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)

Compare your salary: Get a free Salary Report

A Flight to Remember

The Sun-Times News Group has a big multimedia package about the Honor Flight, a movement to transport and pay for WWII vets' trips to the memorial in Washington, D.C. Lots of videos, a live blog and more. There are some wonderful stories here.

interns and bathroom tissue

Two good links to pass along today.

The FIRST is a piece by Adelle Waldman in The New Republic about big-city journalism internships. Often, she writes, they're inaccessible to students who aren't already well-off financially. And they may not be good for journalism, anyway.

There's a social good problem at play when news is delivered by people who harbor such similar ambitions and come from such similar backgrounds, people who have spent their summers in the same cities and have worked at the same types of organizations. Naturally, they are likely to keep spotting and writing about the same types of issues--and keep missing different ones.

The SECOND is a George Carlin bit about soft language. (e.g. "When did toilet paper become bathroom tisue?") Might be good to use at a copy desk meeting. A little bit of foul language, but pretty clean by Carlin's standards. And hilarious.

Outsourced editing

Well, this is novel ...

SANTA ANA, Calif. (AP) -- An Indian company will take over copy editing duties for some stories published in The Orange County Register and will handle page layout for a community newspaper at the company ...

Full story here.

Newspapers and debt

The cover story in the June issue of Editor & Publisher does a good job of showing how the newspaper industry is awash in debt. Key line: "Newspapers across the nation are racing to drive down costs so they can service debt with declining or flat revenue streams." Talk about a vicious cycle.
The article is available online to subscribers only, but here's a column by Mark Fitzgerald about McClatchy that pretty well sums up the problem for many others, too.