A fruitful awards season for WWU journos

I’m proud to announce that I have won two awards from the Washington Press Association:

• First place, Editorial/commentary — Gina Cole, Paige Collins, Olena Rypich; The Western Front — “College is not a practice run: Censorship of student publications is still censorship”
• Second place, Feature — Gina Cole; Klipsun Magazine — “A break as a fix”

Entries from Western Washington University students won in many other categories, including breaking news, personality profile, social issues/minority affairs reporting, environmental reporting, and even ad design.

With Olena and Paige, collecting our first-place award for editorial/commentary from the Washington Press Association. I'm on the far left.

This just adds to my utter joy at all the Mark of Excellence Awards that Western students collected a few weeks ago from the Society of Professional Journalists — a school-record 22 awards in all, including Best All-Around Non-Daily Newspaper for The Western Front. To earn that honor (largely for issues from when I was editor-in-chief) is just mind-blowing. On to nationals!

I am, as always, incredibly proud of my classmates and my alma mater.

An example of framing and the power of language

The image of Obama, a Democrat and the nation’s first black president, and Boehner, a Republican from working-class Midwest roots, tackling a package that would affect government benefits for millions and the progressivity standards of the whole tax code is extraordinary.

via Debt talks blow up – David Rogers – POLITICO.com.

The above sentence frustrates me. It contrasts “the nation’s first black president” with “from working-class Midwest roots” as if they are mutually exclusive (or at least a dichotomy similar to Democrat and Republican).

The Midwest has black residents, too, Politico. Barack Obama is one of them. Or did you mean to say “a white Republican in Congress, which is not a first at all”?

The way journalists frame issues and people has a profound effect on the way the public (readers, listeners, viewers) perceive those issues and people. We have a responsibility to our audience, just as much as to our subjects and our profession, to use fair and accurate language.

On a related note, one of my brilliant WWU journalism professors, Carolyn Nielsen, tweeted a while back about widespread media usage of the term “gay marriage” (instead of the more fair and accurate term “marriage equality,” or even just the more accurate “same-sex marriage”). She wondered, in the tweet, when the shift would happen. Soon, I hope.

Today’s media risk becoming a feedback loop rather than reporters of substantive information. But that’s a larger topic for another day.

Great interview question in a story that uses documents

I’m fortunate to have a desk right next to James Robinson’s. He’s our investigative reporter; he does most of the bigger stories and also covers the county. I always enjoy listening to him interview people on the phone. His demeanor is friendly and empathetic no matter who he’s talking to, and he asks good questions that seem to get the answers he needs.
One such question, asked this morning, was for a story that relies (at least in part) on a document. He asked, “Are there any nuances I need to be aware of as I’m looking at this document?” adding that it seemed pretty cut and dry, but he wanted to make sure.
The person on the other end of the line probably really appreciated that question — almost as much as James appreciated the answer.

A warning to investigative journalists

I’m cleaning out my email inbox a little — just a little — and I re-read a message from CJ Huxford, the coordinator of Western’s student chapter of SPJ. He was passing along a post he found on the FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting) Blog about the rhetoric surrounding WikiLeaks and Julian Assange. The post and message were from early December 2010, when the rhetoric was flying about Assange being a terrorist, guilty of espionage, etc. Although it seems that fervor has cooled now that 2012 presidential speculation is heating up (and Charlie Sheen is melting down), the message to journalists should remain. Think what you will about Assange; journalists who publish documents in order to better act as watchdogs should not and must not be attacked. Good journalism informs people and, in turn, empowers them as citizens. Good journalists are friends of the citizenry, not enemies of the state.

Dec. 1 FAIR Blog post here. It’s a short and important read.