Archive for the &;investigative-journalism&; Category
Columbia Cuts Environmental JournalismProgram
October 21, 2009
Is the force of gravity finally hitting journalism schools? Unbelievably, as newspapers and magazines make cut after cut (incidentally also hurting freelancers like me) journalism school enrollment keeps going up.
I understand the romance of journalism, but what are these people thinking?
Now one of these pricey programs has bitten the dust. The Columbia School of Journalism announced the &;suspension&; of the two-year, $89,000 environmental journalism program. The program directors &;cited falling employment in the field, the rising costs of education, and a lack of financial aid for students.&;
The program actually sounds quite valuable, offering graduates two master&;s degrees, one in environmental science, the other in journalism. These would be ideal tools to investigate critical issues of our time, like global warming, carbon emissions, rainforest deforestation, the decline of the fisheries and the persistence of radiation from the Cold War, just to name some &;top of the head&; topics. Graduates could also take on the appalling anti-science movement of groups like the anti-vaccination crowd.
Unfortunately, in the Darwinian struggle for news outlets to survive, only two of 9 recent program graduates have gotten journalism jobs. Meanwhile, &;many newspapers with reputations for strong coverage&;from the Sacramento Bee to the Columbus Dispatch, have let go of talented specialists.&; Of course, if Rush Limbaugh had his way, there might be an opening at the New York Times.
Tags:anti-vaxers, environmental-journalism, journalism-schools, New-York-Times, Rush-Limbaugh Posted in death-of-magazines, death-of-newspapers, investigative-journalism, Journalism | Leave a Comment &;
The Missing Marines ofTarawa
May 12, 2009
The Princeton Alumni Weekly just published my cover story &;Issue in Doubt.&;
It&;s about how the U.S. military lost track of hundreds of Marines killed at Tarawa in World War II, including Medal of Honor winner and former Princeton student Alexander Bonnyman&;and how despite the Joint POW-MIA Accounting Command (JPAC), whose motto is: “Until they are home&;, depressing political considerations usually mean that the search for Vietnam-era remains get priority over missing WWII or Korean vets.
Due partly to battle conditions, but largely to a series of screw-ups during and after the war, only 49% of the 1000 Marines killed over three days in November 1943 were ever found and repatriated to the U.S.
Can Bonnyman and the other &;missing&; Marines be found and returned to their families? I don&;t know&;but I do think the U.S. owes them a better effort.
Twelve-year-old Fran Bonnyman accepts the Medal of Honor awarded posthumously to her father, Alexander “Sandy” Bonnyman Jr. ’32, from Secretary of the Navy James Forrestal ’15 in 1947.
Tags:government-coverup, Michael-Goldstein, missing-Marines, Princeton, Tarawa Posted in investigative-journalism | Leave a Comment &;
Dateline NBC: EntrapmentAgain?
August 6, 2007
Why people hate reporters: a Dateline NBC producer &;parachutes in&; to the DEFCON hacker&;s convention to attempt to entrap a hacker (any hacker) doing something (anything) illegal so the Feds in attendence can arrest them.
Why? So the &;people in Kansas&; as she so patronizingly describes her own audience can see what &;illegal stuff&; goes down at DEFCON via the ol&; hidden camera trick.
The reporter (Michelle Madigan, to name the guilty) reportedly declined four requests to register as press, and actually told a DEFCON staffer that she was going to the bathroom to get her hidden camera ready!
Unfortunately, all the coverage I&;ve seen of this horrendous example of &;gotcha&; journalism has been on technology blogs; Howie Kurtz , Editor and Publisher other media mavens don&;t often venture into the technology ghetto.
She&;s humiliated, (and apparently, according to this video, Dateline didn&;t even send any back-up to protect her, unlike their anti-predator campaign) but it won&;t stop NBC&;s Dateline, home of the &;online predator&; entrapment that led to a man&;s suicide (without benefit of trial or conviction) and flaming faked truck explosions.
Posted in Dateline-NBC, DEFCON, investigative-journalism, news-entrapment, public-relations-disaster | Leave a Comment &;