Know the News: The biggest city crime story in a long time

Posted on July 1, 2011 by Greg David

The arrest of Dominique Strauss-Kahn, a leading contender to be president of France, on charges that he raped a hotel housekeeper has been the most riveting crime story in New York in years, became an obsession in France and was fraught with consequences for nothing less than global finance.

You will all have to do a crime story at some point in craft during the first semester, probably not like this one.

Today’s story that the case is collapsing because the victim is not who she claimed to be, seems involved in drugs and money laundering, and has not told the truth about many issues carries a very important lesson–be skeptical. If you have read the previous stories, you will know that most reporters dismissed the claims of the defense lawyers that the victim’s credibility was suspect. The irony is that it was the prosecutors who dug up the evidence that supports that contention, not the defense.

 

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Know the News: Trouble in the schools

Posted on June 28, 2011 by Greg David

Last Friday, in an announcement overshadowed by the passage of the gay marriage bill, the mayor announced a deal on the city budget that prevented the layoffs of more than 4,000 teachers. Nevetheless, as a New York Times story today makes clear, schools will be facing budget reductions that will result in tough choices at each school.  When you arrive in your CD in August, those cutbacks will be the talk of people with children in the public schools.

On the gay marriage front, if you followed the coverage you would have noticed the New York Times concentrated on the politics of gay marriage and the tabloids and broadcast media jumped to the issue of whether it would be a boost for wedding-related businesses. A column by Clyde Haberman of the New York Times pointed to a potential boon for lawyers–meaning divorce lawyers. The tabloids and broadcast media loved that angle.

 

 

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Know New York

Posted on June 26, 2011 by Jere Hester

New York is an amazing city for news but it can be daunting – even for longtime reporters and residents.

You can save a lot of time if you hit the ground knowing a little about how the city works, its political structure, transportation system – and where to find local news and other key information.

Here are some tips and resources to help you get off to a fast start:

A City of Neighborhoods

As previously mentioned, everybody is going to get a beat within one of the city’s 59 Community Districts. You’ll find an interactive map of the CDs here, along with borough-by-borough, and district-by-district profiles, chock full of demographic and other useful information. You’ll also find the various districts’ budget wish lists – a good place to look for stories.

Those resources are on NYC.gov, the city’s homepage – bookmark this site, you’ll be spending a lot of time there over the next three semesters. The page is the city government’s online presence, where you’ll find such valuable information as listings of  police precincts and public schools.

PAGE ONE: NYC.gov, the city's homepage, will become your virtual second home.

You’ll need to know how city government works – this flow chart, while somewhat dense, is a start. The key players – the mayor, comptroller, public advocate, City Council members, borough presidents and others – have pages linking off the NYC.gov homepage. The site also has links to state and federal information pages.

Meanwhile, the recent U.S. Census offers a treasure trove of information about the city – and more granular data is being released by the day. The main U.S. Census site is here, and you can subscribe to news releases here.  WNYC produced a handy map showing changes in the city, census tract by census tract. For some examples of how census data can lead to great people-driven stories, check out the NYCity News Service’s recent special report, “Changing New York: Census 2010.”

Mass Media

We’ve stressed the importance of knowing the news. New York, of course, boasts many media outlets of all types and sizes – all potential homes for your work.

GOOD NEWS: New York is brimming with news outlets of all types and sizes. Above is a sampling of outlets that work with the NYCity News Service.

So you’ll need to know what’s going on in the city as you uncover what’s going on in your beat. The media outlets, ranging from TV and radio stations to community and citywide newspapers to hyperlocal websites and blogs, are too numerous list. But here are some sites you might want to visit regularly:

•The New York Times, Daily News and New York Post are online and we have copies in the Newsroom, along with The Wall Street Journal’s Greater New York section (its online presence is called Metropolis). The Daily News publishes neighborhood news sections aimed at Upper Manhattan, the Bronx, Brooklyn and Queens.

•Gotham Gazette, which runs stories about city government issues, has a strong daily news digest (called The Eye Opener) on its homepage, as well as links to many news outlets, government and advocacy sites. The New York Times’ City Room site is a very good source for news, and boasts a comprehensive blogroll. DNA Info offers multimedia coverage of Manhattan neighborhoods. City Limits does a fine job of covering urban issues. The Huffington Post’s New York page offers a helpful aggregation of stories from various outlets, and features feeds of stories from its various “news partners” – including the NYCity News Service.

•All the major TV stations offer newscasts, while local cable news channels NY1 and News12 run around the clock, as do news radio stations WINS, WCBS AM and WNYC. The city also has many magazines well worth reading, including New York magazine and Crain’s New York Business, among others.

There is, obviously, a lot here. It’s a good idea to flip on one of the radio or TV news channels first thing in the morning, and to at least skim the major papers, online or in newsprint. After you’re assigned your neighborhood, identify any relevant local papers and blogs, and add them to your reading list. Do the same for the neighborhood where you live. Consider setting up an RSS feed, Twitter lists and subject-based email alerts to help manage what will be an ever-growing list of news sources.

