My commentary students and I spent class yesterday talking about the Greg Mortenson Three Cups of Tea case study, and talk there led to discussion of the Mike Barnicle / Patricia Smith case.
Greg Mortenson, author of the best sellers Three Cups of Tea and Stones into Schools, has been accused in both a story by 60 Minutes and by a new electronically published article by Jon Krakauer of fabricating substantial parts of his book. I want to develop this further, but in the mean time, here’s a collection of materials on the subject:
UPDATE 2/14/12:Mortenson is facing a civil suit over the acknowledged fabrications in his book Three Cups of Tea. A class action lawsuit representing readers of the book resulted in refunds to complaining readers totaling $27,348; attorney fees were more than $700,000.
I was lecturing recently on free press/fair trial issues, and touched on the CNN/Noriega case. In this case the court issued a temporary restraining order against CNN to prevent the network from broadcasting tapes of former Panamanian leader Manuel Noriega talking with his lawyers. The judge felt that broadcasting the tapes would unduly benefit the government in designing its strategy for prosecuting the former leader on drug charges. Nevertheless, CNN did broadcast one of the conversations. The restraining order was lifted eventually, but CNN was found guilty of contempt of court for broadcasting the original tape.
One of my students started asking me questions about the case that I couldn’t answer, so I did some digging and came up with this article from 1993 from American Journalism Review. Well worth reading.
In the advertising chapter of my book Mass Communication: Living in a Media World, I talk about the Integrated Marketing Communication campaign that Denny’s started back in 2009 to build its brand among lapsed and infrequent customers. They put together some clever TV ads, print advertising, a press kit that generated a fair amount of coverage, a web site, and a “Give Everyone in America a Free Grand Slam Breakfast” promotion that ran two days after the Super Bowl. The campaign had a great response, despite the fact that Denny’s web site crashed as soon as the first Super Bowl ad ran; and the restaurant kept the promotion going for a second year in 2010.
This year Denny’s continued to advertise on the Super Bowl, but they discontinued the Free Grand Slam promotion. The restaurant chain is now using a variety of online projects to promote the company. Among these is the Always Open With Dave web series featuring conversations between Arrested Development star Dave Koechner and a celebrity guest taking place at a table in a Denny’s restaurant. The series is hosted at the College Humor web site.
Here is a fun old RKO short on how the Walt Disney studio produced cartoons back in the 1930s. A great look at old-school animation. Thanks to /Film for the link.
(Pay attention to the narration. The inking work is all done by “room full of pretty girls…)
Students in my commentary class watched the Oscar-winning short film West Bank Story in class on Thursday. They’ve all written reviews, and are now competing for who wrote the best blog entry on the film. Here are links to the reviews; once you’ve read them, you can follow the link below to vote on which were your favorites.
My commentary students viewed the Oscar-winning short film West Bank Story as part of a reviewing assignment. It’s a fun little film that runs about 20 minutes and is a great choice for a review assignment. It’s short enough to show in class, it has lots of different reviewable elements in it, it provokes a wide range of responses, and it’s readily available. The version I showed in class I purchased through iTunes.
My JMC 406 commentary class is going to be talking about writing critical reviews over the next week or two. Here are several readings and great talk by movie critics Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert for my students. But for all of you thinking about reviewing, these materials are all great. (And, please, take the time to watch the C-SPAN video of Siskel and Ebert talking to National Press Club back in 1995. Get passed the complaints about Sen. Bob Dole and get to where they talk about what makes movies good or bad.)
Siskel & Ebert at the National Press Club
Roger Ebert’s Rule Book for Review Writing A great set of rules for writing reviews. The first half deal with writing; the second half deals with working as a reviewer.
Roger Ebert’s Web Site A great collection of Ebert’s writing. Some about movies, some about other subjects.
