The Associated Press is reporting that a Caltech scientist has discovered a tenth planet in our solar system, well beyond the orbit of Pluto:
It’s icy, rocky and bigger than Pluto. And according to scientists who found it orbiting the sun, it’s the newest planet on our solar system’s block. The planet — the farthest-known object in the solar system — is currently 9 billion miles away from the sun, or about three times Pluto’s current distance from the sun.
“This is the first object to be confirmed to be larger than Pluto in the outer solar system,” Michael Brown, a planetary scientist at the California Institute of Technology, said Friday in a telephone briefing announcing the discovery.
Brown labeled the object as a 10th planet, but there are scientists who dispute the classification of Pluto as such.
Astronomers do not know the new planet’s exact size, but its brightness shows that it is at least as large as Pluto and could be up to 1 1/2 times bigger. The research was funded by NASA.
Brown has submitted a name for the new planet to the International Astronomical Union, which has yet to act on the proposal, but he did not release the proposed name Friday.
In journalism, “writer” and “reporter” are often used interchangeably — JournalismJobs.com doesn’t even have a “reporter” job category, just “reporter/writer” (although, strangely, they have a “writer” category, too) — but realistically, they’re two separate, but related job skills.
Writing is just that: the art of communicating with the written word. Crafting a compelling headline, developing an informative but readable lede, structuring a story well, evoking the right images with the judicious use of description, metaphor and simile, these are all the tools of the writer’s craft.
Reporting, on the other hand, is getting the story, the whole story, so help you God. It involves knowing what questions to ask, when and how to ask them, getting people to talk who don’t want to and being able to follow a story to where it’s really going, rather than where the editor back in his office thinks it should go.
Every print journalist is a mix of the two skills, and rarely in equal portion. Every newsroom has the reporters sweating blood over every story, unable to craft a lede on deadline if their life depended on it (which is certainly how it feels at times). Clunker headlines, stories slashed to the bone by editors and stiff and dull language are the debris that reporters who have little writer in them trail behind. When I was at the Potomac News, we’d gather around the desk of the education reporter more nights than not, helping her get her lede done and trim the story down to its required size before deadline, because, as good of a reporter as Sandra was (and she really was a good reporter), some aspects of writing were utterly alien to her.
In contrast, writers with little reporter in them tend to write beautifully and, until you sit down an examine the story carefully, informatively. Once you look at them closely, though, you’ll see there’s not much content to it. There are obvious questions unasked, unsupported conclusions and fun-but-pointless quotes. There are probably more of these folks around than pure reporters: They tend to survive quite well in newsrooms and thrive under deadline pressure. They don’t win any journalism awards — although they can and do certainly win them for their writing — and if they don’t make any great waves, they follow the Peter Principle and rise to the level of their own incompetence.
The problem, though, is that while writing can be taught — there are naturally gifted writers, but mostly it’s a craft, not an art, especially when it comes to journalism — there’s only so much that can be taught to a would-be reporter who doesn’t have the right gut instinct. You can teach them tricks, like when to ask a tough question (late in an interview), the 5 Ws (and one H), how to not phrase a question (don’t ask yes/no questions, since they don’t provide quotes of any real length) and so on. But, at the end of the day, you either have more balls than brains and a huge streak of curiosity/nosiness, or you don’t.
In contrast, the reporters may have problems like Sandra did with writing on deadline and crafting a lede well, but they get the story. At the same paper, I worked with perhaps the best cops/courts reporter I’ve ever worked with, Kari Pugh. Kari, who was 98 pounds soaking wet, was the darling of all the police in the area. She got access to areas few civilians ever saw and got information (both on and off the record) no other reporter could touch. She’d breeze back from a horrible accident on Interstate 95 and toss around grisly Polaroids she’d taken of the scene she would be using as a visual reference for writing her story — not only would she be allowed that close to an accident scene, the police trusted her enough to let her pull out the camera and start shooting. She got stories no one else did, told the readers things no one else could, and made it look easy. Her writing rarely sang — it was workmanlike, reliable and sturdy, but not particularly sexy — but her stories were hard not to read.
