Unless you were just freed by the aliens who abducted you over the weekend, you could not have missed the dust around Joe Paterno’s falsely reported death Saturday night, the retractions, then the correctly reported news of his actual death Sunday.

At least once a year, since social media gave journalists (and everyone else) the capacity to yap at warp speed, some news organization makes a gigantic error like this one. It happened, for example, when Gabrielle Giffords was shot and media outlets incorrectly reported that she had died. What makes the Paterno story more troubling is that so many news organizations picked up the false report from an online site run by Penn State students. Several didn’t even attribute their announcement to the source, and not all of them apologized quickly or were transparent about what happened.

And now, let’s pause for a second and reflect on what it was like to be a member of the Paterno family in the middle of this frenzy. I hope their phones were on silent.

I think this blog post by Carl Lavin does a great job of summarizing the errors and lessons.

The managing editor of Onward State, Devon Edwards (who resigned immediately after assessing the damage done), had this to say:

In this day and age, getting it first often conflicts with getting it right, but our intention was never to fall into that chasm.

Getting it first is a luxury. It’s great, but it’s not a necessity. Like getting it right. That’s a necessity. These two things should be kept in separate corners. They should not be permitted to do battle for priority.

I’ve had many opportunities (like the day the MU campus went berserk after a Tweet about a gunman on campus) to ponder what the process should be to keep the newsroom and the people who depend on it (readers) safe from error and the harm it can cause.

The trick is to stay calm and quiet so you can hear yourself think.

• Methodically, using every source at your disposal, attempt to verify the information. As soon as you can publish something, do it. Do not change the process you would normally use to verify facts. You can and must speed up that process, but it should remain unchanged.
• Be unaffected by the speed of events as much as possible, except in terms of how quickly you make the calls and check (and recheck) sources of information. No shortcuts.
• Be transparent about what you know and don’t know.
• Be keenly aware of contradictory information, and if you can’t resolve the discrepancy, acknowledge it.
• As soon as you are certain that a falsity is in circulation, let everyone know. And apologize. We owe that to the people who trust us for credible information.

Read the column, and look at the comments.

Three questions: First, what do you hear all those readers saying back to Brisbane (generally speaking, leaving out the wackos)?

Second, what does it tell you about what readers expect of us?

Third, do you think that some kinds of in-context “fact checking” (rebuttals to the fact-free things people sometimes say) strike readers as bias? Why?

That last question comes from my awareness of what happened in Texas when a newspaper there started using Politifact in its stories and outright called a politician a liar. People supportive of the politician were outraged. Who did that newspaper think it was, calling someone a liar?

But in fact, I think that is the issue Brisbane was trying to get at in the column (and  the one he wrote after it to try to clarify his question).

The Twitterati went berserk, and the Times’ managing editor felt compelled to weigh in.

Your turn.

• the syllabus
• the lecture schedule (still incomplete)
• the grading rubric (“how we grade”)
• information about the multimedia project
• information about the graduate student project
• information about plagiarism
• information about requesting documents under the Sunshine Law
• Do-It-Yourself links to helpful advice about multimedia reporting

Quite soon, I will also begin posting thoughts about journalism — yours and others from various news sources — as well as discussion questions, new resources and links to examples of great/not-so-great journalism.

I may also post an ethical question for you to consider. Or a cartoon from The New Yorker. Depends.

The best way to stay on top of all of this is to SUBSCRIBE to this blog. Scroll all the way to the bottom of the blog and look to the left: You can just sign up to be notified via your favorite email address that I have just blogged.

If you follow me on Twitter, you will know when I have posted. Follow me at reedkath.

For now, just read this blog post from a reporter from last semester who had some very smart things to say about this class. Here’s a good thing to remember as you get started in this class:

Don’t shy away during the first few weeks. The editors want you to succeed. They will be tough on you but that’s not because they do not like you–it’s because they want you to write the best article possible.

This is true, Constance. Thank you for saying it.

See you all soon.

