Tag Archives: social media

Students kick new life into gumshoe journalism

April 6, 2017 kanelis2012

Pittsburg, Kan., has become the print journalism capital of America.

It’s because a group of high school students demonstrated to a local school board and the school system’s superintendent that they didn’t do their due diligence in hiring a school administrator.

Man, I love this story.

Six students at Pittsburg High School, who happen to serve on the staff of The Booster Redux — the school newspaper — managed to dig out the truth about the resume presented by the school’s new principal.

Amy Robertson was hired as the principal. Then the students begin sniffing around about the school Robertson had listed on her credentials. It turns out that Corllins University — which Robertson listed as where she earned her masters and doctoral degrees — is nothing more than a degree mill. It ain’t accredited, or legit, the students learned.

Students show up their elders

The students, though some vigorous gumshoe reporting — and the help of the Internet doing basic Google searches — managed to show up the school board and the superintendent, who should have vetted the principal properly before hiring her.

And what, in this instance, constitutes proper vetting? Nothing more than checking to determine the quality of the school that Robertson had listed as providing her education.

The students did the school board’s and superintendent’s job for them.

Get this from the Kansas City Star: “On Wednesday, Destry Brown, the Pittsburg schools superintendent, said the district was reposting the job and from now on will be doing a background check and vetting credentials before any candidate is hired.”

Background check and vetting credentials? No spit, folks.

What gives this story its additional legs is that the student reporters employed basic journalism principles in rooting out an important story. It gives some of us old-school journalism dinosaurs hope that the profession is about to jump off its death bed before it is overcome by “click-bait journalism” preferred by too many publishers these days as they stagger away from traditional print journalism to something called “the digital product.”

The students didn’t expect this kind of attention. The national media have jumped on this story, I believe, because it speaks to old-school journalism values exhibited by a group of young people who — one might surmise — are more attuned to social media and other 21st-century technology.

Nice going, students. You have made many of your journalism elders — including yours truly — quite proud of you.

media news

So many lies, so much damage

March 14, 2017 kanelis2012

The president of the United States has lied with such recklessness since entering the political world, it’s becoming difficult to single out which lie has done the most damage.

I believe I should look at one lie that on the surface seems the least consequential, but which has produced the most serious consequence.

It was his pledge to stop tweeting once he became president.

Yep, Donald J. Trump made that pledge. I cannot remember when he did, but he did. He said he would be more “presidential” once he actually took the oath, settled into the big chair in the Oval Office and started signing executive orders to do the things he promised to do.

Has he kept that pledge? Hah! No.

What has been the result? It’s been pretty far-reaching. I’ll start with the most recent tweet, which he fired off more than a week ago early on one morning. It was where he said Barack Obama “wiretapped” his office at Trump Tower. He said his predecessor did it, that he broke the law, that he committed a felony. He called it a “fact.”

Trump’s tweet has ignited a firestorm. I mean, it’s a serious conflict in Washington, D.C. He has generated bipartisan criticism, although the volume has been much louder among Democrats than Republicans.

Is this Twitter tempest ever going to end? Is this how he’s going to conduct foreign and domestic policy, through the use of a social medium in which he makes statements without consulting his senior staff?

Didn’t this clown say he would surround himself with the “smartest people” in the history of humankind? If that is what he has done, why aren’t they telling this idiot to cease and desist with the Twitter nonsense? Maybe they are … and he’s not listening.

The liar in chief is out of control.

You want any more examples of how dangerous this behavior can become in a world fraught with serious peril? We are witnessing it as it is happening.

International news, media news

Tweets diminish Trump’s ‘moral authority’

March 5, 2017 kanelis2012

Thomas Friedman is a journalist of considerable reputation.

He might, in the words of Donald J. Trump, be an “enemy of the people,” but the New York Times columnist has a well-established base of knowledge of world affairs.

Consider his take on the president’s use of Twitter as a primary form of communication.

Friedman appeared this morning on “Meet the Press” and he asserted that Trump’s “moral authority” is being damaged by his random rants that go out in the wee hours from wherever he happens to be at the moment.

He noted that the president is going to Europe soon to meet with other heads of government and heads of state. They are our allies. Our friends. Our partners.

How will the U.S. president respond to these meetings? What might he say about President So-and-So or about Prime Minister What’s-His-Name?

Does the president’s Twitter fetish diminish the trust that these world leaders have in the head of the greatest nation on Earth?

Friedman believes Trump’s use of this social medium ultimately could cause great damage to this country’s standing among other world leaders who depend on America to be the source of reason, strength and wisdom.

Trump’s demonstrated careless use of Twitter undermines all of it.

The president is playing a dangerous game.

media news

Penmanship: It’s a goner

February 28, 2017 kanelis2012 1 Comment

My day is almost over, but before “I lay me down to sleep,” I want to offer this minor regret about the craft I pursued for 37 years.

