The dumbest press release I’ve ever received

Posted on February 22, 2011 by Josh Shannon

Like that of all journalists, my inbox often overflows with press releases for new products, websites, services and the like. Over the years, I’ve seen my share of poorly written pitches: ones that don’t use punctuation or correct grammar, ones that spell my name wrong, and even one that mentioned that the company’s product would be perfect for my readership since I’m the editor of a high school newspaper.

But the press release I received over the weekend takes the cake.

It starts out as your basic press release for a new textbook selling/renting website: it explains why the site is better than the dozens of nearly identical ones already established, mentions how much my readership would want to know about the site and throws in some over-the-top praise (apparently, I’m a “media genius”.) Then the (unnamed) PR flack writing the pitch makes me an offer he thinks I can’t refuse: Write about the website for my newspaper — following all of the company’s conditions — and I’ll be entered to win an iPad.

The e-mail links to a website that spells out the company’s guidelines for the article:

Write. Post. Win.

Writers, we want you to tell students about Swellhead. The most shared article will win a new iPad. iPads are great for taking notes during an interview, catching up on the news or renting textbooks on Swellhead.

To enter, write about Swellhead in your newspaper or magazine. The article must be at least 200 words long and must appear in a prominent space on [sic] your newspaper. Your article must link back to our site. After you have written your article, post your article’s URL on Swellhead’s Facebook wall.

That’s it. Journalists and Editors, get ready for your new iPad.

Sounds like a deal. All I have to do is disregard every journalism ethics rule I’ve ever learned, sully my reputation and that of my newspaper, risk my job and any future employment, and I could (key word: could) win an iPad! Sign me up. I’ll be so busy planning what apps to download that I won’t even notice my integrity flying out the window.

In all seriousness, how does a public relations person not understand the basic journalistic principle of not accepting gifts in exchange for positive coverage? Or does he just assume that because I’m a student journalist, I’ll be so tempted by the iPad that I won’t care about ethics? It’s insulting that he would even suggest I would take that offer, and I’m sure any other journalist worth his salt would say the same thing.

But the saddest part is, I’m willing to bet at least someone will take the company up on its offer.

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My accuracy checklist

Posted on January 30, 2011 by Josh Shannon

Accuracy checklistRecently, Craig Silverman, the author of the Regret the Error blog, challenged journalists to send in photos of their “accuracy checklist” — that is, the list of things they check before submitting a story.

Now, I’ll admit that it was his offer of a free book (not to mention a book I’ve been wanting to read) that first got my attention, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized what a good idea it would be to have a checklist. I’ve always gone through a series of checks before turning in an article, but I’ve never written it down or formally established a procedure for myself.

So after thinking about the steps I go through (and the steps I should go through), here’s my list:

Step 1: Check notes

I usually go through my article, line by line, checking everything that can be verified: names, titles, locations, quote attributions, and basically anything else that is a fact. If I wrote that the source’s name is John Smith, I flip to the page in my notebook where I wrote down his name. If I wrote that he’s 25, I check that. If I wrote that he grew up on Elm Street, I check that. And so on.

Step 2: Check math (twice).

I’ll freely admit that math is not my strongest subject. (After all, I’m a journalist. It goes with the territory.) So I always try to check any math in my stories (percentages, number of years between two events, etc.) And then I check it again.

Step 3: Check online

Because I’m usually writing about UD students, I double-check their graduation year in the university database AND on Facebook (sometimes the database isn’t right.) Then I check any URLs in the story to make sure I typed them in correctly. Third, I verify any facts in the story. (So if a source says that UD has 16,661 undergrads, I look it up. Etc.)

Finally comes the most important part: I Google everything. And I mean everything. I go through the story, and for every name, location, etc., I copy and paste it into Google. If the search engine gives me a “did you mean…” prompt, or if the search results don’t match, I look into it further.

After doing this for a while, I realized that I catch more errors by copy and pasting into Google than by any of the other methods combined. Obviously, it’s not a fool-proof method, so I’d never use it as my only check, but sometimes little errors (like reversing two letters in a long name) that are easy to miss even when double-checking notes, end up getting caught by Googling.

Step 4: Read entire article

Look for spelling, grammar, spell-check errors, AP style, sentence flow, etc.

Step 5: Read entire article again


Now that I have it written out, I’m really going to try to use the list as an actual checklist. After all, I don’t want to end up on Silverman’s list of the year’s most embarrassing corrections.

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Young adults’ confidence in newspapers: A hopeful sign?

Posted on August 22, 2010 by Josh Shannon

Every year, Gallup conducts a poll about the public’s confidence in newspapers. This year’s results are in, and for those of us in the news business, the results are grim.

Just 25 percent of Americans say they have “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of trust in newspapers. That number has been decreasing steadily for the past 20 years.

A glance at the poll’s crosstabs yields mostly predictable results. Liberals have more trust in newspapers than do conservatives. And, with only one notable exception, trust increases with age.

However, what shocked me were the poll results for my generation (the 18-29 age bracket). An astounding 49 percent of young adults say they have “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of trust in newspapers. That’s more than double the percent of any of the other age groups surveyed.

