Paper reports a rumor, to protect the object; social media may cause more such cases

Report a rumor? Sometimes it's called for. The Times Tribune of Corbin, Ky., made that decision this week because a rumor made viral by social media was raising the possibility of retribution and discrimination against an innocent person and his business.

Michele Baker's story began tightly: "A Corbin business has suffered a downturn due to an apparently false rumor circulated on social media outlets that the owners refused to serve uniformed soldiers." It quoted the owner, an India native who said he is a U.S. citizen, as denying the rumor and noting that his daughter is in the local high school's Reserve Officer Training Corps; and it quoted the local police chief: “We have had a dozen calls this morning and we are trying to verify the allegations. We are trying to stop the rumors.” (Baker photo: The Pak-N-Sak store)

Having established the official concern, the newspaper weighed in on its own authority, reporting, "Attempts to contact the servicemen who were allegedly refused service have been unsuccessful. Allegations of business owners refusing to serve soldiers are rampant on the Internet." And it kept the story short: 325 words. There's just as long a story in how the 6,000-circulation daily decided to report a rumor that exploded on Facebook and Topix, the website with discussion threads for seemingly every community.

Managing Editor Becky Kilian said she first heard the rumor Saturday, and by the time the office opened Monday, "It was pickling up multiple threads on Topix and was spreading to Barbourville, in the next county." She said that the police chief mentioned it to her in a conversation about another matter and "We were both concerned that if the rumor continued unchecked that it might contirbute to an inappropriate action on someone's part," beyond the ethnic slurs and gullibility displayed online.

Baker went to work on the story, and "In every aspect in Michele's reporting, it looked like a myth," Kilian said. "It might as well have been a Bigfoot sighting." When a Google search found similar cases elsewhere, involving ethnic or racial discrimination, Kilian knew the paper needed to publish an unusual story. "With the discrimination against a minority and the inflammatory langauge that was being used," she said, "it needed to be addressed."

"This is the first time I think in my career as a journalist that I've ever been involved in a story that dealt with a rumor like that," said Kilian, a Corbin native who has been a journalist for 10 years and returned to her hometown as a reporter two years ago. She became managing editor of the Community Newspaper Holdings Inc. paper last year.

"I just wish there was some way to educate people" that just because they read something on the Internet that doesn't mean it's true," Kilian said. "I wish we could teach news discernment." Situations like this call for editorial discernment, too, and the prevalence of social media mean that journalists may have to make calls like this more frequently.

"So far today's story seems to have garnered a great deal of attention," Baker said in an email to The Rural Blog. "I received a call from a man who said he was among those who helped spread the rumor and the he now regrets it." To read Baker's story, click here. To read some of the discussion on Topix, click here.

Spend Thursday afternoon with Community J scholars at AEJMC

The Community Journalism Interest Group has a great lineup of presentations from scholars exploring numerous aspects of communities, journalism and their intersection at this year's AEJMC annual convention in St. Louis. And, planning for these events is quite easy to do: Simply set your Thursday afternoon aside for back to back sessions focusing on community J:

- Poster session: Thursday from 1:30 to 3 p.m.
- Panel session: Thursday from 3:15 to 4:45 p.m.

These presentations are where scholars who presented peer-reviewed manuscripts will present their work. As you can see from the more detailed look at these presentations as well as the abstracts of the papers, the topics are timely and varied -- they also, I think, show the importance of looking at the new media landscape from the perspective of the community media scholar.
I hope you will attend these sessions, engage our scholars and offer them thoughtful feedback that will enable them to revise their manuscripts and work toward publication in top tier journals. These scholars have already received outstanding feedback from our dedicated group of reviewers, who offered some meaningful feedback and evaluation of the research papers submitted to the interest group this year.

SCHEDULE
POSTER SESSION
Thursday: 1:30 pm to 3 pm / 145

Community Journalism Interest Group
Topic — New Terrain: The Shifting Definitions of Journalism and Community
48. A New Community Journalism? The Deseret News’ Shift Toward Gemeinschaft
and a Values-centered Audience
Richard G. Johnson and Quint Randle, Brigham Young
49. Community News as Collective Action*
Mark Poepsel, Missouri-Columbia
50. Patched In: Corporately Owned Online Community News Sites Pursue
Different News Topics Than Independent Ones
Jack Rosenberry, St. John Fisher

Discussant: John Hatcher, Minnesota Duluth

* Top Student Paper, Community Journalism Interest Group


PANEL SESSION
Thursday: 3:15 pm to 4:45 pm / 167

Community Journalism Interest Group

Refereed Paper Research Session:
Discourse and Knowledge: Exploring the Community-journalism Relationship

