Cronkite School students rake in awards
From the Cronkite School, a release detailing a number of awards won by this year’s student body. Congrats to all the winners!
Carnegie-Knight News21 Schools Honored in Contests
June 4, 2010
Journalism students in the national Carnegie-Knight News21 program have been recognized with more than 40 awards for reporting, design, multimedia and photojournalism.
The students from 12 of the nation’s top journalism schools spent 10 weeks last summer reporting in-depth stories around the country and presenting them in innovative ways on the Web.
Students produced work that won the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award as well as awards from the Society for News Design, the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication, and the Society of Professional Journalists, among others.
The RFK collegiate journalism award went to David Kempa of the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University for a project about one man’s mission to help impoverished farmers in Mexico.
The University of North Carolina won seven awards in the Society for News Design quarterly competitions. The winning projects will go on to the national competition, to be judged in August.
UNC also won eight awards in the National Press Photographers Association competition, three College Photographer of the Year honors and two awards in the Pictures of the Year International competition, which honors the best photography around the world. The school’s “Powering a Nation” project earned the Pictures of the Year International Award of Excellence, coming in behind only Reuters, MediaStorm and The Associated Press in the Documentary Project of the Year category.
UNC, ASU, Syracuse University and the University of Maryland all placed in the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication Best of the Web contest and took top awards in their regional Society of Professional Journalists Mark of Excellence Awards contests. The University of California at Berkeley also placed in the AEJMC contest.
Students in the News21 program come from the nation’s leading journalism schools. They spend a semester studying critical national issues, followed by a summer traveling the country to produce in-depth news coverage and experimenting with innovative digital methods to tell their stories. Nearly 100 students participated last summer.
In addition to ASU, UNC, Maryland and Berkeley, other schools in the alliance are Columbia University, Northwestern University, the University of Southern California and Syracuse University. Students from four other schools – Harvard University, the University of Missouri, the University of Texas at Austin and the University of Nebraska – also contribute.
News21, headquartered at the Cronkite School in Phoenix, is part of the Initiative on the Future of Journalism Education, sponsored by the Carnegie Corporation of New York and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.
The complete list of 2010 awards:
Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication, Best of the Web
• “Latinos & Hispanics in America,” 1st place (tie), Team Innovation
• “The Young and the Wireless,” 2nd place, Team Journalism
• “Powering a Nation,” 3rd place (tie), Team Journalism
• “The New Voters,” 3rd place (tie), Team Journalism
• “BARThood,” Honorable Mention, Team Journalism
Additionally, 2010 News21 fellow Tracy Boyer of UNC won first place in the individual journalism category for her 2009 student project Honduras and the Hidden Hunger.
42nd Annual Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award
• “Crossing Borders,” Sole Collegiate Winner, College Print or Online Division
International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences Webby Award
• “Powering a Nation,” Finalist, Student Sites
NPPA’s Best of Photojournalism 2010
• “Powering a Nation,” Overall Best Use of the Web
• “Powering a Nation,” 1st place, News or Feature Multimedia Package
• “Mining the Mountains,” 2nd place, Documentary Video
• “Roping the Wind,” 2nd place, Feature Video
67th Pictures of the Year International
• “Powering a Nation,” Award of Excellence, Documentary Project of the Year
• “Mining the Mountains,” Award of Excellence, Issue Reporting – Multimedia
College Photographer of the Year 2009
• “Powering a Nation,” Gold, Large Group Multimedia Project
• “Roping the Wind,” Gold, Individual Multimedia Story or Essay
• “Battle for the Mountains,” Bronze, Multimedia Project
National Press Photographers Association, Monthly Multimedia Contests
• “Debating Coal’s Future,” 1st place, Team Video
• “Religion Rejuvenates Environmentalism,” 1st place, Team Video
• “Down the Lines,” 1st place, Team Video
• “Roping the Wind,”1st place, Individual Video
• “Battle for the Mountains,” 2nd place, Team Video
• “Moving to Higher Ground,” 2nd place, Team Video
• “Powering a Nation,” 2nd place, Multimedia Project
• “Voices of Roscoe,” 3rd place, Team Video
Society for News Design Best of Multimedia Quarterly Contests
The following are winners in the Student News category and qualify for the national contest in August.
