Not letting facts get in the way

I mention this link as a firmly undecided voter, so there's no agenda other than good journalism. It's a really interesting look at how a story, not based on fact, still can get a lot of traction when journalists don't do their jobs.

It's from the blog Get Religion and it's about how the press has been quick to report that Obama is getting more support from white evangelicals than have previous Democratic nominees. Turns out, it ain't true. Mollie Ziegler writes:

Now, it may be true that presumptive Republican nominee John McCain has failed to get many folks, including evangelicals, excited about him. But given all the coverage to the contrary, I was somewhat surprised to see the results of a new Pew study that indicates that Obama is getting slightly fewer — that’s right — fewer white evangelical supporters than John Kerry was at the same time four years ago.

Portrait of the NIU killer

This was widely reported last week, but Esquire magazine today has posted its entire long story by David Vann about Steven Kazmierczak, the NIU shooter. It is absolutely chilling, from beginning to end. And it finally answers a lot of questions that have been frustrating this community.

What journalists make

From Payscale.com, here are median salaries in American journalism. There's a good discussion of this today in Mindy McAdams' blog "Teaching Online Journalism."

Median Salary by Job - Degree: Journalism (United States)

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