Tag Archives: journalism

Columnist Wins Several Major Awards

  By Walter Brasch | June 17, 2013 - 8:22 am | ,
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Democratic Daily columnist Walter Brasch has recently won several state and national awards for work published in 2012. Against statewide competition, the Pennsylvania Press Club honored him with first place awards for his column, special series (for articles about problems with the state’s new law on gas exploration), and religion. Also against state competition, he received first place in radio commentary from the Pennsylvania Associated Press Broadcasters Association. The National Federation of Press Women awarded him 3rd place for his column, 3rd for social issues reporting, and honorable mention in special series. The National Society of Newspaper Columnist awarded him honorable mention for his column. In a four decade career as a journalist, Dr. Brasch has won more than 200 … Continue reading →

America’s Culture is Signing on the Dotted Line

  By Walter Brasch | March 3, 2013 - 7:12 am | , , ,
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by Walter Brasch The signing season has begun. Look through your local newspaper for the next few weeks, and you’ll see a lot of posed pictures of high school athletes. Everyone will be at a desk or table. Around each one will be their parents and their coach. In some cases, add in an athletic director, a principal, and someone representing a college the young athlete is planning to attend. It makes no difference if it’s a Division I or Division II school; sometimes it’s even a Division III school. Star athletes at the end of their high school careers get photos and applause. They can even get special financial aid and scholarships just for being able to play a … Continue reading →

Weathering a Blizzard of News Media Bravado

  By Walter Brasch | February 14, 2013 - 7:40 am | , ,
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Ginger Zee is an ABC News weather person. She’s 32 years old, has a B.S. in meteorology, and says even in high school she wanted to be a TV network weatherperson. Not a scientist in a lab studying and analyzing weather, but a TV weather person. For more than a decade, she worked local and regional markets, mostly in Michigan and Chicago. Her other qualifications are that she is photogenic, has a somewhat bubbly personality, wears a size 4 dress, weighs 125 pounds, and was her high school homecoming queen. If she wasn’t on TV, she says she’d have loved to be a bartender. It’s entirely possible she’s competent. But, it’s also possible that TV execs bypassed thousands of other … Continue reading →

Confessions of a Juiced Journalist

  By Walter Brasch | January 18, 2013 - 9:06 am | , ,
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Before Congress creates yet another useless special investigation committee and subpoenas me, I wish to come clean and confess. I took steroids. Strong steroids. The kind that bulk you up and make you look like Stone Mountain. In my case, they just fattened me up, gave me rosy-red cheeks, and destroyed about half of my systems. The first time I took steroids was for a year when I was a high school freshman. My physician prescribed it. Its side effects were that I didn’t have to worry about acne or my voice changing. The last time I took steroids was about a decade ago. For the first four or five months of what would be almost two years, it was … Continue reading →

BREAKING NEWS: AP, Media Fumble News Story

  By Walter Brasch | October 24, 2012 - 5:43 am | , , ,
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  by Walter Brasch   On the Sunday before the final presidential debate, Mitt Romney and some of his senior staffers played a flag football game with members of the Press Corps on Delray Beach, Fla. Ashley Parker of the Associated Press, apparently mistaking fashion reporting for news, reported that Mitt Romney was “wearing black shorts, a black Adidas T-shirt and gray sneakers.” Romney’s team, composed of senior campaign staff whom Parker identified, was “clad in red T-shirts.” She didn’t report what the members of the press wore, their names, or how many were on a team, but did acknowledge she “also played, winning the coin toss for her team, but doing little else by way of yardage accrual.” Yardage … Continue reading →

The Fluff Factor: Today’s Journalism

  By Walter Brasch | July 21, 2012 - 7:06 am | , ,
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Will someone please buy gags for Hoda Kotb and Kathie Lee Gifford? It makes no difference what the color is. Plain or polka-dotted. Painted or sequined. Scented silk, Egyptian cotton, or an auto mechanic’s oil-soaked rag. Just as long as it can be stuffed into their mouths. When their mouths are open, the personality-drenched hosts of NBC’s fourth hour of “Today” are swilling cocktails, blathering about themselves, or interrupting their guests. It makes no difference who the guest is. Cookbook or romance author. Relationships or nutrition expert. A-list actors. No one gets more than a couple of seconds without cross-talk with one or both of the hosts. They may think it’s funny. Or, maybe, like authors who are sometimes paid … Continue reading →

Reality, News Perception, and Accuracy

  By Walter Brasch | April 12, 2012 - 6:02 am | , , , ,
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By Walter Brasch   She quietly walked into the classroom from the front and stood there, just inside the door, against a wall. I continued my lecture, unaware of her presence until my students’ eyes began focusing upon her rather than me. “Yes?” I asked. Just “yes.” Nothing more. “You shouldn’t have done it,” she said peacefully. I was confused. So she said it again, this time a little sharper. “Ma’am,” I began, but she cut me off. I tried to defuse the situation, but couldn’t reason with her. She pulled a gun from her purse and shot me, then quickly left. I recovered immediately. It took less than a minute. The scene was an exercise in a newswriting class, … Continue reading →

Andrew Breitbart Dead at 43

  By Pamela Leavey | March 1, 2012 - 5:08 pm | , , , , , , , ,
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Conservative’s caustic internet mouth-piece Andrew Breitbart died shortly after midnight, this morning, he was 43. He is  “survived by his wife Susannah Bean Breitbart, 41, and four children.” Breitbart’s Big Journalism website broke the news with this, “With a terrible feeling of pain and loss we announce the passing of Andrew Breitbart.” Breitbart was loved by the right-wing and reviled by the left, as he often relentlessly picked battle with both politicians and the main-stream media. He was a darling of the Tea Party as well.   Breitbart was a prolific commentator who founded several websites devoted to covering politics, entertainment and everything in-between. Earlier in his career, he worked for the Drudge Report before breaking off to start his own outlets … Continue reading →