Moderating/Presiding: Tommy Thomason, Texas Christian

At the Community Level: Culturally Competent News Coverage
of a City Neighborhood*
Dianne Garyantes, Rider
Community News along the Rural-Urban Continuum: Looking for News
in All the Wrong Places?
Gary Hansen and Elizabeth Hansen, Eastern Kentucky
Yes We Censor: The Impact of Commenting Policies on Two
Nonprofit Community Journalism Websites
Rebecca Nee, San Diego State

Discussant: name, affiliation

* Top Faculty Paper, Community Journalism Interest Group

ABSTRACTS
Community Journalism Interest Group
1. At the Community Level: Culturally Competent News Coverage of a City Neighborhood • Dianne Garyantes, Rider University • This study represents the second phase of a larger study that examined the cultural competence of journalists reporting on inner-city communities. This phase explored journalists' reporting and news texts, and found support for the importance of ""micro"" knowledge to interpret cultural cues and the need for ""insider"" news sources to negotiate one's ""outsider"" status. However, reporters also need to go beyond ""insider"" news sources to provide culturally competent coverage of the community.
2. Community News along the Rural-Urban Continuum: Looking for News in All the Wrong Places? • Gary Hansen, University of Kentucky; Elizabeth Hansen, Eastern Kentucky University • Access to news on local politics and community issues is critical to community life. Using data from 1,154 respondents to a mail survey sent to a random sample of Kentucky households, both sources of local news and ratings of them are examined at various locations along the rural-urban continuum. Results demonstrate different media and information environments along the continuum and suggest many people may be looking for news in all the wrong places.
3. A new community journalism? The Deseret News' shift toward Gemeinschaft and a values-centered audience • Richard G. Johnson, Brigham Young University; Quint Randle, BYU • In August 2010, the Deseret News, a daily newspaper in Salt Lake City, announced a significant change in direction. It would begin to produce content based on core values that were consistent with teachings of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which owns the newspaper. This article examines whether the Deseret News has shifted from traditional metropolitan journalism to a more community-oriented focus. In an exploratory constant comparative analysis, it examines two months front-page content in 2011 and compares them with the same dates from 2010. It explores the sociological construct of Gemeinschaft and the principle of community journalism. The data from 2011 show a substantial difference in coverage, providing far more content directed toward a values-oriented community.
4. Yes We Censor: The Impact of Commenting Policies on Two Nonprofit Community Journalism Websites • Rebecca Nee, San Diego State University • This qualitative, multiple case study looks at the impact of commenting policies on public engagement with two of the oldest U.S. digitally native nonprofit community journalism sites, Voice of San Diego and the New Haven Independent. Findings suggest an effective commenting community can be created by requiring registration, providing appropriate technical supports, and having journalists monitor and enforce strict guidelines. Human resource demands and other attempts at community engagement by these news sites are also addressed.
5. Community News as Collective Action • Mark Poepsel, University of Missouri • Online news is a collective good. It is difficult, at times impossible, to exclude people from access to information once it is made available digitally. One's consumption of news does not subtract from the ability of another to use the same information. This basic economic theory helps explain the difficulty of establishing a working business model for online news. This theoretical approach also lays the groundwork for a discussion of alternative approaches to funding community news in a digital environment. This study examines a community news website in the American South. The website is supported in equal parts by advertising and by voluntary contributions. Theories of collective behavior are applied to a textual analysis of notes included with voluntary contributions to the news website in relation to the journalistic and social ideals of the site's publisher/editor. What results is a case study of a conversation between a community news publisher and that publisher's audience in the context of the moral imperatives underlying collective action. Social responsibility, altruism and an appreciation for the ideals of news in democratic society are examined as factors influencing decisions to contribute to community news. Identifying key elements of voluntary contribution can help with future funding efforts. The extension of theories of collective behavior has both theoretical and practical implications for community news if it is to survive in an economically challenging media ecosphere.
6. Patched in: Corporately owned online community news sites pursue different news topics than independent ones • Jack Rosenberry, St. John Fisher College • A content analysis found differences in news topics covered by independent online community news sites and ones that are part of the Patch.com network owned by AOL. Patch sites tended to have a greater emphasis on social ritual coverage while the independent operators favored coverage related to community structure.

Alaska Native corporation says it will close its chain of six rural weekly newspapers

UPDATE, Aug. 3: The editor of the Cordova paper is buying it, thus preserving the oldest paper in the chain, but others are scheduled to print their last editions the week of Aug. 15. "The company said it continues to entertain offers for the individual publications," Alaska Dispatch reports.

