The Winston Smith Award for Ethics in Journalism ...

... goes to pussykaty the poster to LiveJournal's Journalists community, who has edited out of her original post the mention of her unethical practice of writing fictitious letters-to-the-editor and signing equally fictitious names.

Judging by her LiveJournal userinfo, pussykaty apparently lives either in Birmingham or in the nearby West Midlands, working for an unidentified weekly newspaper.

In the world of Judy Miller, Fox News, and the Washington Times, nobody is going to convene a blogger ethics panel around an issue as small as this one. But it's an indication that the rottenness at the heights of contemporary journalism may well run all the way down to its roots, despite the best efforts of many working journalists who continue to stand for integrity.

Journamalism

Kathy Walton points us to this gem appearing in LiveJournal's Journalists community:

Getting feedback

Getting letters about stories you have written, isn't that the nicest thing? I've been in my job a few months and today I got two letters about stories I have written. It's nice to know someone actually reads them and finds them interesting (on a weekly I find myself having to get excited about somewhat mundane every day things).

I think we would get a lot more feeback if we had an email address at the end of stories or even our name on them, but that's another story!

We even have to make up letters for our own letters page on occasion as we don't have enough suitable ones. About 50% of the letters we get sent in are these charity ones signed by a 'celebrity', those annoy me so much. [emphasis added – ALB]

This piece of work isn't so thrilled with the feedback she's getting. Apparently some working journalists actually think that Making Shit Up is not part of the job. How quaint.

As I told her in my own feedback: There is a future for you in crossing the Atlantic and joining the Washington press corps.

With Love, From Israel

The Associated Press caption for this photo reads Israeli girls write messages on a shell at a heavy artillery position near Kiryat Shmona, in northern Israel, next to the Lebanese border, Monday, July 17, 2006.

(via boing boing)

Real Live Poker-Playing Preacher

In Tomball, Texas, a suburb of Houston, reports SF Gate, a Baptist minister named Ken Shuman has an unusual ministry. Quoth David Ian Miller in SF Gate:

[Shuman is] now the general manager of Main Street Crossing, a popular coffee shop and live-music venue in Tomball, Texas, that has become a kind of Christian community center. By day, it's just a coffee house. But on nights and weekends several ministries, including Shuman's Wellspring Church, hold their worship services there. They also run a host of activities, including discussion groups and poker games three nights a week.

"The idea is mostly to provide a fun place to hang out," Shuman says. "We don't do heavy evangelism." Still, he adds, it's often easier to connect with the faithful over a round of Texas hold 'em than from behind a conventional pulpit.

Shuman was an ordinary Baptist preacher who led an ordinarily successful congregation when he had a crisis of faith. He left his church and eventually found a place at Main Street Crossing, a coffee house that serves beer and wine, with live performance space that is available both for music group bookings and Christian fellowship meetings.

I've heard that you tell people that despite being a pastor, you will "whup their ass" at poker. Is that true?

(Laughs) I don't know where you got that quote from, but the thing is, well, I told you I was a success junkie. So whatever I do, I want to do it well. And so I decided after the first night of poker that I had to learn how to play simply because there were people there, and I'm trying to connect with people, and what better way than to sit down at a table for three hours with a group of people and play cards?

So I started reading books and learned how to play poker at a pretty good level. And actually, as of last week, I am the point leader for the league that plays at our place.

And how do your new visitors respond to an ass-whupping, poker-playing pastor?

You know, most typical church people look at me like: "You left this nice big church to come do this? And now you're drinking beer and playing poker? You've lost the faith." And I just have to live with all that. I'm not worried about impressing the church people. What I'm worried about, or what I'm most concerned with, is just connecting with these people that play poker.

And I feel like I pastor all of them. I know about when they are going in the hospital, I know about the surgeries they have, I know about their marital problems, because they have begun to see me as a pastor that they can trust.

I think the biggest issue out there today for a lot of folks is they just don't think there is anybody they can trust with their stuff. They think he's gonna preach to me, or just tell me to come to church or pray a little harder and everything will be fixed. I believe we're all broken people. We're just broken in different places, and we all have addictions, and that we just need to come clean with all that and say: "Life is a journey, and faith is a journey. Wherever you are in that journey, let's journey together, and maybe we can help each other as we go."

My understanding is that gambling isn't approved of by Southern Baptists. Do your poker games include gambling?

No. They don't. It's just a league. The players don't pay to play. And there can be no exchanging of money at any of our sessions. If we did, we would lose our license – our beer and wine license – and feasibly they could shut us down, and feasibly they could haul me to jail.

Another Bracelet for Bill Chen

Bill Chen has won a second WSOP bracelet, in the $2,500 short-handed no-limit hold'em event.

Bill is in a solid first place in the WSOP best all-around player standings. Even if he doesn't make any more showing for the rest of the WSOP, he will have made his mark and is on the board as an important tournament player. He will surely be on TV, make the cover of Card Player, et cetera. Which leads me to wonder:

Is celebrity poker ready for Bill Chen?

Friends of Bill C.

I met Debbie at the Oaks Club tonight because, on a rare free Wednesday evening so that we could play in the evening hold'em tournament. Something unusual was in the air.

"You're a friend of Bill's, right?" Dan Huseman asked me when I sat down in the 15-30 game before the tournament. Ummm, no, I've never even been to a meeting.

No, he wasn't talking about Bill W., co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous and the Twelve Step movement. Instead, he was referring to Bill Chen, who Tuesday won the $3,000 Limit Hold'em event at the World Series of Poker.

Bill has been a long-time poster to rec.gambling.poker. I first met him when he came to the home game I hosted for a while. There was a period of time, before he moved to Philadelphia to work for a financial trading company, when Bill dominated the Oaks' Wednesday and Sunday tournaments.

But there's more: Oaks Club regulars pwned the $3K limit hold'em event – casino manager Larry Thomas made the final table also, eventually making 6th place.

Congratulations to Bill Chen on winning his first WSOP bracelet. I'm sure it won't be his last.

(But no joy for either me or Deb in tonight's tournament, alas.)