Dan Gross: "You Should All Be Communicating Now."

When Dan Gross was at Lower Merion High School, he was into punk music. He went to shows and spoke to musicians. He eventually started his own zine that, somehow, he distributed around the country.

It was the music that drove him, not journalism.

"I didn't grow up with a desire to do this," said Dan, who recently left the Philadelphia Daily News after 14 years there. "It just happened."

After high school, he continued making zines while he was an English major at Temple. He took a copy-editing class taught by an adjunct professor who was a copy editor at the Daily News. The prof told Dan about an editorial assistant gig at the paper and Dan applied. His career was launched while he was in school (though it started with him answering phones and greeting guests).

He began writing stories for the paper and eventually, in 2004, ascended to the position of local gossip columnist. He documented the lives of local athletes, TV reporters and anyone else in the public eye in the region.

"I know some people look down on this kind of reporting," he admitted, "but a lot of the time, it's where the truth comes out."

For example, he reported a "blind item" that said a Philly university president was about to be fired by the board of directors about one month before Temple announced that then-president David Adamany was retiring.

"Who's telling you the realer story?" Dan asked.

After nine years of breaking stories about quibbling news anchors and the post-game partying of professional athletes, Dan took a voluntary buyout this winter.

He's now planning his next career step - likely something to do with strategic communications/crisis management but likely connected to journalism in some fashion.

Here are a few things that stood out to me:

• Dan did not get along very well with the other main gossip columnist in town, another Temple grad.
• People are more polite when cameras are rolling.
• Former Philly news anchor Alycia Lane called Dan on Christmas day to tell him that she was engaged.
• Never reveal your sources if you promise them anonymity.
• Be careful what you email people as when you email stuff, it can become very public, very quickly.
• The angry sorority girl? "I love that girl," Dan said. "I want to be her best friend."
• He never outed people who were not already out, and he never published rumors of affairs until relationships had crumbled.

And here's his advice for aspiring journalists/communicators:

• Create a path for yourself. "Jobs aren't really happening anymore," he said.
• "ESPN is not going to hire someone because they know a lot about football," he said. Rather, you need to prove that you can do the job by having your own blog/website, by interning and freelancing.
• You have to self-promote. "There's no excuse if you are not on twitter talking about what's in the news or even breaking stories about something," he said.
• "You should all be communicating now," he concluded.

What stood out for you?

Should Journalism Outlets Show The Gruesome Injury?

Louisville basketball player Kevin Ware suffered a severe broken leg last week during a game against Duke in the NCAA tournament. The video and images are fairly gruesome.

Should news outlets show the video or run the images?

Councilman Bill Greenlee: "Sometimes I think, 'I Could Be Covering the World Series Instead of Being at City Hall Getting Yelled At.'"

Philadelphia at-large city councilman Bill Greenlee was born, raised and still lives in Fairmount.

Before entering politics, he studied journalism at Temple in the 1970's. He had dreams of being a sportswriter. While still in college, however, he began volunteering for David Cohen's campaign for city council. He wound up working for councilman Cohen for the next 26 years. After Cohen passed away in 2005, Greenlee won a special election to fill Cohen's position. He was re-elected in 2007 and 2011.

"Sometimes I think, 'I could be covering the World Series instead of being at City Hall getting yelled at,'" Greenlee said with a laugh.

He loves his job, he added, especially helping people who need help the most. He's worked on legislation to ensure people's homes are not stolen from them (which was surprisingly easy). He crafted a bill that said victims of domestic violence could not lose their jobs because of missed time due to the violence. And his most recent accomplishment was getting an earned sick pay bill through council (it now waits for the mayor's reaction).

"The actions of city council affect people on a more day-to-day basis than that of Congress or the Senate," Greenlee stated.

But there tends to be very little coverage of city council, he said. The newspapers pay attention to the mayor and political controversy (rather than the substance of bills). Television almost never covers council.

"There are times when I get frustrated," Greenlee admitted.

Much of this is determined by how we communicate these days. There are more ways for people to get information now, so there is greater competition for viewers. Less-intriguing news - like council actions, gets bypassed.

When Greenlee has stories he really wants covered, he'll hold a press conference or reach out to specific journalists who he knows would be interested. If stories pertain to specific audiences or specific neighborhoods, he taps into those niche outlets like the Northeast Times or WURD.

When he was a college journalism student, he was instructed to read everything because it's important for all journalists to have at least a little knowledge about everything.

"I'm disappointed by how little young people know about local government," he said about modern youth.

You should be interested and engaged, he said.

What did you think of the councilman and his ideas?

Should Journalists Force The Issue?

Philadelphia magazine's new issue cover story is about the difficulties of being white in Philadelphia. It is full of bigotry and ignorance and it is overall a really poor attempt at journalism (even Philly mag staffers can't defend the piece).

