When I last caught up with director Sam Tyler on the eve of this year's Santa Barbara Film Fest, he assured me that we hadn't heard the last of Citizen McCaw, the 2008 documentary film about the meltdown at the Santa Barbara News-Press.
Now we know what he meant. Tyler, along with his fellow filmmakers Rod Lathim, Peter Seaman, Chuck Minsky and Brent Sumner are giving a copy of Citizen McCaw, accompanied by a second DVD of learning resources, to every journalism school in the nation (that's nearly 500) free of charge.The second DVD in the Citizen McCaw package contains discussion topics, case studies and interviews relating to the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ) Code of Ethics and features, among others, locally based journalists Nick Welsh of the Independent, Sander Vanocur, formerly with NBC and ABC News, Lou Cannon, former Washington Post columnist and Reagan biographer and Ann Louise Bardach, Vanity Fair writer and expert on all things dealing with Fidel Castro, discussing the ethical ramifications of the saga.
As the filmmakers explained in a press release, "Phase One of Citizen McCaw was to cover the story on film as it evolved through early 2008 and present screenings in Santa Barbara and in multiple US cities. Phase Two is to complete the distribution of the Learning Resource DVD Sets to all journalism programs in the nation. Phase Three will be to follow this story and continue to shoot footage of major developments. A revised version of the film will be released at some point in the future."
Let's hope someone can smuggle one of those 2 DVD sets into the News-Press building.
No, I didn't go to last night's debate between District Attorney candidates Joyce Dudley and Josh Lynn at the Faulkner Gallery of the downtown library. I instead opted for the Alicia Keys concert at the County Bowl.
I wouldn't be surprised if Keys was fined for violating the city's noise ordinance for concerts at the Bowl. I could have gone to the debate at the library and still heard the Keys concert.
From the footage I caught on the 11pm news, the debate looked to be very well attended. You can read all about it at Noozhawk and the Daily Sound.
"Congratulations to the staff of KCLU which this year received eight Regional Edward R. Murrow Awards for outstanding journalism.I'm a regular listener of Public Radio on KCLU. I can even listen to it on my iPhone.
I hope local law enforcement is more aggressive about enforcing the new no smoking in parks ordinance than they are about enforcing the thou-shall-not-drive-while-holding-a-cell-phone-to-one's-ear law.
© 2010 by Craig Smith and www.craigsmithsblog.com