The Alaska Native corporation that has published a chain of six weekly newspapers for rural Alaska for 19 years is liquidating its newspaper company after failing to find a buyer, leaving most of the rural communities without a local news outlet.

Calista Corp. said Alaska Newspapers Inc. is unprofitable and will stop publishing some time next month. ANI publishes The Cordova Times on Prince William Sound, The Seward Phoenix Log on the Kenai Peninsula, The Dutch Harbor Fisherman in the Aleutian Islands, The Bristol Bay Times in Southwest Alaska, and The Tundra Drums in the Yukon-Kuskokwim River Delta (the corporation's service area), The Arctic Sounder in Northwest Alaska and the North Slope, and First Alaskans magazine. Richard Mauer of the Anchorage Daily News, in a comprehensive story, notes that The Cordova Times is 97 years old.

About three years ago, the company brought its field reporters into its Anchorage office, occasionally sending them out to their coverage areas, then re-stationed reporters in (from west on Google map) Unalaska, Bethel, Seward and Cordova. It started a content-sharing agreement with Alaska Dispatch, an online publication founded in 2008 and funded since 2009 by Alice Rogoff, former chief financial officer of U.S. News & World Report. The Dispatch's Craig Medred writes, "Newspapers in rural Alaska have been struggling like those elsewhere as news increasingly moves to the Internet." He notes the withdrawal of the Daily News to its home area, and lists the other dailies in the state and their owners, none based in Alaska.

"We genuinely hope the communities affected by this will find a new media voice to tell their stories," Calista CEO Andrew Guy said in the corporation's announcement.

ETHICS: Quandary in a small town sports department

I received this from a former student now working at a smaller newspaper in a large Southwestern state and thought it might make both for a good discussion here and as an ethics case study/discussion in classes.

I think it is emblematic of some of the things that community journalists face that their larger-publication brethren don't.

So let's have at it in the comments. What would you have told the student? My thoughts follow the note (all of this is used with the person's permission):

Since football season wrapped up, I've been "honored" a lot. I guess my first-year here everyone was just feeling me out but a year later they've gotten use to me and my coverage. …

At the football banquet, they gave me a plaque thanking me. At the tennis banquet, same thing. Those I appreciated, and know there's nothing you can do about someone calling you up on stage and handing you a personalized something. Then came the hockey banquet where I got a $50 Outback gift card. And then on Friday, the family of a girl who plays basketball and softball gave me a card thanking me for all my work but that I didn't know had a $50 Chili's gift card in it.

I've gotten a few leftover T-shirts that the coaches had lying around in my closet. I never wear any apparel from either of my teams to any game. I might wear a T-shirt when I got to Walmart, but I usually wear the other stuff when I'm back in Carolina or if I'm just staying in for the day. Keep in mind none of this stuff I solicited. …

Is there a moral dilemma in accepting any of this stuff? I know people are just trying to express their appreciation for the job I'm doing and I really am thankful to have a great community to work with. Plus, I'm broke so a steak from a good restaurant is appealing to my appetite and a few new T-shirts keep me from spending money on new ones.

I believe none of the stuff I have received has affected or will affect my coverage. At the end of the day, I have a certain number of pages to fill and I have to go to the event(s) that help me fill those pages. I'm putting in my 50-plus hours giving everyone as much coverage as I can. … The girl whose parents gave the gift card happened to be the best basketball player on the team the last two years, so she earned the right be interviewed and photographed; but I think anyone will tell you I try to get every kid I can in the paper at some point in the year, trying to keep it fresh.

I've had the discussions before about accepting stuff from bowls (food, gifts, etc.) and I basically came to the conclusion it's a personal decision or up to whatever the paper says you can and can't do. This is just something I'd like a veteran to weigh in on.

Here was my response:

Always a quandary, where do we draw the line - at being human?

The gift cards are problematic. It's a real bear for a community journalist because you have to continue living in the community. But the very fact that it's bothering you shows that it's problematic.


You have plenty of personal integrity. Just raising the question shows that. And that's why it's a problem. You know you aren't going to be bought by a $50 gift card, etc. But you also know that, as a result of that personal integrity, appearances mean as much as reality. And there's no way to control appearances.



So here's what I would do:

 If you can, try to meet personally with those who gave them to you. Thank them profusely and tell them how honored you are that they think so highly of your work - that there is no greater praise than readers - and the parents of the children you cover - thinking you are doing right by their kids.

But then explain that thank-yous beyond an occasional kind word are problematic - you'd never want anyone to have reason to question your ethics - especially any opponent whom you might also have to write about.

So ask if they wouldn't mind if you treated the gift as recognition not only for your work, but also for all those others  (editors, former professors {grinnn}) who help make such work come together. And so it is a gift to the paper that would be honored to be able to use it to support an organization like Salvation Army or, better, the local kids' home that could really use the cards to thank their volunteers or show their kids a good time.



