TVA Coal Ash Flood Coverage Comparison

Sat, 27 Dec 2008 19:49:15 GMT

Update (Jan. 6): An ongoing summary of Coverage of the TVA Coal Ash Spill is being compiled by ilovemountains.org, including national and regional news headlines and links to Google, Yahoo and MSN aggregators, which find more than 4,000 stories in the past week alone.

I saved a bunch of links to the developing coverage of the Tennessee Valley Authority "ash flood" in East Tennessee after reading Knoxville bloggers' comments on the slim coverage by national media. Included are links to brand-name media, TVA, environmental organizations and area bloggers. Maybe when the students come back we'll be able to discuss the evolution of the story and what was undercovered or overcovered, check the math for all those attempts to give readers a visual image of the size of the affected area -- "how many olympic swimming pools?" estimates, comparisons to oil spills of the past, etc.

My first source was "the blogger formerly known as SouthKnox Bubba," who now runs an excellent community site where "TVA" is a keyword tag:
http://knoxviews.com/taxonomy/term/178

Then I checked the two largest-circulation newspapers in the USA:

Dam Bursts in Tennessee, Damaging a Dozen Homes
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122999015454428371.html
(AP story, WSJ search shows no followup from Dec. 22 to Dec. 27)

TVA dike bursts in Tenn.; 15 homes flooded
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2008-12-22-tva-flooding_N.htm
(AP story; no follow up for five days.)

Nice of USA Today to use a Google map to pinpoint the town of "Herriman." Too bad someone spelled the name wrong on the map graphic.

Appalachian Voices environmental news blog:
http://www.appvoices.org/index.php?/frontporch/
http://www.appvoices.org/index.php?/frontporch/blogposts/app_voices_takes_flyover_of_tva_spill/

Center for Environmental Journalism, U. of Colorado:
http://www.cejournal.net/?p=183

United Mountain Defense
http://www.unitedmountaindefense.org/

Knoxville News Sentinel says "tripled"
http://www.knoxnews.com/news/2008/dec/27/spillage-amount-tripled/
http://www.knoxnews.com/news/2008/dec/27/tva-cleanup/

Knoxville TV says "double"
http://www.wbir.com/news/local/story.aspx?storyid=72702
So does AP in Minnesota
http://www.twincities.com/allheadlines/ci_11314203?nclick_check=1

News Sentinel Web guru Jack Lail added an early "link roundup" to the News Sentinel site, which rapidly grew to more than 30 headlines. "The story is getting worldwide attention from various news sources, bloggers and environmental sites."
Columnist Michael Silence kept an eye on national media coverage.

Elsewhere, gentle/harsh language on a different News Sentinel aggregator page, headed "TVA Pond Breach..." The summary below the heading now calls it "an ecological disaster." This page archives more than 20 of the newspaper's own stories, plus pictures and scores of comments. Perhaps the "pond breach" heading -- and storing the developing news in the "business" section -- dates back to the first story.
http://www.knoxnews.com/news/business/tva-pond-breach-roane-county/
http://www.knoxnews.com/news/business/tva-pond-breach-roane-county/?page=2

"Tennessee Green" section of Nashville Tennessean newspaper:
http://www.tennessean.com/article/20081222/NEWS01/81222006/1906/GREEN
(Only the Dec. 22 AP story again, but more than 20 local comments, some identifying themselves as former TVA employees saying "no surprise.")

Local reporters bylined on this one:
http://www.tennessean.com/article/20081223/GREEN02/812230370/1001/RSS6001

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/27/us/27sludge.html
http://query.nytimes.com/search/sitesearch?query=tennessee+valley+authority&;srchst=cse
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/25/us/25sludge.html?scp=3&;sq=ash&st=cse
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/24/us/24mud.html?scp=4&;sq=ash&st=cse

Washington Post:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/12/26/AR2008122601669.html
javascript:void(popitupbig('http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/photo/2008/12/25/PH2008122500320.html',650,850))

TVA creates "emergency" Web page with video of press conference:
http://tva.gov/emergency/ashslide_kingston.htm
http://tva.gov/emergency/12_23_pc.htm

More local TV:

"6 News talked with an environmentalist who says TVA is not doing enough to warn people about the potential danger..."
http://www.wate.com/global/story.asp?s=9583461

"After nearly a week of uncertainty whether their drinking water, air, and ground water was safe, Roane Countians received good news Friday evening..."
http://www.wbir.com/news/local/story.aspx?storyid=72704

(Comments range from "Someone call Erin Brockovich" to a poem that rhymed "confuse" with "hangman's noose.")

