Allan Sloan

Allan Sloan is the Senior Editor-At-Large for Fortune magazine. Before that he was the Wall Street Editor at Newsweek magazine. He is a weekly contributor to Public Radio International’s Marketplace. Earlier in his career he was a senior editor for Forbes magazine. He has been writing Business Journalism for 38 years. He is a six-time winner of the Gerald Loeb Award. He also received the Distinguished Achievement Award from the Society of American Business Editors and Writers in 2001, and he has won the John Hancock Award for excellence in business and financial journalism. He is from Brooklyn. He received his master’s degree from the Columbia Journalism School in 1967, and he received his bachelor’s degree from Brooklyn College in 1966.

Sloan delivered the third William O’Neil Lecture in Business Journalism on February 26 at Southern Methodist University. Sloan talked about how he does not think journalism is dead. He thinks that journalism has a business problem instead. He talked about how people need to invest in journalism so reporters can keep on informing the public of what is going on in the world. He believes it is important to keep people informed of what they do not know. He thinks if more people start to think of journalism as a business then journalism can survive.

Sloan talked about how he believes physical newspapers are gradually going to fade away. I definitely agree with him. As Sloan said it will take a while before they do but it is going to happen. Most people my age do not read physical newspapers but instead read the news online. I myself prefer to get my news online. It is more convenient and it is free. I agree with Sloan when he says it is a money issue and not a journalism problem. Physical newspapers need for people to actually buy them so the business can keep running. Right now physical newspapers are surviving because they also have an online version. Plus there is still an older generation of people who enjoy reading physical newspapers or do not know their way around technology. However, as technology keeps advancing and as people keep learning I think more and more people will turn to the Internet for news. As we discussed in my Digital Journalism class there are advantages of online journalism. Those advantages include audience control, nonlinearity, storage and retrieval, unlimited space, immediacy, multimedia capability, and interactivity. As Sloan said journalism will be around but we do not know in what form. We will only know until we get there. I agree with him that no matter what happens the skills that journalists have of understanding and synthesizing information will be useful no matter what.

John McCain and his supposedly affair

As I was searching the Web for John McCain and his supposedly affair with the lobbyist Vicki Iseman I came across several blogs that made very interesting points about the situation.

On Spin Cycle one of its bloggers John Riley made the comment of how long will this issue last since both parties are saying that there was no affair. How far can reporters go to make this matter even bigger? Even though I am a journalist myself I know that journalists sometimes make the mistake of running a story that they might still not have completely. I think this was a story to really think about because it can affect McCain greatly during his presidential campaign. The story would had made more sense if one of the parties came out saying it was true but both are saying nothing happened. Why try to make this story bigger if no one is being hurt? Even if it is true neither one seems to have a problem with it. It would not be something new for McCain to have an affair since he already has a history of having affairs. I don’t agree that the story should be ongoing if we have both McCain and Iseman already saying that it is not true. If it is true that McCain was doing some illegal things then the story can keep running, but it seems to me more people are worried right now about if he cheated or not than if he was doing favors for the lobbyist.

On No More Incumbents Blog Brettbum mentioned that “Politicians like all Americans are still human an subject to human mistakes.” I definitely agree with Brettbum. Why does it have to be such a big deal if he had an affair or not? An affair has nothing to do with how he will run the country. He can have an affair and still run the country successfully. Like Brettbum said it even happened to Bill Clinton and he was doing fine as president. Clinton’s affair had nothing to do with the decisions he was making for the country. I think Americans take this matter to an extreme. Politicians can’t be perfect human beings. I would rather have McCain have an affair than for him to make a big mistake while running our country and it affecting us all. Emotional issues are very different from political issues. I agree with Brettbum that they attack politicians this way since that is what affects them the most when it comes down to their career. I think it is very unfair because even though in the eyes of some it is a sin to cheat it would be far worse if he had committed a crime such as murder. At least when you have an affair you can give an apology, but you can never bring a person back from the dead.

