For the newspapers, July 1, 1980 is a day of infamy. (And no, it isn’t because at the time “Do That To Me One More Time” by Captain & Tennille was one of the biggest hit songs.) July 1, 1980 is the day when the Columbus Dispatch launched the first newspaper website and put free [...]
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Newspapers Should Replace Reporting with Journalism
July 28, 2011
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Reporting isn’t journalism. This is a distinction that few people understand, including many in the news business. And an inability to distinguish between the two is one reason why newspapers and other traditional media outlets continue to lose paying customers to the Web. We no longer need traditional media and professional reporters to inform us [...]
Read more Journalism Ethics in the 86,400-second News Cycle
July 7, 2011
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It is difficult to imagine the ethical journey for journalists who would authorize hacking into a missing teenage girl’s mobile phone in order to scour the content for a salacious headline. Worse is when these same journalists then delete messages from a full voicemail box so that additional messages could be left behind – giving [...]
Read more Balance Continues to Undermine Journalism
April 25, 2011
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Balance in journalism needs to be reassessed. It damages the fundamental purpose of journalism, which is to provide readers with the truth, and has led to a proliferation of misinformation. The latest example is the increasing numbers of the people who believe President Obama was born in Africa. A recent poll showed that nearly half [...]
Read more Is American Journalism Working Anymore?
April 21, 2011
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Peter Finley Dunn, the late writer and humorist, once described the role of journalism to “comfort the afflicted, afflict the comfortable.” When I was a journalist, Dunn’s quote was at the heart of how I practiced the craft. I believed deeply in Dunn’s assessment and even scribbled the quote onto my journalism notebooks as a [...]
Read moreThe New York Times Big Gamble: Paywalls (Again)
March 17, 2011
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Starting on March 28, the New York Times will dive headfirst – yet again – into digital subscriptions and… take a deep breath… paywalls. Or should I say the dreaded and much maligned paywalls. The last time the New York Times tried this they dove into the shallow end of the pool and nearly broke [...]
Read more Why “Balance” Hurts Journalism
March 4, 2011
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Intelligence Squared is a wonderful program on NPR that features Oxford style debating among experts on various topics. This month, the show, hosted by ABC News correspondent John Donovan, featured a debate on whether to repeal “Obamacare.” Arguing for the repeal was former U.S. Rep. John Shadegg (R-Arizona). As Donovan introduced Shadegg they had this [...]
Read moreA Long Walk Through Tripoli
February 28, 2011
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A rugged, crumbling wall surrounds the old city of Tripoli, Libya. The wall abuts the Corinthia Bab Africa, a luxury hotel with a beautiful view of blue waters of the Mediterranean Sea. The hotel was sparkling new and built to attract Westerns willing to do business with the regime of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi. And by [...]
Read more The Dictator’s Son: Libya, Democracy & Public Relations
February 22, 2011
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Here are my notes from my first impression of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi’s second son, Saif al-Islam. At the time, July of 2007, Saif al-Islam was Gaddafi’s favorite and his likely successor. I wrote: “A rather dim-witted, disinterested brat. A bit distracted, but very stylish.” But I added later: “That first impression was dead wrong. The [...]
Read more Has Blogging Entered its Twilight?
February 22, 2011
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The answer is no, absolutely not. But I’ll get back to that in a moment. The blogging is dead meme has been around for a few years (I first read about blogging’s demise at ReadWriteWeb in 2007). So it isn’t a surprise that the New York Times recently tackled the issue and declared: “Blogs were [...]
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