Justices often confound predictions

This will be my column in Monday’s Gazette:
When presidents nominate new justices for the Supreme Court, people who care about courts project their hopes and fears onto judges most of them have never heard of.
From the special interests and from the extremes of our political spectrum, we hear caricatures about empathetic or activist judges. And [...]

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Take 2 on newspaper executives’ secret meeting

Secret is as secret does. 
When I first wrote about Thursday’s NAA meeting of newspaper executives, I had to confess I didn’t actually know what was happening, but was writing based on some blogs that were mostly based on speculation or rumor or on the agenda for the meeting, which James Warren of The Atlantic obtained. [...]

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Seven reasons charging for content won’t work

I hope the newspaper tycoons meeting secretly in Chicago this week come up with a clap-your-hands plan.
Because clapping our hands to save the newspaper industry, like we saved Tinkerbell at the movies when we were children, has more chance of succeeding than the paid-content-cartel approach that newspaper executives are dreaming and talking about but being [...]

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Yet another anti-Twitter piece written in ignorance

It’s OK to be sick and tired of Twitter rants by journalists who don’t understand it.
The same day I posted about Edward Wasserman writing about Twitter without really learning about it, I read another piece from another journalist I respect, Paul Farhi of the Washington Post, writing The Twitter Explosion in the American Journalism Review. 
Farhi, to his [...]

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Another Twitter expert who didn’t bother to learn

I have long been an admirer of Edward Wasserman’s work. When I was presenting a series of ethics seminars, Our Readers Are Watching, for the American Press Institute, I frequently recommended Wasserman’s Miami Herald columns on ethics in a list-serv for participants.
But his latest work shows how smart people can write stupid things when they [...]

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New York Times social media editor off to a sociable start

First tweets tend to be pretty lame (mine was), often something like “trying to figure out this Twitter thing.”
Jennifer Preston of the New York Times got off to a better start, asking in her inaugural tweet Tuesday:
Hi, I’m the NYT’s new social media editor. More details later. How should @nytimes be using Twitter?
With 40 characters [...]

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No cure yet, but millions of us are cancer survivors

This will be my column in the Monday Gazette:
Imagine the excited news coverage if a major medical journal announced that scientists had developed a cure for cancer.
Editors would splash it across the front page of every newspaper. It would lead the evening newscasts and talk shows would chatter incessantly about it. The word would spread [...]

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C3 commentary in Finnish (and swift social media help)

I’ll start by acknowledging the obvious: I have an ego and it’s not small.
This post will share some praise for me and the Blueprint for the Complete Community Connection. Yes, I do enjoy being called a visionary and having people in Finland encouraged to check out my writing and I don’t mind telling you about [...]

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Journalists shouldn’t hide behind a mask

I’ll use a shortened version of this for my Monday column in The Gazette:
Mixing the personal with the professional has always been uncomfortable territory for journalists and especially for journalists’ bosses. Voicing opinions is another touchy area.
The Wall Street Journal weighed in on both matters last week with a resounding “no” to staff members [...]

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More on newspapers’ social media rules: NY Times, Washington Post, etc.

Update: Gina M. Chen blogged abou the New York Times and Washington Post social media rules, providing thoughtful insight on both. “Newspapers are really, really afraid of readers, sources, everyone. Good grief.”
And I’m especially pleased with Jamie Kelly’s simple, brief advice on social media use by journalists: Identify yourself and don’t endanger your reputation.
No time [...]

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A response from the Wall Street Journal

As punishment, I guess, for posting that I was too busy to continue this discussion (or perhaps because I wished a flight delay on Jeff Jarvis), I got a response from the Wall Street Journal right after I posted my last update in a series of posts that started last night.
I had emailed editors Alix [...]

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More on Wall Street Journal and social media

Update: I’m too busy to add the exchange between Jeff Jarvis and Tim O’Brien of the New York Times or update responses from Alan Murray, but I recommend following them if you’re interested in this issue. I may add the continuing exchange later.
For now I will add and endorse this view from John Robinson, editor of the [...]

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