Category: Media

Periscope’s promise and peril

Media
by Ben Lyons

By Ben Lyons / Live streaming is pushing further toward the mainstream, but hurdles remain. With Twitter’s March acquisition of the mobile application Periscope (launched a few weeks after its main competitor, Meerkat), live streaming is now more accessible to both streamers and viewers. The riots in Baltimore apparently have offered Periscope a journalistic coming out. The Guardian’s Washington correspondent Paul Lewis has been lauded for his powerful interviews conducted over the streaming app. But the media may need to be reminded that the content of streams are more often raw information than actual journalism. And in areas where journalism and the entertainment industry mix, apps like Periscope can land media personnel in hot water.

Perfect storm reporting

Media
by Tony Laubach

By TONY LAUBACH / Several tornadoes hit the state of Oklahoma on March 25 in a regional outbreak of severe weather. In addition to the well-televised tornado hitting Moore, a city hit nearly half a dozen times since 1999, another tornado hit near Tulsa in northeast Oklahoma. This tornado was noteworthy largely due to the actions of a well-known storm chaser who took shelter beneath a highway overpass when the tornado got too close and he was unable to safely flee. His video of this event was posted within a couple hours and went viral almost immediately. In addition, the chaser sold his video to several major news organizations across the country. Highway overpasses are one of the most dangerous places to be during a tornado.

Magazine’s headline has Texans fighting mad

Media
by John Jarvis

by JOHN JARVIS / In almost three decades as a print journalist, I never called out a fellow headline writer for something he or she crafted to introduce a story. Until now. What I never did was write a headline so egregiously bad that readers threatened to yank their subscriptions over what I wrote. Someone at Texas Monthly Magazine did, however.

Missouri capitol reporters still trying to police their own

Media
by Terry Ganey

By TERRY GANEY / The reporters who make up the Missouri Capitol News Association recently came together to consider problems with one of the press corps’ members, the Missouri Times, a newly formed organ published by former Poplar Bluff Mayor Scott Faughn. The press group had put the Missouri Times on notice in late January. While one member of the press corps wanted to suspend the Missouri Times from the group, the vast majority agreed to give him more time to come up with a stronger written policy that separates the financial side of the Missouri Times from the reporters who cover the news.

The Pulitzer for Breaking News Photos: Breakthrough for the Post?

Media
by Roy J. Harris Jr.

By ROY J. HARRIS, JR. / There’s a line in the “first rough draft” of recent Post-Dispatch history – the paper’s own account of winning its first Pulitzer Prize in 26 years on Monday – that sounds a bittersweet note, at least to me. “The mood in the newsroom became tense as [Pulitzer administrator Mike] Pride read through the awards for reporting,” writes Tim O’Neil. “When he started into the next-to-last category, breaking news photography, and uttered the words ‘…to the St. Louis…,’ the room erupted in joy.” The sweet is obvious: “Photographers hugged each other to the cheers of their colleagues.” Echoes, to be sure, of 17 other newsroom celebrations held by Post-Dispatch staffers over nine decades. The bitter? That the remarkable, intensive news coverage by Post-Dispatch reporters and editors – of the same Ferguson nightmare of violence that led to the photography Pulitzer – received no mention, either as winner or finalist.