Before you do this ...


Go to your editor, outline this strategy, and get it blessed. There may be things you don't know about that could give the editor blowback (for all you know, one of these parents sits on the local Kiwanis with old eddie, and maybe said something about doing this and the boss, wanting to be a good guy or girl, said sure, OK).


Either way, sleep easy. You know your integrity.

The Nature of Communities

Back when I was a doctoral student at Iowa State University in the mid-1980s, I took a class in community sociology. One of the first issues that came up was the question of what was a community. We read about George Hillary's 1955 study that came up with 94 different definitions. As the class progressed, we never managed a unified definition of what constituted community, but we did look at a variety of approaches, including location, interest and interaction.

This same question has come up over the last week as I've been working with a group of colleagues on a definition of community journalism. I'm not sure we're any closer now with a group of community journalism scholars than that group of doctoral students was 25 years ago. But the discussion is still worthwhile.

A Nieman Report published this summer from Michael Skoler does a great job of looking over this issue, considering the importance of viewing communities as something more than just an audience with shared characteristics. He writes:

"[N]ews organizations need to think of themselves first as gathering, supporting and empowering people to be active in a community with shared values, and not primarily as creators of news that people will consume."

You can read the whole article here.

Rural journalism doing fine, writer discovers

(First posted to The Rural Blog) "With newspaper ad sales falling at an unexpectedly abrupt rate, many publishers at mid-year were laying off staff, requiring unpaid furloughs, consolidating plants and taking other measures to buttress their bottom lines," Alan Mutter notes on his newspaper-industry blog, Reflections of a Newsosaur. But he's writing about daily newspapers, mainly those in metropolitan areas.

In contrast, "Rural journalism is surviving, even thriving," Geoff McGhee writes for the Rural West Initiative of the Bill Lane Center for the American West at Stanford University. The writer of this blog item, the director of the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues, was a major source for Lane's report. He uses our definition of community newspapers, those with circulations of less than 30,000. But his report is not mainly figures; he also writes about community journalists "developing a relationship with the local readers that some people say that mainstream journalism has lost, a relationship with all the complications that intimacy and proximity bring."

McGhee also relies on Judy Muller, a former ABC News reporter who is a professor at the University of Southern California, and her new book, Emus Loose in Egnar: Big News from Small Towns. (We'll have a separate report on the book in a later blog item; Judy was interviewed by Bob Edwards for his Weekend radio show; to listen, click here.) And near the end of his 3,238-word article, he quotes a Mutter blog post from March 15, 2010 about the business side of rural newspapering, perhaps threatened less by the Internet than population loss and other demographic changes. Rural papers may be doing well in relative terms, but they face many of the same challenges as metros. (Read more)

Loose Emus - good report on state of rural journalism

Geoff McGheee uses a review of Judy Muller's new book, "Emus Loose in Egnar: Big Stories from Small Towns," to launch a discourse on rural journalism - which, not surprisingly, he finds to be a lot healthier than the general j-meme (although, as he also notes, many are "an advertiser or two away from red ink"). But he also notes that too many also are failing to deal with digital well.

"I think the holy trinity of the small town paper is obituaries, the police blotter, and high school sports," says Muller. "That's what people care about. The police blotter is where you find out who's doing what to whom. The school superintendent beating his wife, from there it gets blown into a bigger story. The high school sports thing is so huge, I can't even explain it to a person who doesn't live in a small town. And births, not just obits, tend to dominate. If you leave town, and you subscribe online, those are the things, 'Oh my God, old Pete just died' — that might seem insignificant to someone outside of a small town, but every single birth and death means something." 

Also:

Muller takes us to the town of Hardin, Montana, which built a $27 million jail complex on spec, then launched a doomed campaign to house Guantanamo Bay inmates. The issue touches off a furious wrestling match among the local paper, the Big Horn County News, the local gossip sheet, the Original Briefs, and the Crow tribe's newspaper, the Apsáalooke Nation. Muller's storytelling shines as she leads us through the maze of conflicting agendas, local feuds, and the befuddlement of a newly arrived national reporter at the News, who tries to play it straight and gets virtually run out of town for his efforts.

His editor laments, "Mike came in with what I call the ‘Tin Man’ reporter concept: you are protected, you don't associate with the people you cover, you have no relationship to them, nor do you have the desire to develop one." Muller says that the reporter is now working for a small paper in another state. "He gets it now," she says. "You can still tell the story, but you write it in a way that makes it clear you are part of the community."

 Al Cross is quoted extensively.