COLUMN: Down with newsertainment

A recent discussion in the Columbia College Evening Campus faculty “office” (more like a small, shared space) started with a discussion of plagiarism, ethics and grading offenders of policy, fairness and the understanding of learning. Like most conversations, it meandered for a while until it hit the road of “What makes a person newsworthy? What makes a person 'public' and a target for ridicule and disclosure of intimate information?” This was based on my refusal to write about Sarah Palin as “Sarah,” not in a more formal fashion.