Getting Around

Pretty much all you need to know about navigating New York comes in an old song with Comden and Green lyrics, bouncing over a Bernstein tune: “The Bronx is up and the Battery’s down. The people ride in a hole in the ground.”

We can add some more modern, less melodic tips to the mix:

•You’ll find subway, bus and railroad maps and information at MTA.info. Be sure to check the site if you’re heading out on weekends or late at night, when routes often are changed because of track work.

Your best bet for getting door-to-door directions is HopStop.com, especially when you are – as you frequently will be as a reporter – on the run.

The last thing you need is another expense. But you might want to consider investing in unlimited MetroCards, as you’ll be bouncing around town quite a bit. The unlimited weekly card costs $29, while the unlimited monthly runs $104.

TICKET TO RIDE: Consider buying a weekly or monthly unlimited MetroCard.

The J-School is not only located at the Crossroads of the World – it is, more importantly, at the Crossroads of New York. You’re within walking or easy transfer distance of just about every subway line.

But it’s not all about mass transportation: One respected colleague likes to say that the best journalism teacher he ever had was Thom McAn (not that our colleague is all that long in the tooth, but for those too young to recall, Thom McAn is a shoe company that’s still kicking but not as popular as it once was).  But we take his point: You’re going to be doing a lot of walking on the job. While it’s important that you dress befitting a professional reporter representing our school and our News Service, be sure to don comfortable, hardy footwear.

Bedtime Reading

After all that reading, viewing, talking and walking, you’re going to be pretty tired by the end of the day. So we’ll leave you with a suggestion of a book to keep on your nightstand: “The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York,” by Robert Caro.

POWER SUPPLY: Robert Caro's "The Power Broker" is highly recommended reading.

This 1974 epic biography of the city’s controversial master builder offers a history of modern New York.  Just like Rome, New York wasn’t built in a day – and you won’t get through “The Power Broker” all that quickly, either. It’s 1,162 pages (not including footnotes), but well worth reading for background and inspiration as you begin your role in chronicling the ongoing story of New York.

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Know the News: Gay marriage approved in NY

Posted on June 25, 2011 by Greg David

The most high-profile issue in New York in the past three months has been the effort to legalize gay marriage in New York–or marriage equality as its proponents describe it. The passage Friday of a very controversial bill makes New York by far the largest state to take this step. This comprehensive New York Times story linked to here provides the background, context and the politics of the issue and decision.

This won’t be the end of the story. In fact, one can expect a flurry of followup stories. If you had begun your Craft class, doing such a story might be an assignment.

What stories would you do? Coming up with good story ideas is what makes very good journalists.

 

 

 

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Know the News: The Changing Face of the City

Posted on June 22, 2011 by Greg David

Last semester, virtually every student in Craft did a story on the 2010 Census. Census results will continue to be released for the rest of the year, and you will find them invaluable in the coverage of your community district, and in many other classes as well.

Today’s story from the New York Times, ``For A New Life, Blacks Head to the South,” shows how you can use Census stats to produce compelling stories. It also is important because you will be covering in some way the major demographic shifts in the city. One of those is the decline in the African-American population. The other, not covered in this story, is the way immigrants have remade many neighborhoods in the city–especially in Brooklyn and Queens, home to No. 7 subway line, often called “The International Express.

 

 

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Know the News: Many New Yorkers are rich

Posted on June 21, 2011 by Greg David

What kind of a city will you be covering in your Craft class and in many of the other courses you take? A city with a lot of very rich people as this story from the Wall Street Journal New York section makes clear–Private School Tuition Bill Tops $40,000.

Here are some facts. If New York City were a country, its gross domestic product would rank 17th–behind Turkey and ahead of Switzerland. And the top 1% of New Yorkers account for 44% of the income in the city, a figure which has increased by double-digits in the last two decades.

You might also be interested–or appalled–to know that when the WSJ launched its New York specific section, it targeted precisely those rich people. The section is filled with stories about high-priced homes. They also emphasize private schools, they profile big philanthropists and they review fancy restaurants. Poor people rarely grace their pages, unless the story is about politics.

Greg David

 

 

 

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Know the News

Posted on June 20, 2011 by Greg David

When you walk into your Craft class in August, you will be assigned one of the city’s community districts to cover as your beat or you will be assigned a subject beat within a single community district.  In either case, quickly you will be faced with some basic questions:  How will I get started? Where will I find story ideas? What should I be covering?

The way to begin is to actually know something about that is happening in New York—that is to know the news.

This is the first e-mail that will help you do that.  Three to four days a week, I will select and send a story that will give you the news foundation you will need, with a little commentary to explain why the story is important.  You can find the pieces on the class blog and Facebook page as well.

Every two weeks or so, I will send a practice quiz so you can test how well you have  identified and absorbed the key points.  During orientation, we’ll do another quiz — only this time, there will be prizes for the top three scores.

The point here is not to annoy, but to get everyone in the habit of identifying important local stories and absorbing information that could be critical to your future coverage.  It’s why we have news quizzes most weeks in Craft class.  Be on top of the news, particularly in your area of coverage, is essential for any journalist.