On Political Base Mark Nickolas made the statement that if this affair did actually occur then McCain’s party will start to go down. I definitely agree with this since McCain is trying to get the most conservative people on his side. Conservatives would take this very seriously, and it would make most of them change their minds over McCain. The timing of this story still hurts McCain since there is still enough time for Conservatives to chose another party. If the story would have ran in November it would had also affected McCain by getting him out of the race much faster. Either way it goes it affects him negatively. Maybe if it was ran in November things could have been cleared up faster, but even with that happening it already puts doubt in people’s minds. Conservatives will go with whoever they think is more conservative. McCain has worked and is still working so hard to get Conservatives on his side that allegations like these can mess it up for him. Nickolas also raised a very good question about whether Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee are still in the race because of this story. Nickolas wonders if both candidates knew about the situation and that is why they remained in the race even though their chances of winning were low. This makes me think the same. I had already asked myself why Romney suspended his campaign and why Huckabee still kept on when he is far away from winning. It makes me think that maybe the affair is true. However, my opinion doesn’t change that affairs have nothing to do with politics.

On Stumper blogger Andrew Romano points out that this story is only important if it is true that McCain did favors for lobbyist Iseman and not if he had an affair or not. I agree with him. If McCain did have an affair there is nothing illegal about that, but if he did favors for Iseman then that is illegal. Then I would agree that this story is important and one that should be told. This would let people find out the things politics do behind close doors. There are a lot of illegal matters that never come out to public because they are always covered up by the government. I would much rather read a story about what a political figure is doing illegally than a story that explains who is cheating on who. That belongs in entertainment news and with celebrities. Reporters should stick to what really matters. I have read so many blogs over this situation, and mostly all of them touch on the affair and just mention in one or two sentences the illegal issues. The New York Times reporters do have a story here, but they just need to focus on what really is important.

On Paul Levinson’s Infinite Regress Levinson makes a great point about the sourcing the newspaper did. Levinson comments, “the public interest requires real names of real sources.” I definitely agree with him because like he mentioned in his blog a story as big as this one should have named sources and not unnamed ones. This makes the public doubt the credibility of the newspaper because there is no real proof. This makes the public believe the newspaper itself and people want to make their own judgments as Levinson explains. I agree because even when I read a newspaper I always check who is the person that is being quoted or from where is the information being obtain to see if I can really trust what they are saying. I don’t think The New York Times did right in running the story at this time. It should have waited to make sure it was really true and should have done some more research. It needs sources that can prove the allegations, and without those sources the story is not very believable. This makes all accusations very unclear.

Here are two videos that give reactions to the situation.

• McCain denies lobbyist allegations
• Glenn Beck on NYT McCain story

blog!

I was assigned to read some sections from the book blog! by David Kline and Dan Burstein for my Digital Journalism class, and I was surprised with some of the information I read.

As a journalism student I am aware of the fact that the media’s reputation has been declining and that citizens don’t trust the media as they once did. During this reading it surprised me to find out that even though this is true the media still holds the power when it comes down to news.

I thought that ratings were decreasing as time passed by, but it seems that they are still increasing by combining new technology and effectively including blogs into the system. I have heard various times in the news that blogs are taking over the media, and I thought this was actually true. After reading these sections I come to understand that blogs are not taking over but rather helping the media stay alive.

It makes sense why the media has created blogs and stresses out to the public to participate in those blogs. They want to keep the people interested in this new phenomenon but at the same time give them a say. Blogs are definitely keeping the readers informed and connected.

I agree with these authors when they say that blogs are here to make things better and not necessarily to take over. It is true that important names will still keep the power because they are still considered more reliable. Anyone can write a blog and for most people to actually believe someone they need to know who they are and what they are about. In blogs we don’t know who is actually doing the writing.

As a journalism student I plan to become a reporter one day, and this reading proves to me how I should be aware of blogs and learn how to blog effectively. It makes me see that it will be around for a while and how eventually I will have to do it myself. My Digital Journalism class is a great example of this because our professor is actually making us blog.

What really surprised me was the effect that blogs had in the 2004 presidential election. I was unaware of how blogs practically determined who was going to win the election. It surprised me the power that blogs can have, and it makes me understand why it is very important to keep them close to the media.

As long as the media keeps up with technology it should have nothing to fear especially when it comes down to blogs. Like these authors mentioned blogs can’t control people’s ideas but they can certainly make them think and question the unthinkable.