The Minnesota Journalism Center will host author Paul Rusesabagina, inspiration for the 2004 film Hotel Rwanda, as he recounts his inspiring story of courage and compassion in the opening days of the Rwandan genocide on Monday, November 3 at Northrop Memorial Auditorium. The event takes place at 7:30 p.m. and is free and open to the public.
Volume 2: Issue 10
We are pleased to offer our monthly newsletter in an online format. If you have not signed up to receive this update regularly, sign up to join our mailing list on our homepage. You can view Newsworthy Online by clicking here.
Inside this issue:
- What do you think about election news coverage?
-The National Press Club Comes to Minneapolis
October 2008
Watch your mailbox for the News Council’s 2007-2008 annual report. Due out in early November, the report recaps complaint activity and trends in 2007, includes updates on our activities, goals and members, as well as an outlook for our future.
Please also remember the News Council in your year-end gift planning. We cannot do our work without dedicated supporters like you!
-Erika Roland
This month, the News Council is reaching out to Minnesota high schools, offering its free mock hearing program to English and journalism teachers across the state. Made possible in part by a generous grant from Target, the News Council has developed a curriculum that is currently being used in some high school and college classrooms throughout the state. The mock hearing project aims to introduce journalism students to the news council concept and to start them thinking about the real-life ethical dilemmas faced by working journalists.
Robbie Johnson, retired teacher from Mahtomedi High School, says “ the mock trial program helped my journalism students learn the value of fairness in reporting by being exposed to real claims which have been brought before the council.” Johnson currently serves on the Council and is working to revitalize the mock trial program for high school students.
A mock hearing proceeds much like an actual hearing. Students prepare for the hearing by reading the complaint’s background, the articles in question, the complaint, the news outlet’s response, and the questions upon which council members will vote. News Council volunteers, or the students, play the part of the complainant and news outlet. Student “council members” listen to the parties present the complaint and response, ask questions of the parties, and deliberate the complaint. The class then votes on the hearing question, and can compare their results to those of the actual News Council hearing.
If you are interested in learning more about the mock hearing project, or would like to bring it to a school in your area, please contact Sarah Bauer.
We want to know what you think about news coverage of the 2008 election cycle. How’s your local newspaper doing? The metro dailies? The nightly news? Where do you turn to for election news? Who do you trust?
Read a report from the Project for Excellence in Journalism: “How the Press Reported the General Election.”
Send us an email with your thoughts, and we’ll post some reader comments to our Web site.
-Sarah Bauer
UPDATE: The November 20th hearing has been canceled. Please stay tuned for more upcoming events.
Join us for our next ethical exercise with a panel of journalists and members of the public on November 20. All public hearings are free and open to the public, and held over the Thursday lunch hour.
More information and location TBA.
By Patrick File, 2008 Silha Fellow
2008 Silha Lecturer Siobhan Butterworth was introduced as “a member of an endangered species” - as readers’ editor, or internal ombudsman, for The Guardian newspaper in London, Butterworth is among a shrinking group of editors whose primary responsibility is to address reader complaints, clarifications, and corrections in the daily newspaper and online.
In introducing Butterworth’s Oct. 6, 2008 lecture, entitled “Raise Your Hand if You’re a Journalist: Does Responsible Reporting Need a Legal Defense?” Silha Center director and professor of media ethics and law at the University of Minnesota Jane Kirtley pointed out a recent Editor & Publisher magazine report that between September 2007 and September 2008, 10 U.S. newspapers, including the Sacramento Bee, The Sun of Baltimore, the Fort Worth (Texas) Star-Telegram, The Hartford (Conn.) Courant, and the Minneapolis Star Tribune, dropped their ombudsmen as part of wider financial cuts, suggesting that newspapers increasingly consider the position expendable. More »
The National Press Club, the world’s leading professional organization for journalists, and the University of Minnesota School of Journalism and Mass Communication’s Minnesota Journalism Center are teaming up to look at the future of the news media and how to protect its core values.
The Nov. 17 event will begin at 7:00 p.m. at the University’s Coffman Memorial Union on the east bank of the Minneapolis campus. The event is free and open to the public. Parking information is available at http://www1.umn.edu/twincities/maps/CMU/CMU-map.html.
This NPC Centennial Forum on The First Amendment, Freedom of the Press and the Future of Journalism will feature leading Minnesota journalists: Nancy Barnes, editor and senior vice president, Minneapolis Star Tribune ; Thom Fladung, editor and vice president, St. Paul Pioneer Press; Joel Kramer, chief executive officer and editor, MinnPost; and Nora Paul, director, University of Minnesota Institute for New Media Studies. The panel will be moderated by Alan Bjerga, a Bloomberg News correspondent, the Club’s treasurer, and a University of Minnesota alum. More »
Minnesota Public Radio News and Minnesota Council of Nonprofits are partnering on two nonpartisan events during the week before the 2008 election. Chris Roberts of MPR News will host an informative and entertaining evening for people who are new to the election process Tuesday, October 28. Doors will open at 6:30 p.m. The program will take place between 7-8 p.m. at the Paul and Sheila Wellstone Center for Community Building in St. Paul.
Join the Twin Cities Media Alliance for a brown bag lunch Wednesday, October 22 with Paul Schmelzer, managing editor Minnesota Independent, and a winner of the prestigious Premack and SPJ Page One awards for journalistic excellence. Paul coordinated the Independent’s coverage of the RNC protests - a subject you can ask him about at lunch. Paul also writes the blog Eyeteeth: A journal of incisive ideas, which appears regularly in the Twin Cities Daily Planet, and has written for Adbusters, Cabinet, Ode, Raw Vision, Utne and other publications.