Tuesday, January 24, 2006

this story should be on the front page

Wis. Newspaper Gives Readers a New Voice
- By RYAN J. FOLEY, Associated Press Writer
Tuesday, January 24, 2006

(01-24) 12:53 PST Madison, Wis. (AP) --

Wisconsin's second-largest newspaper is letting readers help decide what to put on the front page.

In an experiment designed to boost reader interest, the Wisconsin State Journal allows readers to go on its Web site every weekday from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. and vote for their favorite out of five story ideas. Barring late-breaking news, the winning story typically will appear on Page 1 the next day.

Tuesday's front page included the first "reader's choice," a look at Ford's plant closings and job cuts. The wire story, which received 41 percent of the 192 votes cast, beat out stories on ex-convicts who return to Madison and President Bush's eavesdropping program.

Ellen Foley, editor of the paper, said it was not shirking its responsibility to judge news because editors provide the choices and do not have to follow the readers' pick.

"The smart editors of America ... all understand that interactivity is part of our future," she said. "Doing that in a credible way and in a transparent way is the trick. This particular feature is appealing because it combines both of those values."

The paper, which has a daily circulation of 90,000 and 147,000 on Sunday, launched the effort on Monday after explaining the move Sunday in a note to readers from managing editor Tim Kelley.

Kelley hinted that more sports and columns could wind up on the front page because they generally are the most popular stories on the Web site, .

In a test run last week, readers favored a story about two backup University of Wisconsin-Madison football players who were arrested on marijuana charges over news that Osama bin Laden had issued a new warning of attacks in the U.S.

On Tuesday, readers could pick from stories on whether two municipal governments should merge, anti-bullying efforts in schools, the Senate Judiciary Committee's vote on Samuel Alito, a chain store that overcharged customers or fish oil's ability to prevent cancer.

"I think that's a great idea," said Kelly McBride, a faculty member at the Poynter Institute, a journalism training center in St. Petersburg, Fla. "If we are going to make the printed newspaper survive, we are going to have to figure out a way to make it more interactive with the audience."

Former Madison Mayor Paul Soglin gave the paper credit for trying to interact with readers but doubted whether this was the right way to do it.

"Involvement is one thing; abdicating front page placement is another," he wrote on his blog. "If the readers choose Carolina Panther cheerleader escapades, is that going to trump the city council's meeting? Sorry, we still need an editor."

The paper is among the largest owned by Davenport, Iowa-based Lee Enterprises, a group of 58 daily newspapers.

Brent Cunningham, managing editor of the Columbia Journalism Review, said the idea sounded reasonable because editors narrowed the selection of stories and can override the readers.

"I can't think of any other paper that's doing this," he said. "But there's a lot of experimentation under way out there to try to balance this need to take what readers want into consideration while also not completely abdicating our news judgment."

www.madison.com/wsj

URL: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/news/archive/2006/01/24/national/a125303S83.DTL

Saturday, January 14, 2006

nothing's shocking

January 14, 2006
Santa Cruz Journal

A Protest, a Spy Program and a Campus in an Uproar
By SARAH KERSHAW

SANTA CRUZ, Calif. - The protest was carefully orchestrated, planned for weeks by Students Against War during Friday evening meetings in a small classroom on the University of California campus here.

So when the military recruiters arrived for the job fair, held in an old dining hall last April 5 - a now fateful day for a scandalized university - the students had their two-way radios in position, their cyclists checking the traffic as hundreds of demonstrators marched up the hilly roads of this campus on the Central Coast and a dozen moles stationed inside the building, reporting by cellphone to the growing crowd outside.

"Racist, sexist, antigay," the demonstrators recalled shouting. "Hey, recruiters, go away!"

Things got messy. As the building filled, students storming in were blocked from entering. The recruiters left, some finding that the tires of their vehicles had been slashed. The protesters then occupied the recruiters' table and, in what witnesses described as a minor melee, an intern from the campus career center was injured.

Fast forward: The students had left campus for their winter vacation in mid-December when a report by MSNBC said the April protest had appeared on what the network said was a database from a Pentagon surveillance program. The protest was listed as a "credible threat" - to what is not clear to people around here - and was the only campus action among scores of other antimilitary demonstrations to receive the designation.

Over the winter break, Josh Sonnenfeld, 20, a member of Students Against War, or SAW, put out the alert. "Urgent: Pentagon's been spying on SAW, and thousands of other groups," said his e-mail message to the 50 or so students in the group.

Several members spent the rest of their break in a swirl of strategy sessions by telephone and e-mail, and in interviews with the news media. Since classes began on Jan. 5, they have stepped up their effort to figure out whether they are being spied on and if so, why.

Students in the group said they were not entirely surprised to learn that the federal government might be spying on them.

