What I tweeted this morning to @romenesko followers:
* The Simpsons” creator Matt Groening donates $500,000 to UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television
* Glenn Garvin: Deep Throat’s leaks “were often either carelessly inaccurate or maliciously false”
* AP files lawsuit against Meltwater News, says it uses unlicensed AP content to compete against AP
* A conservative journalist explains his “eBay of investigative journalism” idea
* Aaron Kushner fails to acquire MaineToday Media
* Hearst to make many of its magazines on Kindle Fire shoppable by linking products to Amazon.com
* In a poll of conservatives, 70% say Fox News has moved left. (“Casual viewers might barely notice”)
* WSJ reports Apple is working with suppliers in Asia to test a new tablet with an 8-inch screen

Doug Brown

About five weeks ago, Kent State University lost a $1 million gift after the student newspaper’s enterprise reporter, Doug Brown, started asking questions about the donor’s SEC violations. Brown obtained hundreds of emails through an open records request and uses them to describe how the university accepted — then lost — the alum Jason Cope’s donation.

On Dec. 21, emails showed Tom Nader, Record-Courier sports editor, was the first to ask if the athletic department was aware of Cope’s SEC violations.

“He wasn’t really looking to do anything negative with it, just asking more if we were aware of it before moving forward with the court name,” relayed Todd Vatter, interim director of athletic communications, to Nielsen, Tom Kleinlein, deputy director of athletics, and Geis on Dec 22.

Nielsen responded and said, “We were aware of the 2000 SEC case,” and copied into the email Harvey and Tom Neumann, associate vice president of marketing and communications, Finn, Steve Sokany, senior associate vice president of institutional advancement, Lefton, Reed and Walker. “Todd, let’s get with [University Communications & Marketing] to discuss drafting a response to media should this question arise again.”

* Behind the scenes of a $1 million withdrawal
* Earlier: Kent State loses gift after student paper asks questions

Geneva Overholser

Veteran journalist Geneva Overholser delivered the 44th Hays Press-Enterprise Lecture last night — her topic was “Better Days to Come: Seeing the promise in journalism’s upheaval” — and repeated the advice of an Annenberg innovator-in-residence: Go hang out with the customer.

That is SO not what we have been doing in journalism. I remember at the Des Moines Register, when we were having to reduce the size of the newspaper and really grapple with what was critically imporatn, I asked members of my staff to go out in their neighborhoods and talk to people. Well, you’d have thought I’d asked them to shame themselves in some vile and degrading way.

Overholser pointed out that hanging with customers is easier to do now than it’s ever been, “because the customers — the people formerly known as the audience, as Jay Rosen has said — are everywhere.”

* “Better days to come: Seeing the promise in journalism’s upheaval”

A graphical representation of data in a typical Daily Mail story
“When judging the Daily Mail article against the research it was supposed to be about, it was pretty difficult to find a sentence that didn’t contain an error.”