Tag: alternative facts

Publisher focuses on telling the truth, all aspects of the truth

Jeff Light
Jeff Light delivers the opening keynote address at the Associated Collegiate Press national convention in La Jolla, California, Feb. 28. Photo by Bradley Wilson

Fundamentals at the core of doing good work

Jeff Light, publisher and editor of the San Diego Union-Tribune, started off his talk reminding the 200-or-so students and instructors of the fundamentals, of the first-order rules.

  • Always write the headline first. It focuses the mind.
  • Always go to the scene of the crime.
  • Spell the names right. Be accurate in every detail.
  • Tell it straight.

These fundamentals, he said, help us do a good job of finding out what’s really going on.

“Listen to the voice of people who have something to say about it. Be open-minded about presenting all the points of view in a favorable light.”

As a former investigate reporter, he should know. Mark Witherspoon, editorial adviser at the Iowa State Daily, said it was precisely this background that made his talk interesting.

“The first thing I was impressed with was that Jeff Light was an investigative reporter that is now publisher of the San Diego Union-Tribune. That doesn’t happen that often,” Witherspoon said.

Continue reading “Publisher focuses on telling the truth, all aspects of the truth”

2017 more like ‘1984’ than 1984

Survey details collision in classrooms between literature and reality

By Bradley Wilson
CMR Managing Editor

Lynn Neary with National Public Radio said George Orwell’s 1949 novel, 1984, again topped the Amazon bestseller list and had become, in her words, something of a political barometer.

Neary reported, “A spokesman for Signet Classics, which currently publishes 1984, said sales have increased almost 10,000 percent since the inauguration and moved noticeably upwards on Sunday. That’s when Counselor to the President Kellyanne Conway appeared on Meet The Press. When host Chuck Todd challenged the Trump administration’s assertions about the size of the Inauguration Day crowd, Conway responded with a phrase that caught everyone’s attention.”

“Alternative facts,” Conway said.

Kellyanne Conway, Counselor to the President, tells Chuck Todd that the Press Secretary used ‘alternative facts’ in his first statement to the Press Corps.

Washington Post reporter Karen Tumulty on CNN’s Reliable Sources said the phrase reminded her of phrases from Orwell’s classic: doublethink, ignorance is strength, war is peace, freedom is slavery. Continue reading “2017 more like ‘1984’ than 1984”