CNN: Tennessee sludge spill estimate grows to 1 billion gallons
http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/12/26/tennessee.sludge/index.html

http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/12/23/tennessee.sludge.spill/index.html

MSNBC:
Group urges stronger warnings over sludge: Some fear coal-ash spill in Tennessee could pose health risks (short AP story, but link to original video)
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28399868/

NPR:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=98741600&;ft=1&f=1001

No news from Al Gore, but a dozen contributions at Current.TV , mostly links to newspapers and network TV, but with space for original comments.

Democracy Now: "Greenpeace is calling for a criminal investigation."
http://www.democracynow.org/2008/12/24/spill_at_tennessee_coal_plant_creates

Back to where I started: Reports from local bloggers, media watchers and citizen journalists:
http://knoxviews.com/node/9983
http://knoxviews.com/node/9980
http://roaneviews.com/?q=node/1754
http://roaneviews.com/node/1786
http://cupofjoepowell.blogspot.com/2008/12/tvas-toxic-coal-ash-disaster-impact-may.html
http://dirtycoaltva.blogspot.com/
http://bethwellington.blogspot.com/2008/12/happy-holidays.html
http://www.scholarsandrogues.com/2008/12/23/ash-flood-superfund/
https://php.radford.edu/~wkovarik/drupal/?q=node/59
http://www.poynter.org/column.asp?id=31&;aid=156134

Google blog search for "tennessee coal ash": 12,600 hits when I checked on Saturday afternoon.

And this popped up as an advertisement:
http://www.levinlaw.com/PracticeAreas/Tennessee-Coal-Ash-Spill.asp

Journalism education group honors Tennessee & Elon profs.

Thu, 03 Jul 2008 17:37:25 GMT

The AEJMC Newspaper Division's spring and summer newsletters are now online, including plenty of news:

National faculty awards for professors Dorothy Bowles at UT Knoxville and Janna Quitney Anderson at Elon University (see page 3 of that PDF newsletter)
A call for discussion of changing the Newspaper Division's name to reflect changes in members' research and in the converged news industry itself. (As I mentioned on the division home page, what was once the International Newspaper Marketing Association, now uses the word "Newsmedia" in its name, but other groups like the Newspaper Association of America and American Society of Newspaper Editors still emphasize their roots. The American Press Institute is still around, too, along with its Newspaper Next project.)
Listings of conference paper presentations and forums at the annual AEJMC Convention, which will be in Chicago next month.

AEJMC is the Association for Education in Journalism & Mass Communication, which consists of 17 divisions, 10 special interest groups and 2 commissions, all providing newsletters, research competitions and convention programming.

NAA forecasts newspaper trends for 2008, lists digital award finalist

Fri, 11 Jan 2008 20:53:46 GMT

Online readings about dead-tree and born-again-online news media:

PRESSTIME, as its home page asserts, is the "flagship publication of the Newspaper Association of America," aimed at news. circulation and advertising executives. It also could be good reading for journalism and media studies students.

From this year's first issue, the 5,000-word cover story has more to do with advertising, circulation, toxic waste, cost-cutting and consolidation... but the closing item does mention the trend in "hyperlocal" coverage as one of 8 Trends to Track in [base ']08

Other January 2008 articles worth reading:

St. Petersburg Times profile: Finding Success by Challenging the Norm
Susan Clark Johnson on the Free Flow of Information Act protecting reporters and their confidential sources, as long as the reporters haven't been "consolidated" out of their jobs.
Rob Curley on Building a Better Newspaper Web Site (oops... that was from the December issue)

The NAA site also lists the finalists for the Digital Edge Awards, given for online publishing issues including multimedia and interactive storytelling. Among the nominees: my old friends at the Knoxville News Sentinel (http://knoxnews) in several categories, and the local Roanoke Times (http://roanoke.com) for its multimedia coverage of the Virginia Tech shootings last April. The Times won a "best overall news site" award last year among papers its size.

Bob Stepno: Knoxville

TVA Coal Ash Flood Coverage Comparison

Journalism education group honors Tennessee & Elon profs.

NAA forecasts newspaper trends for 2008, lists digital award finalist