JournalismBUZZ

When news falls into your lap -- or out of the upper deck

By Ken Carpenter

There’s no update yet this morning on the fan who fell from the upper deck at the Ballpark at Arlington (Texas) last night.

Not on the Dallas Morning News' website, not on the Fort Worth Star-Telegram site, not on ESPN.com. Not on websites run by The Plain Dealer in Cleveland or the Beacon Journal in Akron.

They stopped a Major League Baseball game for 16 minutes last night when the man fell. There were 20,428 fans in the stadium, at least tens of thousands watching on TV – and we all want to know, “How he's doing? Who is the guy? What are his injuries?”

Note to baseball writers — when a fan falls out of the upper deck, your job is no longer to cover the game, your job is to cover the news. The Associated Press will handle the gamer, but the real story is inside John Peter Smith Hospital in Fort Worth.

Put down your third hot dog and the public-relations notes packet, pack up your gear, hail a cab, and stake out the hospital.

There is a link on DallasNews.com this morning: "Condition unknown of fan who fell trying to catch ball from second deck of Rangers Ballpark."

No, the guy's condition is known -- by him, his family, doctors and nurses at the hospital, ambulance personnel, medics at the stadium. Lots of people know his condition. It's only unknown to the fans who were watching and the lazy journalists who were sitting in the hotel bar after the game.

Good friends Paul Hoynes (The Plain Dealer, Cleveland.com) and Sheldon Ocker (Akron Beacon Journal, Ohio.com) are veteran newspaper men, both were at the game, but neither got the story.

I guess that's what happens when you go brain-dead covering the drudgery of 162 MLB games a year, not to mention 30 more games in "spring training."

You get so used to waiting for press-box announcements, or reaching for PR handouts, that you miss the news when it falls into your lap -- or, in this case, out of the upper deck.

Oh, by the way, the Rangers beat the Indians 12-1. Everybody got that story.

Dow Jones / WSJ online activity policies

The Dow Jones / Wall Street Journal list of rules for employees' online behavior, and other rules of conduct, is below, as published by Editor and Publisher from an internal e-mail:

* * * * *

Online Activities

The use of social and business networking sites by reporters and editors of the Journal, Newswires and MarketWatch is becoming more commonplace. These ground rules should guide all news employees' actions online, whether on Dow Jones sites or in social-networking, e-mail, personal blogs, or other sites outside Dow Jones.

* Never misrepresent yourself using a false name when you're acting on behalf of your Dow Jones publication or service. When soliciting information from readers and interview subjects you must identify yourself as a reporter for the Journal, Newswires or MarketWatch and be tonally neutral in your questions.

Update on InDenverTimes.com

As a charter subscriber to the InDenverTimes.com experiment, I'm privy to updates like this one, sent March 31:

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ 

We’re writing with good news.  It’s happening.  Thanks to you and thousands like you, in less than two weeks, one subscription page has become a robust news destination.

Yesterday we launched the INsider Channel where you can have live conversations with INDT’s editors and reporters to ask questions and find out what’s going on behind the headlines.

Our coverage is expanding every day.  We just announced several new contributors, including award winning sports cartoonist, Drew Litton and John Rebchook (business and real estate). INDenverTimes is attracting worldwide attention with stories on NPR and NBC and in the New York Times, the Boston Hearld and many more.  Our mission? To provide you with the most insightful journalism in Denver using the most innovative and effective technologies available.  

As newspapers shut their doors all over the country, we’re leading the way right here in Denver with a new model. A better way.  INDenverTimes is truly changing the face of journalism.  

THANK YOU.  Together we can make our collective dream a reality and bring Denver the most exciting news platform in the country.

INDenverTimes
http://www.indenvertimes.com

David Carr: 'United, newspapers may stand'

Magazine and newspaper editors have canceled their annual conferences (good idea: let’s not talk to one another). But perhaps someone can blow a secret whistle and the publishers and editors could all meet at an undisclosed location.

My fantasy meeting goes something like this: a rump caucus could form where the newspaper industry would decide to hold hands and jump off the following cliffs together on the following actions.

• No more free content.

• No more free ride to aggregators.

• No more commoditized ads.

• Throw out the Newspaper Preservation Act.

Read the full article in the New York Times

Alan D. Mutter: 'Save your paper? Read this'

The Daily Planet, which distributes some 23,000 free papers each week in Berkeley, Calif., ran an arresting front page three weeks ago to kick off a PBS-style pledge drive to help offset the $3 million in losses suffered by the local couple who bought the paper six years ago to save a major source of news about their community.

Read the full article at Reflections of a Newsosaur.

R.I.P., Rocky Mountain News

David Carr: 'Let's invent an iTunes for news'

AN ARGUMENT FOR MICROPAYMENTS

This article by David Carr, a business columnist for the New York Times, appeared on NYTimes.com and, presumably, inside the print pages, too:

"Those of us who are in the newspaper business could not be blamed for hoping that someone like [Steve Jobs] comes along and ruins our business as well by pulling the same trick: convincing the millions of interested readers who get their news every day free on newspapers sites that it’s time to pay up."

Read the full article

Michael Kinsley: 'You can't sell news by the slice'

AN ARGUMENT AGAINST MICROPAYMENTS

This article by Michael Kinsley, the founding editor of Slate magazine, appeared on NYTimes.com and, presumably, inside the print pages of The New York Times:

"Just a few years ago, there was no sweeter perch in American capitalism than ownership of the only newspaper in town. Now, every English-language newspaper is in direct competition with every other.

"Millions of Americans get their news online from The Guardian, which is published in London. This competition, and not some kind of petulance or laziness or addled philosophy, is what keeps readers from shelling out for news."

Read the full article

Walter Isaacson: 'How to Save Your Newspaper'

Walter Isaacson, former managing editor of Time magazine and former CEO of CNN, discusses his proposal to charge micro-payments for Internet news content on "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart."

Read the Time article by Isaacson here.

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

Walter Isaacson

Daily Show Full Episodes
Important Things With Demetri Martin

Funny Political News
Joke of the Day

Charlie Rose interview: Future of Newspapers

PBS interviewer Charlie Rose talks about the future of newspapers with Walter Isaacson, former managing editor of Time magazine and former CEO of CNN; Robert Thomson, managing editor of The Wall Street Journal; and Mort Zuckerman, owner of the New York Daily News and U.S. News and World Report magazine.