Channel 5 owner will sell station

Landmark says a deal could come within a few months.

Dorsey to head communications for new Clement firm

Terri Dorsey, formerly of WSMV-Channel 4, will work for Clement & Associates, headed up by former U.S. Rep. (and Nashville mayoral candidate) Bob Clement.

'Tennessean' will no longer name juveniles until they're sent to adult court

Police reporter Kate Howard blogs on the change.

'DNJ' copy editor runs for Murfreesboro City Council

Jeffrey A. Weems is running for one of the three council seats on the April 15 ballot. Looks there are also three incumbents on the ballot.

UPDATE, posted Feb. 8: Mr. Weems doesn't work for the DNJ anymore.

Being 'friends' with sources: A discussion topic

OK, fellow Middle Tennessee journalists, your faithful chapter Webmaster has a question to throw out to y’all to maybe get some discussion going. What do you think about “friending” – or more likely “being ‘friended’ by” – sources and people you cover?

If you don’t know what on earth we’re talking about, here’s an explainer. “Social networking” Web sites are all the rage these days – MySpace, Facebook, etc. – and they let you have online “friends” who keep up with your goings-on and communicate back and forth with you. The phenomenon has created its own verb form, “friending,” for the act of asking someone to be your online “friend.” (And the reverse is to “be friended by” another online user.)

Journalists are doing social networking, myself included (heck, and those of you in Middle Tennessee may have noticed that the revamped Tennessean.com has its own system of online “friending”). So, I’m figuring that it’s just a matter of time before some well-meaning source somewhere in the USA sends a “friend” invitation to a journalist.

If you’re that journalist, what do you do? (And if this has happened to you, what did you do?)

I’m old-fashioned, and my gut instinct is to say “you should politely decline. We cannot allow there to be friendship or a perception of friendship with sources.”

But is online “friending” the same as being friends with someone in real life? Will sources make that distinction? More importantly, will our readers/audiences make that distinction?

I’d been thinking about this for several weeks now. But I saw Michael Silence’s post yesterday on the Knoxville News Sentinel’s Web site – which picked up a snippet of a Poynter.org piece about journalists creating a “digital identity” – and thought I should post on the blog about it.

What are your thoughts?

Get ready for more chapter programs soon!

We forgot to mention in our recent post on the January luncheon that the Middle Tennessee Pro Chapter is planning more meetings this spring, including one in the works on the proposed federal shield law in March or April. We're also aiming at having an evening social function sometime between now and Memorial Day, Chapter President Milt Capps said. And the regional conference will be in New Orleans around the end of March. It'll be a joint regional with Region 8.

'Scene': Passel of staffers leave 'Tennessean'

The Nashville Scene's Matt Pulle writes about the recent departures of several staffers from the Tennessean newsroom. (Honest disclosure: I'm a Tennessean employee and worked with nearly all the people mentioned in the story. This blog has only about three readers, and all of them know that already, but I add that disclaimer just as a matter of principle.)