Letters to the Editor
April 11th, 2013 • Letters to the Editor
Letters to the Editor
Send letters/comments/feedback to Quill at quill@spj.org. Misguided advice in FOI column In his effort to mix sarcasm with advice in his Quill column (FOI Toolbox, January/February), David Chartrand misguides journalists about the importance of covering public meetings. Inexperienced reporters who whine about covering public meetings typically know little about how state, county and municipal governments function.
June 1st, 2011 • Letters to the Editor
Letters to the Editor
EDITOR’S NOTE: The March/April issue contained arguments for and against updating the SPJ Code of Ethics from Steve Buttry and Irwin Gratz, respectively. More feedback is collected on the SPJ Code Words blog, where you can comment as well. Keep Code of Ethics simple I’m with Irwin Gratz all the way.
February 2nd, 2011 • Letters to the Editor
Letters to the Editor
Quill welcomes and will consider letters to the editor for publishing online and in print. Please include your first and last name, location and a telephone number for verification. Submit to quill@spj.org. See letters regarding the SPJ Helen Thomas Lifetime Achievement Award here.
December 9th, 2010 • Quill Archives, Letters to the Editor
Letters to the Editor – feedback on Helen Thomas awards [Updated 1/27/2011]
Editor’s Note: Quill and SPJ have received feedback on renaming the Helen Thomas Award for Lifetime Achievement in the aftermath of recent and past comments made by the award’s namesake. After the first incident in summer 2010, the SPJ Executive Committee discussed removing Thomas’ name from the award; however, the decision at the time was to leave the award as-is.
August 3rd, 2010 • Letters to the Editor
Letters to the Editor
Send letters to Quill editor Scott Leadingham at sleadingham@spj.org. Please include a phone number. Taking responsibility Thank you for Burton St. John and Jeff South’s incisive article, “Reforming Journalism” (May/June 2010). It is about time that we on the editorial side take responsibility for the declining interest in what we do, as well as hearing and making ourselves heard on the business side.
May 31st, 2010 • Letters to the Editor
Letters to the Editor
To submit a letter, e-mail editor Scott Leadingham at sleadingham@spj.org. All letters for publication must include a phone number for verification. Column demands response As a journalist, I understand Amy Green’s concern about the precedent set by online writing groups like Demand Studios (“The dilemma of Demand Studios” March/April 2010).
April 2nd, 2010 • Letters to the Editor
Letters to the Editor
Send us your feedback: Submit letters to the editor, comments, questions to editor Scott Leadingham at sleadingham@spj.org. International Kudos I have gone through the president’s column “SPJ improves and protects journalism – at home and abroad” (November/December 2009) in Quill, and I am very much inspired by the global perspective of Kevin Smith.
January 31st, 2010 • Letters to the Editor
Letters to the editor
Sound off: Send e-mails to editor Scott Leadingham. Please include a telephone number. Opposition to options In the November/December 2009 issue of Quill, in the article titled “News Hole,”was a summary of what author Daniel Axelrod said were predictions for the future of news.
December 2nd, 2009 • Letters to the Editor
Letters to the editor
Sound off: Send e-mails to editor Scott Leadingham. Please include a telephone number. Bi-monthly endorsement I’d like to endorse the plan for bi-monthly issues of Quill. Truthfully there is far too much reading material on a monthly or even daily basis for any news person to absorb.
February 2nd, 2007 • Letters to the Editor
Letters to the Editor: February 2007
FAX OF THE FUTURE? Dear editor: In the December issue of Quill, “The Ever-Evolving Newspaper,” made for fascinating reading, especially when it talked of the journalism of the future. It made me think of my undergraduate days at Temple University in the late 1940s and our concern about the journalism of our future.
December 1st, 2006 • Letters to the Editor
Letters to the Editor: December 2006
Does Quill advocate manufacturing stories? To the editor: On Page 34 of the October/November issue of Quill, David Cullier’s “The Art of Access: Getting public records through the power of persuasion” column contains the following paragraph in a section titled Reciprocation: Write a feature on the agency — something positive and newsworthy.
June 30th, 2006 • Letters to the Editor
Letters to the editor: June/July
SPJ should apologize to medical news company To The Editor: The May 2006 “In Brief” item trying to start a controversy about the use of TV stories from Ivanhoe Broadcast news misses SPJ objectivity by a wide margin, and we (SPJ) should apologize.
May 1st, 2006 • Letters to the Editor
Letters to the editor: May
COPYING NEWS RELEASES IS NOT PLAGIARISM To the Editor: Regarding the story “Fake News or Valuable Resource?” in the January/February issue of Quill, copying news releases is not plagiarism, as your subhead in Ron Chepesiuk’s article claims. Plagiarism implies theft. Releases are sent out to be used, hopefully as an idea for a reporter’s own story, as copy with attribution, copied without attribution, or to wrap the garbage.
March 30th, 2006 • Letters to the Editor
Letters to the editor: April
Future journalists must crosstrain To the Editor: I was just writing in to tell you how much I enjoyed reading Mr. Hallman’s piece, Print Journalists: Be prepared to hit airwaves. It was a well-written article, and as a print journalism major at the University of Kentucky, I found it very enlightening.
March 1st, 2006 • Letters to the Editor
Letters to the editor: March
SPJ’s help called into question To the Editor: David Carlson’s December 2005 Quill column titled “New president discusses controversial SPJ awards,” includes this statement: “From the beginning, SPJ offered to help Hosty with attorney’s fees, but she chose to represent herself.”
February 1st, 2006 • Letters to the Editor
Letters to the editor
Logic behind award raises questions To the Editor: I commend SPJ President David Carlson for his courage in writing a column about the controversial awards made at the national convention in October. I also commend him for his honesty in admitting his own uncertainty about Judith Miller’s motives for spending 85 days in jail and wondering whether “she is a heroine or a villain to journalism.”
December 1st, 2005 • Letters to the Editor
Letters to the editor
Colleges do enough for sports journalism To the editor: Neil Henry’s “Toy department deserves more respect” (August 2005) told only part of the story. He wonders why sports reporting isn’t offered in more college journalism programs. One reason might be that journalism professors can teach the coverage of “race relations and gender equity laws … priorities of education and local governance and politics” in more appropriate courses than using those topics to justify a sports reporting course.
October 12th, 2005 • Letters to the Editor
October letters to the editor
August education issue should be read by all To the Editor: The August 2005 issue of Quill should be required reading for every new J-school grad, every editor, every manager of a newsroom, everyone who even thinks of training and professional development in the field.
August 31st, 2005 • Letters to the Editor
Letters to the editor
Matthew Cooper should resign To the Editor: As a reporter who was shot at, beaten, held in contempt of court and sentenced to jail for protecting confidential sources, I am both encouraged and sickened by the Miller/Cooper affair. On the one hand, Miller stood firm, was true to ethics and morals in her refusal to turn on her sources and deal with the consequences.