• “Fighting Battles”
• “Powering a Nation”
• “Roping the Wind”
• “Climate Refugees”
• “Down the Lines”
• “Energy Portraits”
• “The High-Energy Diet”
• “Reclaiming Creation”
Society of Professional Journalists Mark of Excellence Regional Awards
First-place regional winners qualify for national SPJ awards, to be announced this fall.
Mid-Atlantic Region
• “Debating Coal’s Future,” 1st place, Online In-Depth Reporting
• “Reclaiming Creation,” 1st place, Online Feature Reporting
• “Down the Lines,” 2nd place, Online In-Depth Reporting
• “Powering a Nation,” 2nd place, Best Independent Online Student Publication
• “The New Voters,” 3rd place, Best Independent Online Student Publication
• “Roping the Wind,” 3rd place, Online Feature Reporting
Western Region
• “Building Success,” 2nd place, Online Feature Reporting
Student Society for News Design
• “Powering a Nation,” 1st place, Best Overall College News Website
• “Powering Down,” 1st place, Best Display for Multimedia
• “Powering a Nation,” 1st place, Best Interactive or Animated Graphic
• “Debating Coal’s Future,” 1st place, Best One-Subject Stand-alone Mini-site or Special Section/Special Package of a Larger Website
3:01 PM
PHXations—Friday, June 4
Is ASU too big for it’s own good?
> ASU is too big and wields too much power in politics and development. The Empire must be broken to give Arizonans more choices and greater access. Arizona could increase college graduation rates (rather than mere enrollment rates) and Arizona could easily strengthen its university system.
Read the whole post at Voices of Arizona.
/yaa
KEZ has set up a tribute page for Bill Austin. From Phoenix Business Journal:
Austin co-hosted KEZ’s morning show with Beth McDonald from 1990 until February 2010. He retired in February at age 55. McDonald continues to host the soft-rock station’s highly rated morning drive show.
KEZ’s website offers a venue for fans, radio station staff and other to talk about Austin’s positive impact on the business and the Valley. It also links to news stories about his passing and includes pictures of the longtime Phoenix radio duo.
Austin never talked about his illness on the air and did not mention his failing health as a reason for his retirement. Before joining the “Beth and Bill” show, he was a weatherman at KPNX-TV Channel 12 in Phoenix.
/yaa
RIP Lola Tapas
Chef Eric Gitenstein tells me he just found out about owner Felicia Ruiz’s decision — but he doesn’t seem very surprised.
“Slowly, sales have dropped over time. We tried lunch, but people would always go to Culver’s to get a burger instead of coming here,” he says. “We were busy on the weekends, but the weekends alone can’t support a restaurant.”
This was Lola’s fifth year in business. Ruiz opened the business back in 2005 with her now-ex-husband, Daniel Wayne, who owns Lola Coffee.
[…]
This, more than ever is an era where saying ‘I’ve been meaning to go there’ is not enough. Intent does not save local businesses, action does. If you find a local gem, support it by being a patron, otherwise we will be just a city of chains and mediocre food.
/yaa (bolding added)
Looks like Russell Pearce has some still competition for most zany state senator in the US:
The story said that although Haley has “gone out of her way to make sure people know she is a Christian,” she was raised in the Sikh faith and placed more emphasis on that tradition when she ran for the state legislature in 2004.
This evening in an interview with Pub Politics, state Sen. Jake Knotts (R-SC) — who is supporting a different candidate — slammed Haley by using a racial slur:
We already got one raghead in the White House, we don’t need a raghead in the governor’s mansion.
Ouch!
Addendum. Turns out that Senator Knotts wasn’t done:
Knotts says he believes Haley’s father has been sending letters to India saying that Haley is the first Sikh running for high office in America. He says her father walks around Lexington wearing a turban.
“We’re at war over there,” Knotts said.
Asked to clarify, he said he did not mean the United States was at war with India, but was at war with “foreign countries.”
Well that’s something, I guess.
Addendum 2. Senator Knotts Just can’t keep his foot out of his mouth. Here is a transcript of his ‘apology’:
“Unfortunately, the show was not recorded as was intended. If it had been recorded, the public would be able to hear firsthand that my “raghead” comments about Obama and Haley were intended in jest. Bear in mind that this is a freewheeling, anything-goes Internet radio show that is broadcast from a pub. It’s like local political version of Saturday Night Live, which is actually where the joke came from.
Since my intended humorous context was lost in translation, I apologize.