The only problem is that few in that generation actually read newspapers. A separate poll found that only 23 percent in the 18-29 age bracket read newspapers every day. (Compare that to 40 percent of the total population and 66 percent of senior citizens, the age group that reads newspaper most often.)

So how is it that the generation that reads newspapers the least has the most trust in them?
Part of me wants to say it’s because while young adults don’t often pick up a newspaper, they still get news on newspaper websites, in breaking news e-mail alerts or passed on through social media. While the medium has changed, young adults still have confidence in the news organizations behind it. However, the cynic in me says it’s because young people’s reluctance to read newspapers has kept them being disillusioned by certain failings and Jayson Blair-esque scandals that have unfortunately plagued some newspapers in recent year.

I don’t know which explanation is correct. Maybe it’s both. Maybe it’s neither. But one thing is clear: the trust young adults have in newspapers is a great opportunity, one that the news industry would be wise to take advantage of.

As my generation begins to enter the journalism workforce, we need to find away to get more of our peers interested in our product — be it a newspaper, or news in another form. But even more importantly, we have to give them a reason to keep confidence in the media. We have to rise above the scandals, the cable news scream-fests and the tabloid reporting and get back to in-depth reporting and fact checking. The poll shows that our generation hasn’t been jaded as much as older generations, but we have to find a way to keep it that way.

The future of journalism could depend on it.

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Using social media effectively in college journalism

Posted on August 14, 2010 by Josh Shannon

It’s no secret that Facebook and other social media are a big part of most college students’ lives. We use it to keep in touch with friends, plan events and “stalk” classmates. So why shouldn’t we, as college journalists, use it as yet another platform for reporting news?

The answer is that we should. In fact, I would argue a strong a social media presence is crucial for a college newspaper. Our generation uses social media more than any other demographic does, so it only makes sense to use it to better reach our audience.

At The Review, we created a Facebook fan page toward the end of the 2008-2009 school year and joined Twitter the following summer. We started it more as a side project – an experiment to see if social media would serve our purposes. Almost immediately, the results were astounding: more than 15 percent of our Web traffic now comes from social media (12 percent from Facebook and 3 percent from Twitter.)

What’s even more exciting is that once we began to foster a social media community, readers started to post our content themselves, either by retweeting us or posting links to our stories on their own Facebook profiles. Not only does that bring in more readers, it means people are reading our content and finding it useful enough to pass on – an instantaneous way to see which articles are resonating with readers.

When thinking about using social media, it’s important not to alter the way you write or choose news – your idea of newsworthiness and ethics should not change. But, it is important to think about which stories you choose to link to through social media.
A few tips for using social media effectively:

  • Pick stories that will resonate in the social media community. You can’t tweet links to all your articles, so pick a few that will have the most impact. Don’t always just choose the same articles you put on your front page. Pick stories you think people will click on to read and then pass on to others. Crime stories almost always do well on social media, as do articles about unpopular laws and policies. Feature stories, no matter how well written, rarely do well online
  • Look for stories that have a chance to go viral. Post links to the stories that have that “I’ll-be-darned” factor – something unusual, weird or funny – that people will be likely to pass on to their friends. A good example is a story we ran last fall about a student who was walking home from a party and managed to get trapped in a shuttered auto plant near campus. It went viral through social media, eventually got picked up by CollegeHumor.com, and now has more than 35,000 hits on our Web site.
  • Don’t go overboard. Nobody likes the person who tweets 20 links at one time or posts numerous Facebook updates in one day. Doing that is the quickest way to lose followers. If you are more selective about your tweets, people will pay more attention to them.
  • Use Twitter to break news. Post a quick summary of what happened and then direct readers to your Web site for more in-depth coverage. If you have a smart phone, tweet a picture from the scene of the news. The same technique can be used for sports coverage: tweet periodic score updates, then direct readers to your website for the game story.
  • Use social media to find sources. If you’re looking for people to interview about a particular issue – let’s say, for example, students who planned a spring break trip close to home because of the economy – post that on Facebook and Twitter. You might be amazed at the response you’ll get. More than once, I’ve gotten a crucial source on deadline thanks to social media.
  • Develop niche social media accounts. For example, a separate Twitter account that the sports desk uses to post game scores. That way, you can provide followers with more detailed sports news without boring the non-sports fans who follow your general account. Reporters, especially entertainment writers and columnists, can also use social media for their work. For example, one of our columnists often seeks input from readers about upcoming columns via Twitter.
  • Be responsible with social media. Remember that the same rules and ethics apply to anything you publish, whether it’s a 700-word article or a 140-character tweet. You can use more casual language, but careless spelling and grammar will still undermine your credibility. Also, remind your staff to be mindful of posting information on social media that could damage their credibility or objectivity. For example, news reporters should refrain from tweeting their personal opinions on news topics or filling in the “political views” section on Facebook. And, though letting readers see you as a real person is a good thing, the dean you’re scheduled to interview tomorrow might not be too impressed with the pictures of your drunken homecoming party.

(Cross-posted on College Publisher’s “Words of Experience”.)

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