My handwriting has gone straight to hell.

I was blessed with good penmanship as a child. I got good grades from my elementary school teachers who used to actually grade students’ penmanship. My parents both had exquisite penmanship. I have in my possession a stack of letters Mom wrote to one of her brothers in the late 1940s. Her handwriting was impeccable.

I came of age with that kind of handwriting. I was inducted into the Army in 1968 and wrote letters home constantly. Dad would share them with friends and other family members.

I came home from the Army in the summer of 1970, re-enrolled in college in January 1971 and started taking mass communications classes.

I became a reporter, which required those of us in the profession at the time to learn how to write rapidly. I had to take copious notes from subjects I would interview. When one has to write like that so frequently, it stands to reason that one’s penmanship is going to suffer.

I finished school, got started in journalism. I kept writing quickly. My handwriting kept deteriorating.

Now? It’s shot all to hell. My wife needles me good-naturedly about it on occasion. She remembers my good penmanship.

Yes, I know that penmanship no longer is even taught in school these days. Children operate handheld “devices” to communicate. Many of them can’t tell time by looking at an old-fashioned clock dial.

My handwriting got so bad that I actually fantasized about some judge issuing a subpoena ordering me to turn over my notes. Hah! Go ahead and try to decipher this scribble, Your Honor!

But I do regret that I no longer can write with precision.

Mom and Dad no doubt would be unhappy with this admission.

media news

Feeling a bit self-conscious

February 26, 2017 kanelis2012

I am feeling a little self-conscious about one aspect of this blog I write.

It involves the way I distribute it. I use several social media to disseminate my musings about this and/or that. One of them is Facebook.

This week a young man with whom I am acquainted complained about the politicization of Facebook. He told he has grown weary of all the back and forth, give and take, the jousting over political matters on a social medium that — as he understood it — isn’t intended for such discussion.

“It’s supposed to be a place where people ‘congregate,'” he told me.

True enough.

I mentioned to him that I distribute my blog through Facebook and other social media; I don’t think he reads the blog, so perhaps he learned something about what I do in my “spare time.” The blog does produce its share — or more than its share, perhaps — of comments from those who spend a lot of time reading other people’s posts. They engage each other. They take me to task for my posts; others of them endorse whatever I am saying. They argue with each other, they get under each other’s skin.

I choose essentially to stay out of that kind of repartee. I prefer to post the item on my blog and then fire it off on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn,Google and Tumblr.

I don’t intend to politicize Facebook with these posts. I merely intend to get as much exposure as I can for my blog, which I enjoy writing immensely.

This exercise, which I pursue multiple times a day, is a form of therapy for me. It keeps me engaged in public affairs and the news of the day.

Sure, my blog content is mostly about politics and public policy; it’s also about slices of life and life experience — including retirement and grandparenthood. And, yes, I enjoy writing about our adorable puppy, Toby.

Perhaps my sharing this fit of self-consciousness will help clear my head — and my conscience.

Actually, I feel a bit less self-conscious at this moment than I was when I began writing this post.

See? The “therapy” works!

media news

Trump declines to mingle with ‘the enemy’

February 25, 2017 kanelis2012 1 Comment

We might have seen this one coming.

Donald J. Trump announced today he won’t attend the annual White House Correspondents Dinner, an event that attracts noted journalists, assorted celebrities and politicians — and usually features a blistering bit of self-deprecation and jabs at others from the president of the United States.

It’s a whole lot of fun for those who attend. At least it’s supposed to be fun.

Trump, though, will forgo the event. “I will not be attending the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner this year. Please wish everyone well and have a great evening!,” Trump wrote on Twitter.

Is anyone surprised? Really? I didn’t think so. Trump, after all, has labeled the media the “enemy of the people.” Why would he want to mingle with such “dishonest” individuals and organizations?

The president has gone on the warpath against the mainstream media, going so far as to ban certain media organizations from attending routine White House press briefings. He has called them “fake news” outlets. He has accused the media of making stories up, of hiding their sources and attribution.

It is all — if I may borrow a term — “unpresidented” of the president to say these things about the media.

However, the White House Correspondents Dinner has been notable at many levels for many years. Perhaps the most notable event occurred in 2011, when then-President Obama joked about Trump — who was in the audience — concocting all sorts of conspiracy theories, starting with whether the president was born in the U.S. of A. Trump, at the time a mere real estate mogul and reality TV celebrity, took the ribbing stone-faced

What we didn’t know at the time, of course, was that earlier that day Obama had approved the commando mission to kill Osama bin Laden, who was holed up in a Pakistan compound. The president carried on as if he didn’t have a care in the world.

The dinner, which occurs on April 29, will no doubt include plenty of barbs tossed at the president from the podium.

I’m willing to consider taking bets on whether Trump unloads via Twitter in response when they start flying at him. That shouldn’t surprise anyone, either.

Commentary on politics, current events and life experience