I still believe Ms. Haley is pretending to be someone she is not, much as Obama did, but I apologize to both for an unintended slur.”
/yaa
ASU and the Mayo Clinic are in talks about … something, the Phoenix Business Journal reports:
ASU spokesman Virgil Renzulli said the university and Mayo are in an intense planning phase to further develop their relationship and are discussing about 50 topics, including expanding collaborative research and creating curriculum. He did not provide further details.
But the story quotes Phil Gordon saying something bigger might be up:
Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon said he hopes to see ASU and Mayo develop a medical school in the next decade.
“I’m confident in the future (ASU President) Michael Crow, working in partnership with Mayo Hospital and Councilwoman Peggy Neely, will figure out a way when the time is right to have a medical school there,” he said. “It’s not a pie-in-the-sky dream. It’s a matter of when, not if.”
11:22 PM
How did Arizona fare in US News' grad-school rankings?
As we know, the state fared mighty poorly in the undergraduate arena when U.S. News unveiled its undergraduate college rankings last August.
It’s slightly better news on the graduate level, but this is tempered by the fact that the reporting on the rankings locally were wrong or incomplete.
Not a good example to set for the kids!
Anyway, the Thunderbird business school retained its place as the best international business school—for the fifteenth year in a row.
The ASU Carey Business School came in 27th on the MBA list, and UofA’s Eller 55th.
But neither the Republic nor the PBJ noticed that both ASU and UofA’s law schools made the top fifty as well—38th and 42nd, respectively. I did some other selectively checking and also found:
In English both came in in the 50s; in history, ASU was 71st and UofA 42nd.
They came in 30th and 45th in fine arts, respectively, and 25th and 36th in public affairs. They tied for 39th in economics.
Now, given that there are fifty states, Arizona did not fare embarrassingly. Having two schools in the top fifty, in most cases, in those categories is a decent showing.
The papers should have noticed that.
That said, the state’s ranking in the undergraduate sphere — detailed here —remain shocking and a big problem for the state’s national image.
7:57 AM
PHXations, Thursday, January 28
Overheard in Borders. Our cast is a man and a woman, both fiftyish:
Man: Hon?
Woman: Mmmm?
Man: They got a book here about the iPod. [O’Reilly’s The Missing Manual
Woman: Really?
Man: Let’s get it and read it and then we can decide if we’ll get one.
Woman: Okay
[ Exeunt, pursued by a bear. ]
The Democratic Diva writes about a recent talk by ASU prez Michael Crow. One passage:
He clicked on a graph of state funding of ASU per student since 1990. Back then the state contributed roughly $11K per student. Today it’s around $5K.
Sounds like it’s time to introduce a bill to put the Ten Commandments on the state capitol.
The Arizona Cardinals’ Kurt Warner holds a press conference conference tomorrow. Most papers quote his agent saying that Warner will announce “whether” he will retire; this Chicago Tribune report says he will.
Warner, 38, is expected to retire after 12 seasons, including the past five with the Cardinals. A friend who talked with Warner after the Cardinals lost to the New Orleans Saints in the playoffs said “it sounded like he was done.”
2:25 PM
ASU gets a Nobel, sort of
What’s called the economics Nobel is actually a memorial award, created in 1969 by the Swedish Central Bank, somewhat distinct from the others. It went today to an economist and a political scientist who study the ways economic coherence sometimes evolves even if free market policies are not strictly followed.
One of the recipients, Elinor Ostrom, is a director at ASU’s Center for the Study of Institutional Diversity, though she apparently actually teaches at Indiana. From the NYT:
In its announcement, the committee said Ms. Ostrom “has challenged the conventional wisdom that common property is poorly managed and should be either regulated by central authorities or privatized. Based on numerous studies of user-managed fish stocks, pastures, woods, lakes, and groundwater basins, Ostrom concludes that the outcomes are, more often than not, better than predicted by standard theories.”
[…]
Ms. Ostrom, 76, was born in Los Angeles, and received her Ph.D. in political science in 1965 from the University of California, Los Angeles. She is the Arthur F. Bentley professor of political science at Indiana University, Bloomington. She is also co-director of the Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis.
Cruelly, the paper doesn’t mention ASU. ASU itself claims her as a “research professor.” The other winner was Oliver Williamson, from Berkeley.
