Janetnews.com Blog

W. Mark Felt is Deep Throat.

The Washington Post reports:

The confirmation came from Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, the two Washington Post reporters who broke the Watergate story, and their former top editor, Benjamin C. Bradlee. The three spoke after Felt’s family and Vanity Fair magazine identified the 91-year-old Felt, now a retiree in California, as the long-anonymous source who provided crucial guidance for some of the newspaper’s groundbreaking Watergate stories.

Washington Post Confirms Felt Was ‘Deep Throat’

I agree with Bradlee, editor in chief during the Watergate years, that he’s surprised the secret kept this long! If I was a source, I would trust Woordward and Bernstein to keep my identity secret. They exemplify journalistic integrity, ethics and bravery. If only investigative journalism today was so bold.

More Washington Post Coverage

Check out these Box Office charts and graphs. They not only keep track of the Box Office in real time, BUT also compare and contrast from year to year and season to season.

Nielsen EDI - Box Office Charts

Since I teach News Editing and Design, I thought I would share Ron Reason’s Web site with everyone.

I really like Ron’s first point, “Put yourself in the place of the reader.” I used to be a TV news producer and although I teach Newspaper design, I think it really helps me teach students to think visually. No matter what you are doing, print, TV, film, etc, you must look at the whole picture and ask yourself, what can I use to make this story pop out to readers? An eye pleasing story, TV or print will reel readers into a story that words alone might not.

Take a look at Ron Reason’s Top Ten Tips:

Design With Reason: “Visual Thinking for Writers and Editors”

After almost 400 years, talk of the newspaper becoming extinct is still the topic among the publishing world.

Of course, blogs were discussed and online news, but the conclusion, newspapers are here to stay. I agree.

The BBC reported on the World Association of Newspapers.

BBC NEWS | Technology | Newspapers face up to new media

“Newspapers are clearly undergoing a renaissance through new products, new formats, new titles, new editorial approaches, better distribution and better marketing,” Mr Balding said.

Yes, online news readership is growing, but newspapers have been around for 400+ years. As the article suggests, newspapers need to grow with their audience and that means catering to the online audience as well. Technology diversity is important to today’s readers. In my opinion, as journalists we report the changes in the world and now we need to recognize the changes in our readers to accomadate their growing need for information. And that means not only having a print newspaper, but an online version that has mulitmedia capabilities as well as on the go services such as email updates as well as pda and the growing popularity of RSS feeds.

The NYTimes.com wrote a Web site review about a blog that lets people reveal their innermost secrets by post card.
Bless Me, Blog, for I’ve Sinned - New York Times

For PostSecret, you write, type or paste your secret on a postcard, and then, if you want, decorate the card with drawings or photographs. Next the stamp and then the mailbox. Yes, it’s work to confess. And it should be, if only for the sake of the person who might be listening.

The actual Postsecret Web site is very entertaining to read. I think it shows that people LOVE to participate. It reveals a lot about our culture… especially the diverse selection of post cards. As the NYTimes commented, it is an artistic endeavor.

Memorial Day used to be called Decoration Day. It was a day set aside to honor those killed in the Civil War. It was first observed on May 30, 1868. After World War I, people began commemorating all the fallen heros of every war. Then in 1971, Memorial Day was declared a national holiday that would land on the last Monday of May. At the same time, they decided to make November 11 a national holiday to celebrate war veterans, which we call Veteran’s Day.

Read more about Memorial Day on the History Channel’s Web site.

It’s anyone’s guess when The Da Vinci Code will be out in paperback. According to the NYTimes.com, The Da Vinci Code dropped to No. 6 on the hardback fiction list. No. 6, to me is still commedable after how many years? But for the publishers, it might mean it’s time to come out with the paperback edition. (It would have been helpful to me carrying the book around Europe in January) They are hoping the hype of the movie will revitalize sales.

A Mystery: When Will ‘Da Vinci’ Go Into Paperback?

According to The Observer, blogs are here to stay. John Naughton reports on the implications bloggers have on journalism. I myself blog, but I do not consider myself a journalist. I think of my blog as me pointing my readers to interesting stories that reflect my research, academic and personal interests. You will occassionally see a commentary on a story, but I’m just a voice of millions that are doing the same thing. I find this blog as a nice supplement to my personal website, janet news.com.

Again, I go back to James Carey’s theory, ritual of communication. The Internet is a source for people to publish instantly. The Internet lets people give the media feedback instantly. The media was once considered one-way communication, well, not anymore. The Internet now allows the media to be a two-way communication vehicle and that freaks out many journalists, TV execs and I’m sure the film industry.

But, John Naughton gets it right when he says, don’t consider ALL blogs journalism. Click here to read the article. AND, he points out that blogs are not going anywhere. It’s a venue to take part in the conversation. Also, blogs are easy to maintain, which makes it much easier for the non-Internet savvy person to publish their ideas. And, the small percentage that ARE creating credible journalistic content, well, take a look at their credenitals, they ARE journalists. Remember humans love to communicate and just as you talk over the watercooler at work or chit chat over coffee in starbucks, blogs are a virutal community that allows people to vent, editorialize and create grassroots journalism. It’s no different as what I observed from the 17th and 18th century coffeehouses where each coffeehouse catered to different types of industries… yes, the monarchy didn’t like the spreading of the news, but look how that turned out!

David Smith of The Observer (U.K.) reports that a study showed that men mainly read books by male authors and women read both male and female authors.

But a gender gap remains in what people choose to read, at least among the cultural elite. Four out of five men said the last novel they read was by a man, whereas women were almost as likely to have read a book by a male author as a female.

Read the whole article, it is fascinating that in today’s world that more men don’t pick up more predominate women authors to read.

Take a look at this AP story:

LONDON (AP) — A cell-phone ring tone appeared set to top the British singles chart Sunday, outselling the new single by the band Coldplay by nearly four to one, a music retailer said.

Click here for the full story