"On the one hand, I was surprised that we made the list because generally we don't get the recognition we deserve," Mr. Sonnenfeld said. "On the other hand, it doesn't surprise me because our own university has been spying on us since our group was founded. This nation has a history of spying on political dissenters."

The April protest, at the sunny campus long known for surfing, mountain biking and leftist political activity, drew about 300 of the university's 13,000 students, organizers said. (Students surmise that, these days, they are out-agitating their famed anti-establishment peers at the University of California, Berkeley, campus, 65 miles northwest of here.)

"This is the war at home," said Jennifer Low, 20, a member of the antiwar group. "So many of us were so discouraged and demoralized by the war, a lot of us said this is the way we can stop it."

A Department of Defense spokesman said that while the Pentagon maintained a database of potential threats to military installations, military personnel and national security, he could not confirm that the information released by MSNBC was from the database. The spokesman, who said he was not authorized to be quoted by name, said he could not answer questions about whether the government was or had been spying on Santa Cruz students.

California lawmakers have demanded an explanation from the government. Representative Sam Farr, a Democrat whose district includes Santa Cruz, was one of several who sent letters to the Bush administration. "This is a joke," Mr. Farr said in an interview. "There is a protest du jour at Santa Cruz."

"Santa Cruz is not a terrorist town," he added. "It's an activist town. It's essentially Berkeley on the coast."

The university's chancellor, Denise D. Denton, said, "We would like to know how this information was gathered and understand better what's going on here."

"Is this something that happens under the guise of the new Patriot Act?" Ms. Denton asked.

As to the students' insistence that the university is monitoring their activities, Ms. Denton said that she had checked with campus police and other university offices and that "there is absolutely no spying going on."

The antiwar group is working closely with the California chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, which plans to file a public records request with the federal government on the students' behalf, A.C.L.U. officials said.

Meanwhile, members of the campus's College Republicans, strongly critical of the protesters' tactics last April, are rolling their eyes at all the hubbub.

"I think it's worth looking into, but right now I think they are overblowing it," said Chris Rauer, internal vice president of the College Republicans. "I think people are taking their anger over the war out on this."

The Defense Department has issued a statement saying that in October the Pentagon began a review of its database to ensure that the reporting system complied with federal laws and to identify information that might have been improperly entered. All department personnel involved in gathering intelligence were receiving "refresher" training on the laws and policies, the statement said.

With this happening in academia, there has been a good deal of philosophical contemplation and debate over the socioeconomic and political dynamics underlying the uproar.

"I had multiple reactions," said Faye J. Crosby, a professor of social psychology and chairwoman of the Academic Senate.

"One reaction was, 'Gosh, I wonder if we're doing something right?' " Professor Crosby said. "Another reaction was it's a waste of taxpayer money. What are we a threat to?"

"The real sadness," she added, "is the breakdown in discourse of the marketplace of ideas."

Tuesday, January 03, 2006

delicately

Orlando Swinger Party Upsets Soccer Parents

(01-03) 09:52 PST Orlando, Fla. (AP) --

Some teenage soccer players and their parents saw more sights than they wanted when they stayed at a hotel where about 200 swingers were having a New Year's party.

Paul Camporini brought his wife, seventh-grade daughter and eighth-grade son from Safety Harbor and said he had to "delicately explain to my Catholic school children that swingers change partners during the evening."

"My biggest gripe is that the hotel had two distinctly different groups under the same roof," said Camporini, 49. "A soccer team and middle-aged swingers should not have been booked together."

The families said the sexually adventurous partygoers sometimes flashed breasts and bare buttocks in front of the children as they sashayed through the hotel atrium. The parents described the dress at the Crowne Plaza Hotel-Airport in Orlando as "raunchy, despicable and worse than prostitutes."

"We thought we were coming to Orlando, not the Las Vegas Strip," said Mark Gilbert, the father of a boy who plays on the Clearwater Chargers, a group of 13-and-under players from Florida.

The teams booked the $92-a-night rooms for Disney's Soccer Showcase, and said hotel management did not tell them about the swingers' party or try to keep the partygoers away from the children.

Hotel managers did not immediately respond to a call seeking comment Tuesday. All of the swingers had checked out of the hotel by late Sunday.

"We're not prudes by any means," said Rob Young of Greenville, S.C., who said his two daughters, Leah, 13 and Lauren, 11, asked questions he struggled to answer. "We would have liked to have been informed when we checked into the hotel so we could have made other arrangements.

"The kids could see through the glass atrium into the ballroom where naked people were dancing. There were exposed breasts, thongs and see-through dresses on women who were not wearing any underwear."

Young said he complained to hotel management and to John Hollis, an off-duty Orlando police officer hired by the hotel for a New Year's Eve security detail. He said neither did anything to help.

Lt. John Mina, a watch commander for the Orlando Police Department, said Hollis didn't witness anything illegal.

URL: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/news/archive/2006/01/03/national/a095221S55.DTL