Saw this blog post make the rounds on Twitter. Although the post is 7 years old, I felt it’s worthy of archiving here, for my own personal  reference.

“Practical Theory: What Makes A Great Teacher?”
http://practicaltheory.org/serendipity/index.php?/archives/8-What-makes-a-great-teacher.html

(Photo by photoxpress.com)

Headquartered in Soho, NYC, Patch sites are run locally by full-time professional journalists, sales and directory professionals, and are supported by a team of engineers, product, design and business people. Patch was acquired by AOL in 2009.”

 – http://www.linkedin.com/companies/patch.com?trk=copro_tab

Here’s what the UW Center for Journalism Ethics says on the subject:

“News media now inhabit a radically pluralistic, global community where the impact of their reports can have far-reaching effects — good or bad. News reports, via satellite or the Internet, reach people around the world and influence the actions of governments, militaries, humanitarian agencies and warring ethnic groups.

A responsible global ethic is needed in a world where news media bring together a plurality of different religions, traditions and ethnic groups.”

Read more here: http://www.journalismethics.ca/global_journalism_ethics/index.htm

Sounds a lot like E pluribus unum: “Out of many, one.”

(Photo by stockvault.net)

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http://katilingban-burawanon.nfshost.com/

When I worked as a reporter, I covered more than my share of funerals. One was for a 7-year-old who had his head cut off with a box cutter after a home invasion. Another was for a family of two young sisters and their grandmother who all died in a fire while the mother/daughter was in prison on drug charges. The mother recieved special dispensation from Gov. Rowland to attend the funeral.

Both were high profile stories that appeared on the front page of the newspaper. Both were heartbreaking.
The funerals were heartbreaking, too. I remember staying way in the back, watching scenes play themselves out, and taking notes as discreetly as possible with my pen and my notebook.

Would punching out my notes on my mobile phone in 140-character sentences and sending them out to the public live on my Twitter feed during the service be essentially the same thing in this day and age?

I don’t know.

I remember taking the time after both of these funerals to be very thoughful and respectful with the words and information I delivered to the public in my story.

Maybe that’s my problem: Can you be thoughtful and meaningful on Twitter?

Maybe you can. But such immediacy leaves lots of room for thoughtlessness, too.

Twittering for a news organization during the funeral service of a private citizen is not necessarily unethical, but it feels disrespectful. Aren’t the deceased and their grieving family entitled to the full attention of everyone attending funeral services, including the press? Even the PGA forces spectators to turn off their cell phones at golf tournaments.

If you are constantly connected and communicating, you are only giving partial attention to the event at hand.

Has the public’s appetite for information become so insatiable that we’ve come to require play-by-play commentary during funeral services? Can’t the public wait until it’s over?

Or does the intense pressure on media outlets to be “first” in today’s highly competitive information climate mean that funerals are fair game for tweets too?

So here are 25 tips for writing short by Roy Peter Clarke, the writing coach at Poynter Institute.

My short list of Clarke’s best tips:

• #6. Beware: The infinite space on the Internet creates aerated prose.
• #7. The shorter the passage, the greater the value of each word.
• #12. Imagine a short piece from the get-go. Conceive a sonnet, not an epic.
• #17. Read, study, and collect great examples of short writing, everything from the diaries of Samuel Pepys to the Tweets of your favorite Twits.
• #18. The best place for an important word in a short passage is at the END.
• #22. Obey Mark Twain: You may need more time, not less, to write something good and short.
• #25. Treat all short forms of journalism – headline, caption, blurb, blog post – as literary genres.

“The future belongs to people who see possibilities before they become obvious.”
— Ted Levitt