Things got raucous indeed in December at the JPS book benefit ramrodded by IABC
with assistance from SPJ. Think how happy everyone would’ve been if they’d known how much good they were doing. Here’s the take: 297 books and 310 magazines collected at the door plus another 238
books donated by Friends of the Library. JPS valued the books at $7.50 each and
the magazines at 50 cents each. Throw in $363 net cash, and the readers library
at the county hospital received $4,530 worth of value.
Coming next month: all the revelers in the building on a big color page.
GFW PRSA board member Lauren Burkett, right, earned her M.B.A. from UTA last
month, while Lisa Albert, above left, and Shawn Kornegay both earned a master
of science in journalism, strategic communications from TCU (a month earlier,
PR Tactics published Lisa’s article “A brand new U: Effective sub-branding at a university”). And that’s PRSA roving ambassadors Richie Escovedo, left, and Tom Burke making one last
stop in 2008, at Mi Cocina off Hulen Street at I-30.
SPJ national update: Seeing the future of journalism, and trying to save it. ... Iraqis and other Arabs erupted in glee at the Iraqi journalist’s shoe attack Dec. 14 on George W. Bush. Many in the Mideast saw the act as expressing the contempt they feel for the
American leader they blame for years of bloodshed, chaos and civilian
suffering. “I hope he got the message loud and clear: that he’s loathed for his wrongdoing, for killing Muslim women and children in Iraq,
Afghanistan and Palestine,” said Jordanian businessman Raed Mansi. Shoes figure prominently in the Arab lexicon of insults, as in, you’re lower than the dirt on my shoes. More here.
SPJ national update II: The U.S. Department of Education released new rules in
mid-December that would let records be kept secret, even with all identifiers
removed, if someone maybe could figure out who the records pertain to. The rule
change, an interpretation of the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act,
goes into effect Jan. 8. Critics say it’s being hurried into place before President Bush leaves office, enabling schools and universities to hide information regardless
of its public importance. More here. ... An unpublished 513-page federal history of the reconstruction of Iraq
depicts an effort crippled before the invasion by Pentagon planners hostile to
the idea of rebuilding a foreign country and then molded into a $100 billion
failure by bureaucratic turf wars, spiraling violence and ignorance of the
basic elements of Iraqi society. The account is circulating in draft form in
Baghdad and in Washington among a tight circle of technical reviewers, policy
experts and senior officials. It concludes that when the reconstruction began
to lag — particularly in the critical area of rebuilding the Iraqi police and army — the Pentagon simply put out inflated measures of progress to cover up the
failures.
More here.
SPJ national update III: CNN, in the afterglow of record election ratings, now
wants to beat the Associated Press at its own game. For nearly a month, a trial
version of CNN’s wire service was on display in some newspapers. Editors from about 30 papers
were to visit Atlanta to hear CNN’s plans to cover big national and international events at a lower cost than the
AP. More here. ... Committee to Protect Journalists seeks answers that mainstream press ignores. ... South Florida’s three largest dailies have a new initiative in their four-month-old
content-sharing arrangement — launching a news service this month with print and digital articles produced by
Florida International University j-students. The South Florida News Service
will operate out of classrooms at FIU’s School of Journalism and Mass Communication. More here.
SPJ national update IV: With few job prospects, journalism students should learn web skills. ... For years The Daily Texan has been one of only four college newspapers with
its own printing press on site. That may change this month, as the governing
board that oversees UT Austin’s student paper will vote whether to sell the printing presses sitting at the
bottom of the William Randolph Hearst Building on Whitis Avenue at 25th Street.
More here. ... The U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C., awarded Freedom of
Information Act requester William Davy attorney fees Dec. 19, saying he deserved to have them paid after six years of
litigation against the CIA. Davy sought records related to the assassination of
President John F. Kennedy. More here. ... Military whistleblowers, save your breath. The Pentagon inspector general
rarely sides with service members who complain that they were punished for
reporting wrongdoing, according to an Associated Press review of cases. More here.
===========================================================
PEOPLE & PLACES
John Lumpkin, a vice president and former bureau chief for the Associated Press, has been
named director of TCU’s Schieffer School of Journalism. His first day on the job is June 1. “We are aiming to be nothing less than the best program in the country, and John
is a fine choice to help us get there,” said Bob Schieffer, moderator of CBS News’ “Face the Nation” and a TCU alumnus for whom the journalism school is named. A graduate of the
University of Virginia, Lumpkin worked with the Richmond, Va., Times-Dispatch
and the Fort Worth Star-Telegram before joining the AP in 1971. He was a
correspondent and bureau chief in Texas, North Carolina and Iowa, then became a
corporate officer in 2003. He reported on the Watergate-related Milk Fund
Scandal and directed coverage of numerous major news stories, including the two
space shuttle disasters, the political rise of
George W. Bush and the 51-day Branch Davidian siege in Waco. He currently is AP vice president
for newspaper markets in the U.S. and Latin America. ...
Abilene Christian University’s Department of Journalism and Mass Communication dedicated its converged-media news lab during ceremonies in September. “It used to be enough for students to enter the job market with a good education
and a good set of clips or a good photo portfolio or a great audition tape to
illustrate they had some practical, real-world experience. That won’t cut it anymore,” department chair Cheryl Bacon said. “Today’s media need fresh, young talent who can write, shoot video, get their story
online and talk about it on the 6 o’clock news, or on YouTube.” Bacon added that few universities in the nation have converged-media newsrooms,
and even fewer have put their reporters and editors in these newsrooms to work
on a daily basis.
===========================================================
