Courts and Police - Blog #8

Today’s discussion was about courts and the police. These two areas are really interesting and they separate the good from the bad reporters earlier in every journalist’s career. I have covered many stories during my internship in Florida.

The best advice I ever received about covering the cop beat was from an editor that introduced me to the police scanner. My desk has five pages single-spaced with the call letters and call signs for all types of reports. My mentor told me that what the cop or firemen are saying over the radio is not really important, our job as reporters is to listen to the tone of the voice of the person speaking and that is the best indication of a story.

Even over the spotty, crackling radio that gave me headaches every day I was able to a most time hear when something big was going on and what was routine without even looking at the call sheets.

One thing I regret never finding out more about was that the police in Panama City are constantly saying “meet me at Dairy Queen” over the radio. At first I did not really pay attention until I heard how frequent they were saying it. As time went on and I became more familiar with Panama City I never saw a single Dairy Queen. I asked everyone at the newspaper if they knew of any Dairy Queens in the area or if they knew the pseudonym for the Dairy Queen. No one was able to tell me anything more than it being slang used by the police.

Accuracy and fairness are extremely important to the majority of police officers. Even when I was covering sensitive stories of a police chief drinking on the job all the cops under him were very open as long as I was fair. There were a series of stories so the more the cops were able to see that there was no hidden agenda to drive out the police chief they became very receptive and giving with their information.

One way, other than writing great and accurate stories, to gain some support within a department that is difficult to crack is to write essentially a buff piece on something that they are doing. Find out about any softball games they have, any mentoring they are doing, what charities they are supporting or any competitions they are in. This helps get reporters in a different environment to meet sources without having to ask them tough questions or questions they might not know the answer too. The story will build some trust and help the reporter get noticed by the right people.

The other topic of covering courts is important for young-reporters are to cultivate good sources inside and outside the newsroom. Get a seasoned reporter to take you down to the courthouse and introduce you to all the secretaries, court reporters, judges and lawyers. This is an instant in for most reporters.

Court documents are great sources of information since every time a crime is committed a new file is started or a footnote is added onto an existing file. Looking at the arraignments for the day can tell the reporter information like who was arrest for what, are arrests increasing or decreasing and what the most common arrest are.

We also read an investigative story from the Chicago Tribune about how reporters can effect change in the world. This moving series is about how the justice system is full of unsavory people that were getting away with heinous treatment without being noticed. Most people believe that the courts are noble and the reporters were able to shine light on the situation and enact change, which is something every reporters wishes to accomplish with their career.

Anatomy of a City Council Meeting - Blog #7

Anatomy of a City Council Meeting was a large component of our class for the past two weeks. The anatomy had five units; background on the council and its members, an agenda analysis, attending a city council meeting, post-meeting analysis and a guest speaker.

The background section was divided into different issues the council is covering and the members themselves. Each person in the class was assigned a topic and had to research, write a paper to be handed out to the class and give a short oral presentation. Some of the really interesting reports were on the history of Malibu, the history of the city council and the Malibu families.

I researched the controversy of overnight camping in Malibu. It is a story that is ongoing between the council and the Santa Monica Mountain Conservancy, which controls the campgrounds in Malibu. (Please see the report below) This will end up being a part of my in-depth story about the Santa Monica Mountain Conservancy due in a few weeks.

The agenda analysis (please see the report below) was interesting because the minutes for the city council were accessible and really thorough. I have had editors that were able to read minutes and highlight a single sentence that ended up being a good story. One example were minutes that I got for the Cedar Grove city council that had one light highlighted that said, Council member moves.

A council member took a new job in Georgia as a principal and some of the citizens wanted him to resign because he was moving. The council member would still have his family in Cedar Grove and still have a home there but every city has a few citizens that cause a ruckus. These same citizens a few weeks later came to me with a story about the mayor’s finances claiming he was not filing the right tax forms and should be removed from city council. The gentleman was a former mayoral candidate that was not elected and he tried every week to find a way onto that council.

The meeting itself was really long for a city council meeting. Other meetings I have attended over the years in other cities seem to have less discussion and fewer agenda items. The Malibu City Council is also really high-tech compared to other cities; their long three-hour meetings are broadcasted on local channel 3 and also streamed online.

Malibu has the same citizens that go to every meeting and use their rights to offer their opinions on the issues of the day. My landlord is one of those citizens that went up to the podium a few times and gave his opinion.

The meeting was interesting with a lively debate on septic tanks in Malibu and their effect on the environment. The council attempted to do its part to meet regulations established by other governmental agencies even though many citizens will oppose the financial strain this may put on them.

My favorite parts of the council meeting though were the comments early in the night. Sharon Barovsky raised some good points about the fire department and she had a great tone in her voice that made it abundantly clear to everyone that she did not appreciate the way she came off in a recent Malibu Times article. This means that the coverage newspapers have on city council members and their decisions can effect change.

The post-meeting analysis (please see the report below) was a class discussion on what happened at the meeting. The class also used this time to brainstorm questions for Malibu mayor Ken Kearsley who was our guest speaker. The class was able to delve deeply into the history of Malibu and narrow in on some in-depth questions.

The guest speaker was the best part of the Anatomy of a City Council Meeting (please see the report below). Kearsley really opened up to the class and shared some great information. I have never had a local politician/leader open up that much to me, let alone a class. I learned more about Malibu politics from Kearsley than from any of the other exercises in this unit.

Guest speaker - Blog #6

We had a great special treat today in class; Judge Ralph Erickson the president of the Malibu Democrats enlightened the class on politics from the grassroots perspective. Erickson is a retired federal judge, a former SEC investigator and Democratic Party activist. The hour and ten minute talk covered many issues from his history, dealing with reporters, how community/state politics function and a wide array of historical context.