Let's move beyond that. Let's focus on the bigger question here: should journalists present major topics for discussion, and if so, how?

The reality is that the story thrusts race and racism into the spotlight. Is that a good or bad thing?

Are they ultimately doing a good thing by forcing the discussion, or is this a dangerous and divisive act that could have greater ramifications (beyond people dropping their Philly mag subscriptions)?

There is not one incident that is the catalyst to tell their story. Rather, they say that race and racism is an underlying issue that exists in Philadelphia as it has for half a century.

What positives can come out of this, if any?

Innovation in Advertising or Danger to Journalism?

As traditional advertising becomes less and less popular (for whatever reason), media organizations are experimenting with other forms of revenue generation, such as "sponsored content."

Sponsored content, such as this one for the upcoming Playstation 4, looks very similar to the usual editorial content. It is often labeled as sponsored content - this one says the story of from Sony Entertainment Network, a BuzzFeed Partner.

Is there a problem with advertisements looking like editorial content?

Or is this a brilliant new way for media organizations to raise cash?

Cherri Gregg: "People don't know what they don't know until we tell them."

When Cherri Gregg was a little kid, she always wanted to know what was going on before anyone else. And she was always going around telling people about what she discovered.

"I always dreamed of being a reporter," she said yesterday in class.

She got sidetracked though. After studying communications at Boston University, she earned her law degree from Howard University. Then she practiced intellectual property litigation for eight years. And she married a fellow lawyer, whom she met on her first day of law school.

"I didn't like it," Cherri said of being an attorney. "I didn't love it with the same passion that my husband did."

So she did some research on graduate schools and wound up at Temple. Immediately, she became involved with TUTV and she reported and anchored for Temple Update. She freelanced video packages for a Turkish news organization. She kicked ass in her classes, she developed contacts and sources and she built her demo tape.

"It's on you," she said. "You can't blame your professors if you don't succeed."

Halfway through her graduate studies at Temple, Cherri began working as a part-time reporter at KYW Newsradio. Her immediate supervisor is a Temple grad, as is the news director and most of the reporters (some of whom also teach at Temple). After completing her graduate program, Cherri went full-time at the station.

Last month, she covered the inauguration of Barack Obama. She watched Beyonce lip-sync from up close. She reports, writes, tweets, shoots images, packages video and creates podcasts while covering multiple stories every day.

"There's no chilling," she said. "It is fast-paced."

But she loves it.

"We get to be thought leaders," Cherri said. "People don't know what they don't know until we tell them."

Here are a few other things that stood out for me:

• Her reason for going into law is the same as why she became a journalist: "I want to give voice to people who can't speak for themselves."
• She thinks she'll go to television news at some point but she knows she has much to learn still.
• She believes in making strategies, figuring out what she needs to do to get to where she wants to be.
• She thinks you should make a strategy too.
• As a journalist, you have to be comfortable around all kinds of people.
• Be nice to everybody. Who knows where people will wind up, and you don't want to burn bridges.

What stood out for you?

Should The Media Make Deals With The Government?

The American military has been operating a secret base for drone aircrafts in Saudi Arabia, the New York Times revealed last week.

It turns out that some members of the American media, including the Times, knew about the base for about a year, and they knew about the operations taking place there because they had obtained copies of the document approving activities at the base. According to the Washington Post, the document concludes "the United States can lawfully kill one of its own citizens overseas if it determines that the person is a 'senior, operational leader' of al-Qaeda or one of its affiliates and poses an imminent threat."

The media had an informal agreement with the government not to reveal the details.

Should the Washington Post, New York Times and other news organizations have revealed the information when they first learned about it?

Is there a danger/problem with the media making deals with the government?

The Reporter And The Random Person: Is This Professional?

A Florida reporter was doing a live shot/preview package in New Orleans the day before the Super Bowl when a random person approached her and began talking.

Did the reporter handle this situation properly?

Recent Journo Grads Are Making Decent Money (And Other Odd Things You Learn On The Internet).

Oh, Internet. You'd think by now we'd know how to use you properly.

Then again, maybe there are new rules and the old conventions are obsolete. Who knows?

• The Lansing State Journal invited followers to "share" an image of a fatal car crash on facebook as a way of expressing condolences to the families of victims. Is there anything wrong with that?

• An activist group launched a campaign - online and on facebook - to save the two main daily newspapers in Philadelphia.

• A teacher in Colorado was suspended after she tweeted topless images of herself to Diplo. Philly.com ran the images on their website. Should Philly.com have published the images?

• There were 24.1 million tweets about the Super Bowl. Only 5.5 million of them were about Beyonce's halftime performance.

• AOL did a story about Penn State's hockey team. And AOL added the words "Jerry Sandusky" to the story URL. Some folks argued that was a blatant attempt at building better search engine optimization for the story. Is there anything wrong with that, if that was the case (which they deny)?

