Tag Archives: Journalism

Does Commenting Add Any Value?

Do you read comments? For me the answer is: It depends. I often read the comments on my favorite blogs. The comments on blogs generally add value.  Often there are debates breaking out around the issues the blogger has explored in his/her post.  I like reading how people are reacting to the content and the [...]

Read more

A Glorious Digital News Revolution

Here are the ways I now get my news: My New York Times iPhone application which I read each morning at breakfast. My NPR News iPhone application which I listen to on my commute to work (On Point, Intelligence Squared, and Fresh Air are my favorites) “My News Channel” Twitter list which contains the real-time [...]

Read more

Is Social Media More Important than Traditional Media?

What is better for a brand? A.) 25 million Facebook fans B.) An article in the New York Times Ideally, you’d like both. But if forced to pick, I’d probably go with A.  Facebook fans are a constant – a set of people who have opted into your content.  While they don’t all receive your [...]

Read more

A Vanishing Species: Fact-based Journalism

“Well, opinions are like assholes. Everybody has one.” – Clint Eastwood as Dirty Harry in “Dead Pool”   Here is the sad story about FACT.  The unfortunate fellow has been thumped on the noggin, hog-tied, and dragged unconscious into a locked closet by OPINION, SPECULATION, and RHETORIC. The big enablers of this Gang of Three?  [...]

Read more

The Sorry State of Political Journalism

Not even NPR is immune anymore. This morning, WBUR, a NPR affiliate radio station in Boston, broadcast a story about the results of a poll about U.S. Senator Scott Brown and his likely Democratic opponent Elizabeth Warren. The story reported that the two candidates were neck-and-neck.  But the content of the piece centered on two [...]

Read more

Paywalls, Journalism & the Boston Globe

  When I was a newspaper reporter, my peers and I referred to ourselves as “Inked-Stained Wretches.”  It was our way of celebrating the broadsheet.  The printed product that we all wrote for. From an early age, I wanted to be a newspaperman.  I was the editor-in-chief of my high school newspaper; news editor and [...]

Read more

The Day of Infamy for Newspapers

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 [...]

Read more

Tweets Are the Future of Journalism & the Future is Now

The New York Times last night published a story on Steve Jobs resigning his post as CEO of Apple.  No, this blog post isn’t about Apple or Jobs, but about how the New York Times covered the news. Here are the concluding paragraphs in the article: “Twitter, the instant messaging service, filled with an outpouring [...]

Read more

Newspapers Should Replace Reporting with Journalism

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

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
Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 76 other followers