THURSDAY'S LINKS: Columbia J-School Commencment Speech, Another Journo's Anonymous Posting

By: E&P Staff In today's edition, Wall Street Journal reporter Farnaz Fassihi gives the commencement speech at Columbia's j-school, more questions about online postings from a journalist (this time in Denver), and reflections on Tony Snow's debut as White House press secretary.


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'WSJ' Reporter Fassihi on How Reporters Cope in Iraq
At a time when most news organizations are hurting financially, those of us who have bureaus in Iraq spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to make sure those bureaus remain open and we can continue to do our jobs," said Wall Street Journal reporter Farnaz Fassihi during her Pringle Lecture at the Columbia School of Journalism commencement Wednesday. "Most of the money has been spent on beefing up security: armored cars that cost over $100,000, an army of guards, blast walls 20 feet high around living quarters and expert security advisers that cost about a thousand dollars a day."


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McClatchy CEO Pruitt Upbeat on Newspapers
Responding to gloomy predictions about the industry, he said newspapers are holding onto their audiences more successfully than other media, despite a gradual drop in circulation. And newspaper audiences are actually growing when their Web site readership is included, he said.


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Should Journos Lose Their Naming Rights Online?
Denver Post writer Bob Ewegen neither confirms nor denies that he has posted comment in an online forum under an assumed moniker. The charges against him come at a time when media organizations are grappling with the phenomenon of journalists who post on blogs or other sites under fictitious monikers. Ewegen's never blogged on a Post site under another handle, and he's certain he's never broken any of his newspaper's regulations about pseudonyms. After all, he notes, "We have no policy that says you can't do it."


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Reflections on Tony Snow's Debut
"One of the ways to fight and win (in a global contest of ideas) is to stand at the podium, with those words The White House behind you, and meet your misinformed critics head on," writes Jay Rosen.


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Citizen Media Firm 'Enthusiast Group' Gets Funding; Launches First Site
Enthusiast Group, a citizen/community media venture founded by Steve Outing and Derek Slater Scruggs, has received seed funding from a syndicate of eleven investors, and has also launched its first site. The funding was led by Omidyar Network (Pierre Omidyar?s vehicle), DB Medialab (the new-media arm of Norwegian national newspaper Dagbladet), and Brad Feld, among others?the amount was not disclosed.


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Speed vs. Accuracy in Online Journalism
"If it's so easy to get things wrong when they're done quickly, is it worth risking posting information before it is confirmed?" asks John Burke. "There is the argument that readers will correct you. But what if one reader scans the false information, doesn't check up on the aftermath, and posts the rehashed false info on his blog for all to read? Those who read it will thus be misinformed."


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Continued Confidence in Print Media in Japan
The largest percentage of Japanese polled, 53.6%, indicated they see newspapers as "indispensable information sources," against 38.5% who give private television broadcasters that ranking. The poll found that 31.3% regard the Internet as an "indispensable information source."


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Raines on Life After 'The Times'
"... I think the Times is an irreplaceable national institution, and I want to see it prosper in every way," says former editor Howell Raines in and interview. "At the time that I was there, Arthur Sulzberger and I and a core group of executives had a strategy for trying to use the revenues, considerable revenues but time-limited revenues from the print paper, to move into digital and broadcast and other areas of publishing, and we were going to go international. That?s why Arthur bought the International Herald Tribune. That was the right strategy for that time."


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Zuckerman's Bid in for PNI
With the outlook for the newspaper industry increasingly gloomy, some observers are puzzled by Mort Zuckerman's interest in increasing his exposure to the business. However, the two Philadelphia papers, with operating margins of about 10 percent, are more profitable than Zuckerman's New York operation, which is believed to barely eke out a profit, said newspaper consultant John Morton.