• A report says that 2012 college grads with full-time jobs in journalism had an average starting salary of more than $40,000 per year. This dude adds context to the claim.

Got any thoughts about any of this?

Carrying A Semi-Automatic Rifle in Virginia Is Legal. So Is This A Story?

A man walked into a grocery store in Virginia over the weekend and he was carrying an AR-15 rifle, like the one above. A few people called the police, who were dispatched to the scene.

The police spoke to the man but he was not arrested. He was not breaking any laws - he legally owns the gun and it was not concealed.

Is this a news story?

A few outlets covered the episode. One news organization chose not to. What would you have done?

Is There Such A Thing As Proper Behavior For Journalists?

Friday, apparently, was national opposite day. So the morning crew at Colorado Springs' local Fox affiliate had their anchors imitating each other.

This is a compilation of the show, put together by the station.

Is this proper behavior for journalists? Is there such a thing as proper behavior for journalists?

If There Is Crazy Video, Does That Mean It's News?

There was a brawl in Old City last weekend when the bars closed. The video above was captured by a random person.

Is this news?

Several news outlets did stories about the brawl, including 6ABC, CBS3, the Daily News and Fox29.

What qualifies this as news? Is it a matter of having the dramatic video? Is it because people will see the raw video and talk about it? Is this an unusual event, and therefore newsworthy?

Or is this a non-story?

Does The World Need Another Sex Columnist?

The story above is a college sex columnist's narrative about having sex all around the campus of the University of California, Berkeley. It raised a bit of a fuss (read the comments below the story) as sex columns often do. Talking about sex, it seems, is always rather controversial.

But let's make this about more than this particular story. Is there a need for sex columnists in general? Are we wasting our journalistic resources by over-covering this salacious subject (especially when Dan Savage has already answered every possible sex-related question)?

Do media outlets focus on sex because it will attract attention or because there is a legitimate service being provided to the audience?

Is Black Friday A News Event?

Across the country last week, print, online and broadcast journalists documented the Black Friday shopping phenomenon as though it was a presidential election.

Some outlets revealed where the best deals could be found and when. Other outlets harkened back to previous years when Black Friday shoppers became unruly and sometimes even violent.

Is Black Friday a news event? Are the journalists providing a service to their audiences or are they just promoting retailers, many of whom are their advertisers?

Denise James: "The Words Provide Context to What You See."

Denise James testified before city council when she was a teenager growing up in Detroit. The area newscasts covered the event and she wound up on air.

"They didn't get me," she remembered as she spoke to class on Tuesday.

She felt the newscast misrepresented her sentiment. And that sparked an idea in her mind.

"I could do that and I could be a more clear megaphone for people," she said. "I could assist people and get their voices out there more accurately."

She went to Michigan State University and then landed a job at WGPR, the first wholly African American-owned television station in the United States. It was a small station but a huge television market, so Denise reported alongside seasoned veterans, and she learned from them.

She spent a few years as a broadcast journalist at stations in North Carolina and then came to 6ABC, where she was a reporter for more than 23 years. She has since left the station and now she runs her own media company.

Here are a few things she said that stuck out to me:

• In broadcast journalism, a pen and notepad are almost as important as the camera, she said. "It's still about the writing," Denise said. "Content is king."
• Broadcast journalists write to sound and video. "It's my job to not get in the way of the marvelous images," she said. "I'm just a boat to deliver the messages. The words provide context to what you see."
• The reporter's job is to make the audience relate to the story, to help create that universal experience.
• It's important to be curious. You need to go beyond your personal interests.

• When you are writing, you need to pay critical attention to your presentation. Use active verbs. Vary the sentence length. And be aware of tense - most TV news is in the present or future tense.

• Journalists must remain ethical. Always. "The perception of impropriety can be worse than the impropriety itself," she said.

• Be careful what you put online. "If you don't brand yourself, someone else will," Denise warned.

• Talent is absolutely necessary but you also need something that will make you stand out when applying for jobs. Get involved with student groups, the school newspaper and TV station, and do internships.
• Start networking now, Denise implored. Even your classmates might help you get your foot in the door in the future. "Who you know might let you know if a door is opening," she said.

New Funding Idea for Journalism.

The student chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists at Arizona State University is holding a fundraiser. They are selling copies of a calendar featuring male students from the journalism department there.

Is this a good idea?

Stay Inside During Storms. Unless You Are a Journalist.

This ia a montage of reporters covering Hurricane Sandy from a CNN story.

I present it to you without comment. But I'm interested in your thoughts.

(FYI ... the video originally posted here was removed from YouTube. This one is quite similar.)

BE AFRAID: Frankenstorm Is Going to Destroy Everything You Own.

This guy admits that "FrankenStorm" is a name a meteorologist in College Park made up.

Is it responsible for journalists to perpetuate the name? Does it help illustrate the potential for damage and devastation, or does it just scare the hell out of you?