From the EVT:
Arizona State spokesman Virgil Renzulli says Ostrom is working at Indiana University this semester but also holds a research professorship at ASU.
She founded Arizona State’s Center for the Study of Institutional Diversity in 2008.
The paper has this Associated Press detail about her work:
Ostrom devoted her career to studying the interaction of people and natural resources. One notable publication she wrote in 1990 examined both successful and unsuccessful ways of governing natural resources — forests, fisheries, oil fields, grazing lands and irrigation systems — that are used by individuals.
Ostrom’s work challenged conventional wisdom, showing that common resources can be successfully managed without privatization or government regulation.
To explain her ideas, the academy cited an example about dams in Nepal that Ostrom used in her 1990 book “Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action.”
Local people had for many years successfully managed irrigation systems to allocate water between users, but then the government decided to build modern dams made of concrete and steel with the help of foreign donors.
“Despite flawless engineering, many of these projects have ended in failure,” the academy said.
That was because the new, modern dams cut out communications and ties between the users. The new dams required little maintenance whereas the earthen local dams forced users to work together to keep them functional.
12:00 AM
Live, from the Cronkite School!
Live-blogging as Joe Arpaio meets the press.
* PHXated is live-blogging the event as it happens. Refresh for updates *
Thus endeth the live-blogging.
In the end, a little anti-climactic. The professors did a good job, but Arpaio just blandly deflected the inquiries.
The students who disrupted the event are still milling around upstairs. Seems odd that the school had no way to shut them up or hustle them out. It’s a bad precedent that ten or twenty people—I’m guessing—can disrupt the desires of hundreds of others.
They seem to be ending it.
This is wrong. The event is over. Callahan is trying to lecture the disruptive students. He points out they’ve lost twelve minutes of questioning. And that they’ve effectively left Arpaio to have his views unfiltered in other media venues.
Wide applause from those left here.
A disruption. Protesters are singing a parody song to the tune of Bohemian Rhapsody. Arpaio puts a funny hat on, but then took it off.
Callahan is trying to quiet the crowd.
This is embarrassing for the school. It’s wrong to disrupt an event in a venue called a “First Amendment Forum.”
Callahan can’t be heard from the dais. Some students are yelling “Shut up” to the idiotic protesters.
RR is asking him about racial profiling and targeting political opponents. Are you above the law?
Why have there been so many officials saying they were targeted?
A: Implies he got his question from someone else. RR: My words came from me.
A: I don’t know about police chiefs who don’t like me. I don’t know about mayors. RR: Phil Gordon. A: Well him.
He’s getting pressed on making records available—another thing he’s been getting dinged on. He says they are getting better.
SG presses him on releases video of a certain inmate. “I’m not too familiar with that one. I”m sure they got the information."
What do you consider a reasonable amount of time? There’s been an unwritten law of ten days, but when they ask for thousands of pieces of information it takes time.
Steve Elliott: Presses him on his home address being publicized. I found your address in public document in five minutes.
A: There might be some slipperage but it’s still a violation. I have a lot of threats on me.
A: What’s the saying? “The buck stops here? There?” I feel comfortable when I go home at night. Blustering: “I will continue to deal with the media!”
A: “I have nothing to hide. I want to thank you students. You are the future of journalism. I love this Cronkite.”
SG: Have you rethought that? A: No, there are times you might re-evaluate.
SG: Do you stand by what was done? A: I’m saying it was a learning process.
“Everyone’s afraid to drink with me. The media is not my enemy.” He’s getting a little unhinged.
Would a normal politician agree to this? Green: Absolutely.
A: “I kinda like the media!”
Green bring up his subpoena of all New Times’ information from its web site, including IP addresses of visitors for three years.
A: Not going to go into all the reasons things were done.
He pleads litigation again. But concedes he’s “learning.”
No one’s laid a glove on him yet.
RR brings up New Times. They do hard-hitting reporting. They published your home address. In Oct. 2007, you arrested the editor and publisher of the paper i the middle of the night, on a misdemeanor. I was an executive editor of a paper. We often reported on grand jury testimony. I was never threatened with arrest. Were the arrests appropriate? Was it a mistake?
A: They increased my popularity.“By the way, it’s a free weekly paper.” (Groans from the crowd. A deputy, he said, made the decision to arrest the pair. Most arrests are for misdemeanor. Can’t talk more—litigation.
