Pursuing a new opportunity in Washington

Each time I take a new job, I think it’s going to be my last move. I thought that when I came to The Gazette and gazetteonline as editor, and I thought that about the previous job and the one before that. And … well, a lot of jobs in the newspaper business. My next [...]

Read Full Post »

Carole Tarrant discusses APME board’s Twitter use

My Sunday post about the APME board’s use of Twitter drew a detailed, thoughtful response from APME board member Carole Tarrant. Carole, editor of the Roanoke Times, had prompted the Sunday post with a tweet from a meeting of the Associated Press Managing Editors. She responded in a comment to the original blog post. But, [...]

Read Full Post »

Newsday’s pleased with 35 paying online customers

No one spins shocking news like people who think news sites need to charge for content. If only 35 people decide to pay for the content you thought was worth $260 a year? No problem. Just say, “That’s 35 more than I would have thought it would have been.” That’s what Staci Kramer of paidContent.org [...]

Read Full Post »

Students’ media use shows journalism’s future

I’ve done the same exercise with University of Iowa students twice in the past week: I ask them to tell me about their media use over the past 24 hours. I want to know how they learn about the world beyond their immediate circle of family, friends and faculty. I ask them to break it down [...]

Read Full Post »

Innovation and Managing Change in the Newsroom

Newsroom leaders struggling with the challenges of innovation will find help in a low-cost training opportunity next month in St. Louis. Bring your Valentine with you to St. Louis (I’ll be taking mine to dinner at an Italian restaurant on The Hill) and join us for a Feb. 13-14 Mid-America Press Institute Seminar, Innovation and [...]

Read Full Post »

APME board members still not engaging much on Twitter

I was delighted to read the news in a tweet from Carole Tarrant this morning: All APME board members are on Twitter now. Tarrant, editor of the Roanoke Times, was tweeting from an APME board meeting and reported: We just surveyed which #apme board members are on Facebook and Twitter. All 27 have accounts on both, [...]

Read Full Post »

Humanity is more important and honest than objectivity for journalists

One of journalism’s favorite notions is that we don’t become part of the story. We are supposed to be some sort of object (you know, objective) that doesn’t feel, that stays aloof and writes from an omniscient perch above it all. It is a lie, and we need to stop repeating it. The first principle [...]

Read Full Post »

Tweeps give advice to journos using Twitter

My tweeps came through this week with lots of advice for journalists using Twitter. On a trip to Ottawa, I led three workshops on Twitter for journalists for Carleton University, the Ottawa Citizen and Canwest News Service. I knew I needed to update the Twitter tips for journalists that I posted in July. Six months [...]

Read Full Post »

Mandy and Matt reunited with Maya Esther in Haiti

The high point of an emotional week for our family was seeing my niece Mandy Poulter and her husband Matt reunited last night with their daughter, Maya Esther, at an orphanage in Haiti. Since I blogged last week about how an ABC News crew and Good Morning America anchor Robin Roberts found Maya uninjured at [...]

Read Full Post »

Pew doesn’t understand news ecosystem well enough to study it

Note: I have added an update, in bold below, since originally posting this. A study of Baltimore news sources was more deeply flawed than I initially realized. I blogged Monday about weaknesses in the How News Happens study by the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism and about the misinterpretation of the report [...]

Read Full Post »

The search for Maya made the Haiti disaster story personal

Update: Maya Esther is in the United States. Read the update. A journalist gets an unusual perspective on disaster stories. Chances are you remember the Oklahoma City bombing from the horrific television images of the demolished building or the heart-rending photograph of a firefighter carrying a dead baby from the building. I remember the bombing [...]

Read Full Post »

I need journalists’ stories and tips on using Twitter

I will be leading three Twitter workshops for journalists in Ottawa next week, and I’d like some help from journalists using Twitter. Please share your best stories (with links, if possible, to tweets/stories) about using Twitter as a journalism tool in the comments here: What’s been your best experience using Twitter to connect with sources [...]

Read Full Post »