Newsletter
Summer 1998 Issue
- Dixon student wins high-school honor
- Lawyers, judges, media find common ground
- Today's tear-it-down culture should terrify us
- National media's image problem damages us all ... and that's unfair
Dixon student wins high-school honor
Laura Kuhn of Dixon has been named the first Northern Illinois High School Journalist of the Year by the Northern Illinois Newspaper Association.
Kuhn is a senior at Dixon High School and editor in chief of the school's newspaper, the Dixini. She also writes for the Dixon Telegraph and was been named 1996 "Feature Writer of the Year" by the Illinois Women's Press Association.
Jim Dunn, managing editor of the Dixon Telegraph, has employed Kuhn for the past year as a part-time reporter and columnist.
"I would say Laura is one of the two best high-school writers I've met in my 20 years of journalism," Dunn wrote in a letter of nomination. "In writing skill, Laura is years ahead of her age. Her columns range from sharing heartfelt feelings to showing off her fine wit, and her writing evokes a response."
Kuhn was one of 30 applicants for the $500 scholarship award -- the first ever offered by NINA to a high-school student. She will study journalism at the University of Illinois this fall.
"NINA is pleased to be able to promote quality journalism at the high school and college levels and, we hope, to spur people into working in the profession," said John Etheredge, NINA president.
The scholarship will be offered again next year.
Lawyers, judges, media find common ground
By Jim Killam
Put judges, lawyers and journalists together for a day in a nonwork setting
and what do you get? A fair amount of fear, some frustration ... but also
more common ground than many might have expected.
NINA's spring conference April 24 at NIU helped the three groups address
some occupational conflicts.
"We're afraid of you. We don't know what's going to come back on the
front page," Appellate Court Justice Michael Colwell told journalists.
Added attorney Gary Vanek, president of the Kane County Bar Association:
"It's the fear of being misquoted. For us, there's no such thing as
a one-sentence answer. And we know you can't use a three-paragraph quote."
From the journalists came pleas for better access and better explanation
of court proceedings.
"We are seasoned professionals, but we also are seasoned generalists,"
said Rick Nagel, managing editor of Press-Republican Newspapers, St. Charles.
Colwell mentioned the First Amendment as a common bond among bench, bar
and media, all of whom depend heavily on its freedoms. But, he also addressed
a thornier issue: judges' reluctance to talk to the media.
"We want to do it, but we don't want to feel like what we say is turned
into something different than what it was," he said. "Judges can't
comment on pending cases. If I do, it's a mistrial and I go before the inquiry
board. It's inevitable that we will say something that will be seen as showing
partiality.
"And of course, good reporters always try to get us to do that. So
there's some tension there."
When can a judge talk?
"I can comment on a case when the time for any further action has expired."
That's usually 30 days after a trial ends," Colwell said. He added,
though, that judges can talk any time about the judicial process or about
issues not related to pending cases.
"There are a lot of stories laying on the pavement that no one picks
up," he said. For instance, of 840,000 cases heard in 1996 in the 13-county
Second District, just 1,600 went to the appellate court and only about 125
went to the Illinois Supreme Court, he said -- meaning that the perception
of the legal system being hopelessly backed up with appeals is "simply
not true."
Colwell's parting advice to reporters: Spend some time watching court cases
before you actually cover a case, so you're not ignorant of how the system
works.
Nagel followed with a session called "Top 10 Dumb Things Lawyers Say
to Reporters." They are, in his view:
10. "Let me speak to your court reporter - now!" (Understand that
most smaller newspapers don't have a full-time court reporter.)
9. "If I fax it to you tomorrow, can you get it in tomorrow's paper?"
(Learn deadlines.)
8. "Oh, and my client murdered your mom -- but that's off the record."
(Define rules for "off the record" before you go there.)
7. "The plaintiffs also invoked the pendant jurisdiction of this court
to decided the asserted state law tort claims." (Don't use legal jargon
and explain the process in simple terms.)
6. "I said, let me speak to your court reporter, you little *&^%$#@!!!"
(Find out who at the newspaper handles what kinds of information.)
5. "If you don't let me speak to your court reporter, I'll sue your
sorry *@#!" (Be nice; don't be short-tempered or egotistical; think
twice before you call to complain.)
4. "The name is spelled S-M-I-T-H, and I want that correction to appear
on the front page!" (Understand the best way to correct mistakes.)
3. "If I wanted to associate with an anus, I would have become a proctologist!"
(Establish relationships with press people; offer advice, story ideas, tips;
take an editor to lunch Ñ but let him/her pay his/her share of the
bill.)
2. "We want to invite everyone to our fabulous celebration of ..."
(Learn how to write a press release.)
1. "I'll have my secretary chisel that on a stone tablet and have it
to you by Thursday." (Know the best methods of delivering information:
e-mail, modem, hard copy, fax, in that order.)
Afternoon sessions included the keynote address by Linda Grist Cunningham,
executive editor of the Rockford Register Star and a role-playing forum
moderated by Dean LeRoy Pernell of the NIU College of Law. Participants
included attorneys Gary Johnson and Don Craven, Judge Colwell, editor Roger
Ruthhart of the Rock Island Argus and reporter Tona Kunz of the Kane County
Chronicle.
