more journalism links

The Coming Plague author Laurie Garrett goes to Davos as reporter for Newsday, fires off candid email about her perceptions to her friends, which propagates all over the net, much to her dismay. Scott Rosenberg has the story -

...I think what irked a lot of people on the Net was the feeling they got that the story she told her friends was very different from the one she was likely to tell readers of her "official" work.

Rightly or wrongly, a lot of people feel that reporters know a lot more than what they actually put in their stories -- that the "real story" of our times is the one that reporters tell each other over beers, and in for-private-distribution-only e-mails, rather than the one they tell in their formal stories...her reaction of outrage and violation at the viral-like spread of the e-mail ...reinforces readers' hunch that they've just gotten a fleeting glimpse of how journalists talk to each other when they think the mike is turned off.

Great lazy journalism example - this excerpt doesn't do it justice -

..."The point this study makes," says McKenna, "is that when given a choice, more voters prefer investing regional transportation dollars in a new monorail system...."

Pelz, a light rail advocate, denounced the poll as "fraudulent." Pelz believes the poll used false information. According to Pelz, the poll implies that monorail will relieve congestion, but Pelz insists monorail will not relieve congestion; the poll claims light rail will cost more than monorail, but according to Pelz, the monorail will be as expensive as light rail; and Sound Transit does not agree that light rail will average 20 mph...