from Salon
The controversy surrounding Colin Kaepernick’s comments are a reminder of how sports are a metaphor for social and political life in the United States. For example, in the NFL black players dominate on the field but are grossly underrepresented as head coaches and in other senior positions. The NFL’s teams — with one exception — are all owned by white men. Likewise, white men are grossly over-represented in the National Football League’s media, marketing, and merchandising machine. Women are present largely as cheerleaders, sex objects for the titillation of men. Old racial stereotypes still color how football players are described by sports analysts and fans. Black football players have “natural talent” and “raw physicality”; white football players “work hard” and are “intelligent.” As such, the notion that African-Americans possess the mental acumen necessary to play as a starting quarterback in the National Football League is still a relatively new one.
Tuesday, August 30, 2016
Friday, August 26, 2016
Hello, Ethics Class
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| The Journal of Ethics (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
A straight reporter from the Daily Beast is drawing criticism after signing up for a gay dating app and writing a story about how he essentially catfished Olympians into trying to hook up with him.
Wednesday, August 24, 2016
Old Beat Assignment We May Revisit
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| San Francisco Bay Area highlighted in red on a map of California (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
* Briefly describe an issue on your beat that is national. That is, an issue that - if written about - would run in a publication with nationwide circulation. It might run in a Bay Area publication without being localized or (less likely) in the Foghorn, but the rationale for its having been written is its national appeal.
* Briefly describe an issue on your beat that is local. That is, an issue that - if written about - would run in a Bay Area publication. It might run in the Foghorn without campus sources being added or (less likely) in a national publication, but the rationale for its having been written is its Bay Area appeal.
*Briefly describe an issue on your beat that is USF constrained. That is, an issue that - if written about - would run in the Foghorn. It might run in a Bay Area publication or (less likely) in a national publication, but the rationale for its having been written is its campus appeal.
You will draw on your sources, including the news sites and the Twitter feeds you follow, to provide this overview.
Tuesday, August 23, 2016
Curious about Beat Etymology and Sick of Google's Amateurism, I Turn to the OED
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Sometimes Google lacks authority. I went back to my miniaturized version of the Oxford English Dictionary to find the first use of beat as "the action of the feet upon the ground" and also the first reference to a "course habitually traversed by a watchman, sentinel, or constable on duty." Now I'm satisfied usage moved from cops to reporters and not vice versa. I'm pleased that the sense of the word in both usages is that beat reporting is an exercise in dogged routine, in using up shoe leather.
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Jeffrey Toobin, Reporter
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| English: Patty Hearst at the Hibernia bank, San Francisco, 15 April 1974. (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
My editor at Doubleday actually suggested Patty Hearst and I said to him, “Well there must be a million books about Patty Hearst,” and he said, “Go check.”
And I actually went and checked and I saw no journalist had looked into any of this in more than 30 years. So I thought, What the heck! It seemed like a good subject and I started doing what a journalist does. I started trying to track down sources and it turns out there were a lot of people who would talk to me about it.
Did you talk to Patty Hearst about it?
I did not. I tried. If you have the book in front of you, there’s an author’s note at the end, which discusses this at greater length. She refused to talk to me and I tried everything, directly and indirectly.
She basically didn’t want to talk to me for two reasons. One is she’s in her early 60s now. This is very far in the past. She doesn’t want to relive the experience and I certainly want to respect that.
The other reason though . . . She’s given many interviews about this subject, almost exclusively to journalists who know almost nothing about the underlying facts and, I think, she didn’t really want to answer any sort of detailed questions because there’s a lot that, I think, is pretty hard to explain.
Sunday, August 21, 2016
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