RR: Is publishing grand jury testimony automatically grounds for arrest in AZ now?
A: It all depends.
Steve Elliott asks him about not sending press releases to the EVT. The scrape wound up in court and the paper won. The judge said you were petty. Did you act properly?
A: Two issues. The judge never ruled against us. “You have to improve,” he said. They had a way to get press releases. They could drive downtown. (!) He said the problems were fixed. We did improve. The releases are now on the web.
Susan Green asks what about those not allowed to a press conference?
A: I average 200 interviews a month with media.
SG: People have shown up and been denied access to press conference.
A: One or two out of thousands. Security reasons. They use the press conference to sandbag me, or disrupt it.
She presses him: They are doing the stories that aren’t so favorable. Are you using access as a weapon?
A: I’m not afraid to face the media. They ask questions that are off the subject of a press conference.
This is a specious point. He has a crazy idea of what a press conference is. She should be pressing him on the fact that he doesn’t allow himself to be questioned on hard topics.
Rick Rodriquez starts off the questioning. “It’s going to be a learning experience for students.”
Q: Media relationships—he got great press coverage for being tough. Your son in law works for Republic. Other side: Journos who do critical stories get frozen, even arrested. Deputies have threatened to arrest a report. Is media a tool or the enemy?
There’s protest noise from outside
A: I have to get to people I serve. I have an open door policy. You can come to the tents. I don’t have to have handlers. [I’m paraphrasing] Sometimes there are problems with media. I’m human. I’m still going to deal with the media.
I’m still here, will continue to do my job. I report to the people directly. I have nothing to hide and I do my job.
RR presses him. What about threatening to arrest a reporter asking for public records? A says he’ll arrest anyone who breaks the law.
Callahan asks for “respect” from the audience and says he’ll stay after and answer questions. His mike is going in and out.
Callahan is explaining the format—he notes there’s been some "misunderstanding"about the “Meet the Press”-style format. He’s referring to the rabble-rousing by Stephen Lemons and some student activists. He’s making the case that it’s appropriate to have profs question Arpaio without letting the audience at him. It’s sad he has to do it, but whatever.
Then he amps it up to “misreporting.” He’s not paying Arpaio. It’s not “a speech, an interview or a debate.” It’s journalists asking questions of a political leader.
See below for background on the three interviewers.
About to begin. The session will last one hour, Dean Callahan just said. Arpaio just walked in, to smatterings of applause.
Some early photos from the event.
The live internet stream of tonight’s event will be here, the school says.
The event will also be shown on video on the pedestrian mall just south of the school. It’s on Central Avenue between Fillmore and Van Buren.
One of the benefits of the event tonight is that I will be able to indulge my fondness for the word interlocutor. Our interlocutors this evening, as described on the school’s website:
The interviewers are three Cronkite professors and veteran journalists: Steve Elliott, digital news director of Cronkite News Service and former Associated Press Phoenix bureau chief; Sue Green, broadcast news director of Cronkite News Service and former managing editor of ABC15; and Rick Rodriguez, the school’s Carnegie Professor of Journalism and former executive editor of the Sacramento Bee.Meanwhile, Nick Martin, at Heat City, is tracking one of the many ongoing Arpaio legal sideshows:
An all-out showdown could be in the works today over whether one of Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s officers will apologize for taking an attorney’s confidential files. It all goes back to an Oct. 19 incident in which Maricopa County detention officer Adam Stoddard was caught on a courtroom security video swiping a document from the files of a defense attorney while her back was turned. Superior Court Judget Gary Donahoe has since ordered the detention officer to hold a news conference to apologize for taking the document. If he refuses to do so by the deadline – set for today – Donahoe said he would throw the officer in jail for contempt of court.Stephen Lemons, at New Times, continues to be skeptical that the Cronkite School profs will be hard-hitting enough tonight:
Arpaio and his PR staff are practiced media manipulators. I wouldn’t be surprised at all to see Arpaio play the profs like a flute tonight. Though out of pride, if nothing else, you would hope these J-school teachers would not wish to be bested like that.
The site tonight is the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication. It’s a key part of ASU’s move into downtown Phoenix; the school sits in a distinctive orange building on Central Avenue, just across the street from the new Civic Space Park and a massive piece of public sculpture, Janet Echelman’s “Her Name Is Patience.”