If you would like to have breakfast with us and watch the presentations, sign up here to bring something. It is great to give, especially if one wishes to receive.

He’s been doing this for 50 years, and you talk about someone whose work is his life… Cunningham really doesn’t care about much besides fashion. He sees poetry in the way people put their look together, and watching this film I can see what he means.

But the reason I suggest you watch this, sometime (those of you who see fashion as an art), is for what he has to say about his craft. And, by the way, he’s about 80 and still riding that Schwinn, weaving in and out of the cab traffic on busy New York streets, steering with one hand and snapping photos with the other.

Go, Bill!

Other honorees are Chris Christie, governor of New Jersey, Jared Cohen of Google Ideas and Sheila Bair, chair of the FDIC from 2006-2011.

I find it fascinating that a journalist has been identified as a leader in this company. Is Nicholas Kristof breaking the mold, or has he put a new polish on an older, more traditional role?

But they listen because Kristof is a great reporter, a very good writer and a humanitarian down to the bone. He makes you care. You’ll see him in action when we watch “Reporter” in class tomorrow, a film I first saw three years at the True/False Film Festival here in Columbia.

The film documents a trip Kristof made to Africa with two college students, the winners of an essay contest Kristof sponsors each year. (Note: Five or so years ago, the contest was won by an MU journalism grad student, Casey Parks, who now works for The Oregonian.)

I think you’ll get more out of this film if you at least take a quick look at at least one Kristof column. Here’s a typical one from the period when he was trying to get the world to pay attention to the genocide in Sudan. He won a Pulitzer for his efforts.

Come back tomorrow after you’ve seen the first half of the movie; I’ll have some discussion questions posted here.

And then a nice thing happened: Mashable created a terrific infographic explaining how you can stop wasting keystrokes.

Bookmark that link. Seriously.

I have linked to Romenesko (an excellent blog on the media) for as long as my blog has existed. Before the blog (in the years BB 2006-2009), I included Romenesko on the “strongly suggested” reading list on the reporting class syllabus. He has always been interesting and authoritative. And, I assumed, beyond reproach.

It’s so easy to forget that all of us, as we employ new ways to communicate via inherently casual and quick social media, are vulnerable to being caught in the crosshairs of new media, old rules. Jim Romenesko thought it was well understood, he says, that anything he wrote about a news organization might well include a sampling of that org’s material: its own words. He had done this for years as he aggregated bits and bites (hyperlinking like crazy) about what was going on out there in news world.

Poynter didn’t fire him. Julie Moos, director of Poynter Online and Poynter Publications, writes that his offer to resign was declined. But he quit anyway. And now Poynter is revising its editorial policy.

Many people have sprung vociferously to his defense (the comments on Moos’s column at the second link are well worth reading). It would appear that many people find Jim Romenesko more valuable than they do Poynter, these days (and I am sure that when he starts his new venture, he will have a loyal audience waiting to read him).

Questions remain for us to ponder: Did Poynter overreact? Do the rules of attribution change with the form of communication?

Thursday, as I mentioned in class earlier this week, free-lance journalist Petra Bartosiewicz, who wrote an article in the August Harper’s called “To Catch a Terrorist,” will be in class. Professor emeritus George Kennedy will moderate the discussion. The Harper’s piece is long, but you are sure to admire the depth and authority of the reporting and writing.

I’m not sure that there is a journalist in the United States who knows more than Bartosiewicz about the FBI’s methods for catching terrorists — some of which are sure to give you pause. As you read the Harper’s piece, think about some of what Mark Horvit had to say about the investigative reporter’s methods.

Go to Ragtag on Wednesday night and watch “Better This World,” if you want a great warm-up for Thursday’s discussion. (I’m not going to lie to you: This film made me angry.) Petra and the film’s co-director will be on hand after the showing of the film, along with an MU law professor, to talk about it and answer questions.

It’s going to be a fascinating week. I’m going to be at another conference — this time in Minneapolis — so I have to miss it. But I hope you all will blog like crazy about it.