Thursday, August 24, 2006

New sites about student journalism

One of my favorite new bloggers is Ryan Sholin, who writes about his experiences as a journalism student. What I like most about Ryan is that he seems genuinely excited by this profession. And unlike so many people I meet in newsrooms, he seems interested in learning how to get better at his trade.
Take a look at this post or this or this funny little one to get a feel for his work.

Yesterday Ryan pointed me toward a site that may become another of my favorites -- campusbyline, a two-man operation that aims to highlight the best in college media. And as I took a look through it, I came across this post about the Princeton Review's rankings of college newspapers.
That post links to a related article in the University of Arizona's student newspaper, and suggests a link between the article's writer and a source quoted in the story. That raises an all-new ethics question for me: Should a journalist disclose that a source is a "friend" on a social-networking site? My gut instinct is to err on the side of transparency and say "yes." But I'll be curious to see what other folks say.

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3 comments:

  1. Thanks Paul - If I weren't passionate about it, I wouldn't write about it.

    I dunno about MySpace transparency. Some of the undergrads working on our school paper have hundreds of "friends."

    I think we have pretty general rules about not using friends or family as a source, but an acquaintance or classmate you add on a social networking site seems like fair game to me.

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  2. Hi guys,
    Thanks for your comments.
    Certainly having a "friend" on a social-networking site doesn't imply the same sort of intimate connection as does having a friend in the real world.
    But I agree with Kiyoshi -- the ethical move is to just avoid using online friends as sources.
    If, however,someone you know from a social-networking site runs for office or is arrested or buys a business or takes some other news-worthy action, and it falls to you to do the story, then you should disclose the connection.

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  3. When one looks at it through the lens of a professional journalist, the "Friend" concept seems to have all sorts of extra connotations. Usually, it's just someone you rubbed elbows with. Friend collecting is all the rage these days.

    I would venture to say that we'll be seeing many more charges of bias in college papers stemming from seemingly innocuous "friend"-ing and joining of "groups" on Facebook and MySpace.

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