The school’s Monday evening events are held in its second-story atrium, which allows room for several hundred students to sit in front of the stage and on steps and balconies above it.
Arpaio’s relationship with the press can be said to be dismal. The East Valley Tribune won a Pulitzer Prize this year for its investigation into his various managerial and legal deficiencies.
The series, “Reasonable Doubt,” can be read here.
The Phoenix New Times has spent untold resources over the last few years investigating Arpaio’s practices as well. There’s a fairly complete rundown of its work here.
During the course of one of these series, County Attorney Andrew Thomas and Arpaio actually sent deputies to arrest the editor and publisher of the New Times chain, Michael Lacey and Jim Larkin, in the middle of the night.
While the arrests drew national attention (New York Times story here?) the reaction against Arpaio in Arizona was something less than wholesale outrage, suggesting either that the image of the press is much worse than one might expect … or that Arizonans, being Arizonans, haven’t thought too hard about the implications of mass arrests of journalists.
For the convenience of readers, I’m inserting my previous coverage of this event below.
Live, from the Cronkite School: Joe Arpaio meets the press.
If you’re just coming to the story of Joe Arpaio’s appearance at the ASU journalism school tonight, here’s a precis of developments thus far:
Many months ago the school got Arpaio to agree to a “Meet the Press”-style grilling at the school. The interlocutors will be three professors: Rick Rodriguez, Susan Green and Steve Elliott. The event is at 7 p.m. Monday, that’s tonight, in the second floor atrium of the Cronkite School, which is the east side of Central Avenue downtown, between Van Buren and Fillmore.
(The session itself is open only to students; the school’s going to show the event on video on the mall just south of the building, and will stream it live here.)
Arpaio’s talks a lot—blusters, really—in public, of course, but he’s a slippery figure; who wouldn’t want to see him in an enclosed space questioned closely by three journalists?
Besides the obvious—the extraordinary number of inmate deaths in Arpaio’s jails, the myriad documented cases of mismanagement, his excessive use of his police powers against rival elected officials, and any number of other abuses of power—it will be interesting, given the setting, to hear Arpaio talk about the decision-making processes that lead to the 2007 early-morning-hours arrests of the editor and publisher of the Phoenix New Times alternative newspaper.
Well, this is Arizona, and things don’t always make sense. Some students, misapprehending the nature of the event, have said they will protest, saying they were “outraged” that there won’t be questions from the audience.
PHXated went to Berkeley and is, uh, not unsympathetic to the idea of student protest. In this case, it’s dumb. It’s a rare chance to see a public figure as brittle and indefensible as Arpaio in a controlled situation. Why not see how it plays out?
As PHXated has written before: It’s uncool to say it in this Age of Everyone’s a Journalist, but this serves the public a lot better than having a bunch of Arpaio’s opponents declaiming at him from a microphone. The students should shut up and come watch the session. If it turns out to be filled with lobbed softballs, then they can protest.
And speaking of dumb, now the local tea party folks are riding to Arpaio’s defense. Again, this being Arizona, they’ve managed to trump even the misguided students. Here’s a press release I got the other day:
American Citizens United is organizing a rally in front of the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism. There is a great push from the Hispanic students of Journalism (some of them children of illegals and others illegals themselves). They have been encouraged by “La Raza” and other local pro-amnesty organizations to go into journalism so they can have an influence on public opinion. And you can guess what opinion they want to change to get amnesty.Again, it’s tonight at 7 p.m. MST. Let the zoo begin!
Arpaio at the Cronkite School: The zoo approacheth
The Arizona Republic and KPHO have both posted stories about Monday’s live “Meet the Press”-style interview of Joe Arpaio at ASU’s Cronkite School of journalism.
Arpaio’s going to be questioned by three profs from the school at 7 p.m.
Both stories are pretty incompetent. The Republic story says that interest in the event will surely swamp the smallish school atrium where the interview will be held, so the school’s going to show it on a large video screen and stream it over the internet.
The paper doesn’t bother to tell readers where the screen will be, or what the web address for the stream is.
For the record, the video will be shown in the public mall just south of the Cronkite building, which is on the east side of Central Avenue between Polk and Fillmore.
The video stream will be here, according to the school.
