feeling slack - a weeklong workshop and the end of first-session summer school kept me away from the keyboard. A timely reminder got me started again - thanks!
I've mentioned the ConvergeSouth program being sponsored by N.C. A&T and the Greensboro blogging community this fall. I'm working on the Friday sessions, where we are planning three tracks aimed at journalists and educators.
The first deals with mechanics: How to Blog, Wikipedia, Where's the Business Model Going?
The second (running concurrently, 9 a.m.-5:30 p.m.) will focus on journalistic principles: Who Owns the Words, The Future of Journalism and Ethics: What Are the Rules?
The third concurrent track will consider community: Adding More Voices to the Conversation, Blogging and Community-Building and Voices of Iraq: Journalist/Military.
There will be an evening dinner and speaker TBA. On Saturday, the conference will shift to a more free-ranging discussion, with creativity at the center both in the program and the entertainment that evening.
That's it in a nutshell, a still-evolving life form.
Click on the ConvergeSouth link at left for all the latest.

A single day

A single day turns spring into summer, a moment when the sun appears to stand still - if we have time to watch.
The daylilies create day by day, old blossoms shriveling and new ones unfolding. We are reminded that we have only this day, this hour, this moment.
The flower unfolds. The day lengthens. Fireflies rise in the cooling night.
Welcome summer.

Double River Wye hemerocallis 

Join Us

Well, I'm scrolling through aggregates of military websites, looking for bloggers who might be in or near North Carolina. I'm on the team for ConvergeSouth 2005, http://2005.convergesouth.com/, which will be coming to Greensboro in a few weeks, and one session is planned on the Iraq war and bloggers.
The breadth and depth of the blogosphere on this topic is astounding. Some sites are reminiscent of a WWII Army footlocker, with pinup girls and GI cartoons. Some are sober analyses of the situation, others are unabashed rants. Marines and Air Force and Army and Navy. Reserve, Guard, women, wounded, veteran, active, mobilized, returned. Journalists embedded and otherwise, mothers at home and commentators in Europe and children in Iraq. The blogs reflect the many faces of this war.
I hope we'll see some of the faces behind those and other blogs when we gather in October. Take a look at the website or read this article http://www.news-record.com/news/local/gso/convergesouth_060705_hp.htm to learn more. North Carolina A&T, where I teach, is focusing on the intersection of journalism and blogs and academia for the Friday sessions. Saturday will be more freewheeling. For someone new to this world (I posted to my first carnival just last week) this is a learning experience that puts me right in the chair beside my students.

Pattern recognition

I was standing in Bicentennial Park, waiting for Turbo to finish analyzing the bouquet around a small tree, when I spotted a four-leaf clover. No big deal, except that I hadn't found one in a long while. Maybe two years? And when I was a child I used to find them in multiples, pressed them in every large book I could locate around the house.
Later that afternoon at home, I found another one in the back yard. I don't know why the pattern recognition clicked in, after apparently going on hiatus for a while.
My Newswriting students had lunch yesterday with some reporters and editors from the News & Record. The conversation tacked from subject to subject, until it came to "finding a story."
That's one of the things you can't really teach. Every reporter had a method, a plan. Riding around, walking, calling people, reading, looking at bulletin boards in the laundromat. It's a matter of seeing - something. Pattern recognition. Some stories are evident, some evident only to the reporter who catches something out of the ordinary, a branch crossed the wrong way, a poster crumpled in the rain.