Today's tear-it-down culture should terrify us
This is an excerpt from Linda Grist Cunningham's keynote speech April 24
We are all -- press, bench, bar and pols -- in serious and potentially
devastating trouble. ... Make no mistake: Simply because we are the establishment
does not protect us from the "tear-it-down-at-all-costs" mentality
driving American society today.
In less than 50 years, we have gone from build it up to tear it down --
and we in the media and the legal systems have aided and abetted those who
would destroy the fundamental, constitutional rights for which the colonists
fought and died.
We have moved through a culture of excess that crescendoed in the 1980s
with Ronald Reagan and his attendant yuppies. And out of that culture of
excess has grown today's culture of secrecy, revenge and judgment.
We should be terrified of that culture, for it represents the single greatest
threat in more than 50 years to our rights of life, liberty and the pursuit
of happiness. ...
Our very excesses, whether reflections of society or of ourselves, have
made us the bullseye for disillusioned Americans who see us simply as too
big, too powerful, too aloof. Our constituencies want us controlled, muzzled,
broken apart.
National media's image problem damages us all -- and that's unfair
This column appeared originally in the May 2, 1998, issue of Editor & Publisher. It's reprinted here with permission.
By Dave Bakke
Editor, Catholic Times, Springfield
I am the media -- not Dan, Diane, Tom, Peter or Barbara. It's me and
thousands like me who work at the smaller papers and TV and radio stations
across this country. There are many more of us than there are of them. We
just don't get much attention.
We're journalists who would leave Monica Lewinsky alone before we would
crush each other around her car and follow her to restaurants. We've never
chased a limo or broken a law to get a story. The people who do are more
of a circus sideshow than journalists. To improve the image of our profession,
we must get the American public's attention refocused on the center ring:
their local newspapers and stations.
Over the past 23 years, I've come to know hundreds of people who work in
journalism's backwaters. Not many of them would push, shove and elbow each
other out of the way to get to a bank of microphones where Kenneth Starr
is about to say ... nothing. That scene, broadcast at the height of the
Clinton-Lewinsky coverage, only further tarnished the image of journalists.
Now, the national media are in full post-Lewinsky hand-wringings over whether
they moved too fast or printed too much rumor. This is stupefying to those
of us in smaller media outlets. There's no debate to be debated. The story
was handled poorly by people who are supposed to know better. That, unfortunately,
is nothing new. Everybody knew the big guys would overplay and bungle the
story and eventually have to print retractions.
The problem for smaller media outlets is that we aren't regarded as "the
media." The metro reporters who camp out on someone's lawn are. The
tabloids are.
The public isn't solely responsible for this attitude; our own business
reinforces the idea. The last time I checked the Best Newspaper Writing
books, the contents were virtually all from the big boys. What message does
that send? Take a look at the Pulitzers. Who wins 95 percent of them? Similarly,
network big shots routinely disrespect the reporting done by local affiliates.
That's a problem. Perhaps what we need to do is create our own professional
organization for journalists who work in smaller places. A group like that,
willing to work hard to restore the profession's respect among the public,
would have an impact.
I am working for my fifth newspaper, none of them more than 70,000 circulation
and most much less. Most of us who work the smaller outlets had the same
dream at first. We'd spend a few years here and there, keep sending out
the resumes and, someday, we'd be at The Washington Post or at the network
level.
We never made it. And when I survey the wreckage that is big-time American
journalism today, I feel like the guy who just missed the plane that crashed.
"Whew! That could have been me." I am not alone in that emotion.
When our towns do spawn a story deemed worthy of national media attention,
they descend upon us, and expect local reporters to direct them to our files.
Then they are gone. If you've ever seen the national media parachute into
your town, you know how good it feels when they're gone. The entire community
breathes a sigh of relief when the last distorted, almost funny, local color
story is filed by someone who couldn't find you on a map a week ago.
The upside is that local reporters look very good in comparison. Maybe we
should rotate the national media to various small towns in order to polish
our image in our communities.
Seriously, though, how low are we going to allow confidence in journalism
and journalists to sink before we do something about it? It hurts to read
books and see movies in which journalists are invariably portrayed as sharks
on a feeding frenzy. That's not us. That's them.
We constantly hear people attack the media, and we often agree with them
-- but with mixed emotions, since we are the media. Instead of slinking
away before we're noticed, we need to start distancing ourselves from the
overzealous, egomaniacal jerks in the national media.
The next time you hear someone bash the media (this will likely be today),
politely tell him or her that, in fact, you are the media. You, the reporter
who put their daughter's name in the paper when she won a prize at the county
fair. You, the photographer who shot the picture of them playing with their
dog in the park. Remind them that you helped get them a print of that photo
when they called. Tell them you wrote the story about the benefit concert
for the local firefighter who has a terminal illness and four kids. Tell
them it's your station they turn to for information on the school lunch
menu, local weather and corn prices.
I cite these stereotypical small-town stories because these are the stories
that weave us into the fabric of our readers' and listeners' lives every
day. We also do a good job on the big stories. But they will never be our
bread and butter. In a small town, it might be a long time between major
stories. What are you doing for your readers, viewers and listeners in the
meantime?
If those of us in "the sticks" don't stand up and start taking
back our profession, then we can expect more media bashing. And we'll have
to stand by and take it.
But remember this: When someone takes a poke at the national media, we're
the ones who get our noses bloodied.
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