Erickson's first memories of journalism began early in his life, hearing radio accounts of the Hindenburg disaster and live broadcasts of Hitler speaking. This 75-year-old veteran is a voracious reader of newspapers and has developed many relationships with journalists. Erickson is the type of reader that newspapers adore - he receives three daily and two weeklies, and he reads them all.

The reader has also become active in journalism education; he has spoken at conferences held specifically for investigative reporters and editors. While working for the SEC in Los Angeles, Erickson worked extensively with reporters from the Wall Street Journal, The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times. I really appreciated the stories he shared with the class about the crazy antics of the reporters he worked with, especially the Wall Street Journal reporters.

After hearing about Erickson's history and background we had some class discussion on political slants of newspapers. Bias in newspapers is extremely hard to judge because most news stories and just news stories and most op-ed or staff ed's are clearly opinions.

The best example of political bias that I see in most newspaper is reading the difference in AP or big stories in the Wall Street Journal and in the Los Angeles Times. My dad handed me two front pages one day and said read these two stories. Both stories were an AP story about the economy, one was published in USA Today and the other was in I believe the LA Times or the Washington Post. The AP story was about an economic study that was released. The overall findings of the study showed that the economy was stronger than it has ever been. The USA Today story leads with the positive outlook on the economy. The other newspaper rewrote the lead to focus on one of the negative things that study found and changed the tone of the story to be about inflation rate rising at a dramatic pace. These were both true and both news but one editor picked to ignore a part of the story while the other covered the entire story. One was biased.

One of my favorite books on bias is just that, Bias, by Bernard Goldberg. This CBS insider wrote a great book that detailed the daily bias he saw in his own newsroom. Goldberg is a democrat but he saw that the most common and subversive form of bias in the news is in the identification of people. Any comment, statement or fact coming from a conservative group was clearly identified as coming from a conservative group. Comments, statements and fact that came from the left were usually not identified as coming from the left. This was usually done on accident by the reporter because they share the same opinions with the left side and view those as facts and hence do not need to be identified in the same way.

The other interesting topic of discussion in class was the power of politics. Erickson said that to be a politician a person has to be able to change power structures. He led with an example of his grandson being a great politician because he is able to get his mom to do anything he wants.

The scary aspect of this part of the discussion was that money controls almost every aspect of politics, which is something everyone knows but few are willing to admit. Erickson said that in politics "you buy committee chairmanships or for the less funded you buy seats on important committees."

Public Access - Blog #5

I was unable to attend class on Thursday due to illness but through the reading and the notes provided by Carissa Marsh I was able to catch-up on some of the things I missed.

The class involved an access workshop, when Dr. J advised us on how to get access to public records. There is nothing inherently written in the Constitution that gives reporter access to government or private documents. The 1st Amendment does give reporters the right to access all materials pertaining to the criminal process.

While I worked the cop beat in Panama City, Fla. I was responsible for going through the police logs, editing them and then making any follow-up calls for more information. Panama City, Fla. has an illustrious legal history with the creator of Girls Gone Wild having his plane seized at the airport and the prosecutors of Bay County charging the founder with criminal charges. The majority of the stories I covered were breaking news and did not require too much harassing for documents.

When there was a fire I would get the official reporter from the fire departments investigator or go to the courthouse to see the arraignments for the day. A lot of the stories I was covering were routine and the departments I worked with were fair with their information sharing.

The Brown Act is an interesting law that hopefully keeps city and county commissions humble and efficient. The act requires that public agencies conduct their meetings and therefore business in an open setting. I have sat through many city council meetings as an intern and young journalist. The meeting are pretty boring but like my editors before me the exposure allows a reporter to get good and figuring out what items on an agenda would make good stories and how to interpret the proceeds of the meeting.

reply on a politician for all their information. The city council members have a vest interested in the information they My experience with city council meetings is that the commissioners tend to get along really well and work together to form a barrier to keep themselves from asking tough questions of each other and to keep the press away from stories. The other, and more common type of council is that members do not get along and they try to manipulate the press to get what they want. I would get calls from city council members before the meetings to give their side of a particular story and to try to mold the story before the meeting even starts. With experience a journalist walks the line to cultivate these sources to get good information but does not solelydivulge so it is important to talk to everyone to make sure you get the whole story.

Note: In the state of California, crime reports and police reports are not public documents. But reporters, by law, are allowed to enter crime scenes, which many police officers do not know. The way I was able to get into crime scenes was to find the officers I have worked with in the past to be as gracious as possible. I had police officers and firemen that knew me and helped me in search of the truth. The worst I have ever been treated in my journalism career was not covering a murder case, or trying to get a story about a man who fell into a well. The worst I was treated while trying to get a story was at Pepperdine's Malibu campus by a lieutenant that we did a nice feature on the week before in the news section.

The story was that a man worked out on campus and while driving home he had a heart attack on campus and passed away. When we heard there was a dead body on campus I went down to the gym parking lot near the scene of the accident with two other reporter. Public Safety meet us with extreme resistance and told us we were not allowed to be on campus, and I the officer in charge of the scene took down my information and threatened to bring me up on disciplinary action through the university for disturbing the peace and talking back to the officer when I asked him where we were allowed to be.

In the end I was never called to the disciplinary review board and we got the story.

OC Register - Interview

Yesterday I was interviewed by a reporter from the OC Register about a high school teacher I had that lead trips to Europe during the summer. It was very interesting to be on the other end of the phone for once and answering the sensitive questions about sexual impropriety instead of asking them. I think the story came out well I will be curious to see what comes of this story.

My favorite part of the story was reading the comments that SMCHS and Mater Dei parents made at the bottom of the story. Take a look.