When it comes to working on skills, it’s best for an aspiring reporter to focus on the reporting skills. So long as the writing is up to the high school graduate level, and features complete sentences, decent spelling and a sufficient English vocabulary, they’ll be fine. If you can’t master the 5 Ws (and one H) and the other basics of reporting, the prettiest images and cleverest alliteration won’t do a thing for you.
(Where do I fall in this continuum? Probably more on the “writer” side than the “reporter” side, I’m sorry to say. I have to re-read all my stories to make sure I didn’t forget something crucial, and I sometimes have to call sources back to ask them questions I should have asked the first time around. This is BAD when it’s a one time shot at asking a question, as you might imagine. But I’m doing my best to improve.)
Next week, we’ll take a break and talk about the three best movies about journalism.
As I mentioned previously, I have to operate with the expectation that, as a weekly reporter, I won’t always beat the Daily Press or the Sun. And so it is that Gretchen has gotten a story to print before I could:
After four months of searching, the City Council chose Interim City Manager Mike Podegracz as the right man for the city manager post. The council tapped Podegracz during a special closed session Wednesday.
“We had about 40 candidates. We weeded them down to 15 and interviewed seven,” Mayor Jim Lindley said. “It was a field of outstanding candidates but he rose to the occasion and got to be the one that we picked.”
Podegracz is expected to take on the role as city manager Thursday. He will be the city’s fifth city manager in the past 17 years.
And it’s entirely likely the Sun will have something before Tuesday as well.
So if I can’t have it first, I’ll have to do it better. Check back here on Tuesday for what I think is the definitive story about the top government job in the city being offered to Mike Podegracz. 😉
Well, as of Tuesday, the San Bernardino County Sun did not, in fact, have this story.
And here’s my version of the story complete with more information on the process, comments from all the council members, comparative salary info and a look at Robb Quincey’s benefits, for additional insight into what Podegracz might be looking at. We’ll find out more after his contract is approved by the council.
When White Wolf Game Systems sued the makers of “Underworld
” for ripping off their world, with its highly social and politicized vampires who sleep for eons and their violent emnity with werewolves, it was assumed it was because they were trying to cash in on WWGS’ World of Darkness.
Yes and no.
“Underworld” is theoretically about vampires and werewolves, but honestly, it mostly ends up being leather-clad people shooting fancy guns at other leather-clad people. In other words, it devolves into the worst sort of World of Darkness game, with angsty gun-toting idiots killing other angsty gun-toting idiots over something that probably made sense at the beginning of the evening, but eventually just becomes an excuse for posturing and gunplay.
In the DVD extras, one of the creators of the film says “Underworld” might be one of the best vampire movies ever made. This might be true if no other vampire movies ever had been made. As it is, it’s not the worst ever — the “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” movie holds onto the left end of the bell curve with a death grip — but this confused, muddled and ultimately pointless film isn’t much better than mediocre, at the end of the day.
Vampire fans are advised to check out “Near Dark,” “Bram Stoker’s Dracula,” “From Dusk Til Dawn” or even “Fright Night” or “Lost Boys” for a better vampire experience.
A rental at best. A recommended buy only for the most diehard World of Darkness fans.
The trailers for “Idle Hands” implied the film was a madcap horror comedy when, in reality, the filmmakers created something more along the lines of “An American Werewolf in London.” Granted, they don’t come near the high water mark of that film, or even the later “Fright Night” or “The Lost Boys,” but “Idle Hands” has genuine moments of horror along with its comedy, although neither element is particularly memorable.
From the icky premise to the icky undead friends acting as Greek chorus to the hot babe inexplicably drawn to the protagonist to the dark finale, “Idle Hands” bears the mark of the creators watching “American Werewolf” over and over and over again while creating this film.
Of course, it’s not as though “An American Werewolf in London” is difficult to find at your local video store. For those looking for those sorts of thrills, stick with the original, as well as “Fright Night” and “Lost Boys.”
“Idle Hands” is a recommended rental for fans of Seth Green or Jessica Alba, but other horror fans should give it a miss.