If you have any questions on the stories, don’t hesitate to email me at greg.david@journalism.cuny.edu.

Let’s begin with top issue in New York in the past two weeks.  Should the state legalize gay marriage?  Here is the Daily News look at the impact on the economy and business.  Note how they used a relatively old report, which had been covered at the time, as the key element in finding some way to advance a story and go beyond the political maneuvering.

If you click on “news of the day” under “Categories” to the right, you will always be able to find whatever news items have been posted.

Happy reading,

Professor Greg David

 

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Getting off to a Fast Start at the CUNY J-School

Posted on June 16, 2011 by Judith Watson

So you want to hit the ground running when classes start in August at the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism?  Here’s how: Become a regular user of the 2012 FastStart blog, the online summer program designed to strengthen some core skills you’ll need beginning with your first assignment. Every week, we will post new material on the FastStart blog, corresponding to one of the items below.  Many will link to suggested assignments or exercises – we urge you to try them out.  You’ll be glad you did.

1. Know the news

Sounds basic, doesn’t it? But news awareness was the area in which the Class of 2012 scored lowest on the admissions test.  You’ll be tested regularly on the news once you get here, so you need to get in the habit of consuming news critically.  You will learn how a journalist reads the news – this will give you a foundation for your Craft class, in which you will cover a community district or a beat within a community district.

Starting next week, you will get 3-4 emails a week with a story to read that also will be posted on the class Facebook page. We encourage you to comment on what the stories mean and how well they were done.  During orientation, we’ll give you a news quiz to see how well this material “stuck” – prizes will be awarded for best scores.  Happy reading!

2.  Know New York

New York is an amazing city for news but it can be daunting – even for longtime reporters and residents.

You’ll be assigned a neighborhood beat early in the first semester and can save a lot of time if you hit the ground knowing a little about how the city works.

We’ll offer tips and resources to help you get off to a fast start – including a link to NYC.gov, which will quickly become your virtual second home.

3.  Know and understand grammar, usage and style

This may sound elementary but it’s not.  We see lots of grammar problems in student writing, everything from subject-verb agreement to uncertain uses of the comma. You need to start learning AP style and usage now. All students are urged and, in some Craft classes, required to do the exercises at Newsroom101, both the general grammar/punctuation and the AP style exercises. We’ll provide some grammar exercises and links to useful websites, such as The Tongue Untied.

4.  Know how to cover news on deadline

Ask previous first-semester CUNY students.  They’ll tell you perhaps the toughest adjustment is to suddenly find yourself covering an AP daybook assignment with just a few hours to deadline. Here’s an example of a recent NYC AP daybook listing of events, any of which you might be assigned to cover, and some tips on how to prepare for writing on deadline. We’ll post some breaking news exercises during the summer, much like the one on the admissions test.

5.  Know how to use numbers

The use and interpretation of numbers is a constant source of problems for many journalists, and many numeracy issues crop up with journalism students.  But numbers help us do our work as reporters. They are facts that tell a story.  Poynter Online blogger Chip Scanlon once counted how many stories in his local paper involved numbers.  On that day, it was more than one-third, and those stories appeared in every section of the paper.

During “numeracy week,” we’ll post some useful numeracy sites and recommend a free three-hour online training course from Poynter.

6.  Know the tools of the trade

The explosion in communication technologies  – and resulting new journalism tools, especially those for mobile reporting – allows us to tell stories faster and in a variety of new formats. Don’t let a lack of skill and confidence get in the way of your using these tools, especially on deadline. Remember that many (though not all) new methods to produce and distribute content are meant for lay audiences, so they are generally easy to use. You can likely master most of them them on your own, often using web-based tutorials to help. The goal is to make the technology so second nature, it’s as easy as pen and reporter’s notebook.

In the meantime, get a head-start by learning the capabilities of the most ubiquitous new reporter’s tool out there – your mobile phone! Begin this summer by taking a few journalistic pictures with your phone (we may periodically suggest a theme of the week, such as “interaction” or “machines” or “the color red”) and posting them on the Class of 2012 Facebook page.

7.  Know the ethics of your profession

In the hurry-up, always-on media world, it’s more important than ever to understand the ethical underpinnings of journalism.  We’ll post case studies about of some of the thorny issues you’ll face. Meanwhile, try out Poynter’s NewsU’s free ethics module, Introduction to Ethical Decision-Making.

8.  Know how to tell stories in all formats

As journalists, we’re increasingly called on to produce excellent content for multiple platforms. Not only does that mean developing fluency with the storytelling techniques and tools needed for print, interactive and broadcast. It also means knowing which form – or forms – tell the story best. One of the smartest ways to do all this is simply to pay attention to great journalism – check out the best of the best, as judged by fellow journalists.

The Pulitzer Prizes are the big kahuna, as are the DuPonts and the Peabodys for broadcast, and the Online Journalism Awards for digital media.  Here is a list of major journalism awards from Cyberjournalist.net.  Seek out inspiration.

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