The KPHO story is equally unhelpful; worse, it lets the sheriff natter on about how good he is with the press:
“There have been blips about some weekly newspaper — we didn’t give an answer to a request — but that’s been straightened out. But I think it’s great. If there’s anyone who has an open door policy, I think it’s the sheriff,” said Arpaio.There are three inaccuracies in merely the first sentence alone. The KPHO reporter doesn’t bother to ask him about them.
The Republic story doesn’t mention that some students plan to protest the event; the KPHO story does, but neither note that local Tea Party activists are showing up as well.
PHXated’s background on the event is here and here.
Is the Cronkite School’s “Meet the Press” night with Joe Arpaio going to be a zoo?
As you might know, Sheriff Joe Arpaio is going to be interviewed by three journalism professors onstage at the Cronkite School on Central at 7 p.m. Monday. The event is looking more and more like it’s going to be a spectacle.
First, a bunch of misinformed ASU students have decided that, since audience members don’t get to question Arpaio at the panel, the school is somehow giving him a platform to spread his views unchallenged.
The students are planning a protest outside the event.
But as the title of the session—”Meet the Press”—makes clear, the point is to have the sheriff questioned closely by some informed professionals.
It’s uncool to say it in this Age of Everyone’s a Journalist, but this serves the public a lot better than having a bunch of Arpaio’s opponents declaiming at him from a microphone. The students should shut up and come watch the session. If it turns out to be filled with lobbed softballs, then they can protest.
(By the way—Stephen Lemons notes here that CBS 5 has a new investigative report on Arpaio scheduled to run tonight at 10 p.m.)
Now the Sheriff Joe contingent is getting into the act, too. Below is a press release I just got from the Phoenix Area Tea Partyers. (Note the slur on the students half-way down.)
Looks like Monday is going to be quite a scene:
SUPPORT SHERIFF JOE
Time: November 30, 2009 from 7pm to 7pm
Location: First Amendment Room-Second Floor
Organized By: American Citizens United
Event Description:
This is an event I saw posted on Resistnet and thought our group may be interested.American Citizens United is organizing a rally in front of the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism.
There is a great push from the Hispanic students of Journalism (some of them children of illegals and others illegals themselves).
They have been encouraged by “La Raza” and other local pro-amnesty organizations to go into journalism so they can have an influence on public opinion. And you can guess what opinion they want to change to get amnesty.
Please keep it orderly, no yelling or name calling. Resist the anger we all feel when our country and those who protect it get attacked. We must remain civilized to be credible.
Will Joe Arpaio really “meet the press” at the Cronkite School?
It’s been an unobtrusive line at the bottom of the this semester’s ASU j-school event calendar:
Meet the Press: Sheriff Joe ArpaioThe title at once says it all and nothing; but the idea, if it works, will be an unusual opportunity for a few serious journalists to question Arpaio about his record and methods live on a stage.
Those scheduled to be asking the questions are three profs from the school: Rick Rodriguez, Susan Green and Steve Elliott. The event will be held at 7 p.m. Monday in the second floor atrium of the Cronkite School, which is on the corner of Taylor and Central downtown, just two blocks north of Van Buren.
Already, the event has been misinterpreted; Stephen Lemons of New Times is, unusually for him, off the mark on this issue today in his blog:
As mind-numbingly impossible as it is to imagine, Sheriff Joe, avowed enemy of a free press and brown people everywhere, will be the guest speaker at the ASU Cronkite School of Journalism’s “First Amendment Forum” this Monday, November 30. Talk about eating turkey after Thanksgiving. Arpaio lecturing at a First Amendment Forum? Too bad Idi Amin’s not around anymore. ASU could have him come chat about human rights.From the start, the idea was exactly the opposite; Arpaio will not be lecturing, he will be being questioned by three journalists.
That’s why the student activist Lemons cites, who says she’ll be protesting the event because the audience won’t be allowed to question the sheriff, is off the mark as well.
Sure, it’s an old media model—but in this case, it could be revelatory. Arpaio’s a slippery figure, and it will be interesting to see if the three interlocutors, if they’re prepared, can pin him down on the facts he’s so casual with.
And let me just say this about that dull old Old Media format: There’s no substitute from questioning by smart and prepared people; the idea to sacrifice that so that a bunch of political opponents of Arpaio declaim at him from a mike on the floor is not a smart one.
Arpaio could as yet back out, the questioning could turn out to be pallid—but it’s wrong to criticize the school for giving Arpaio free rein to speak when that’s not the idea at all.
6:44 PM