Studying the intersection of journalism, interactive communications and public discourse
What’s the role of the local press in a Donald Trump presidency? WNPR invited me to participate in a live town hall discussion of the topic on Monday, Feb. 13, 2017, with Hartford Courant Publisher Andrew Julien and Journal Inquirer Managing Editor Chris Powell. (I start talking around the 12-minute mark.)
“[News] is the product of a bunch of people sitting in a room, using their own best judgment. Their own best judgment is shaped by their own lives. If you do not have people in that room who lived a very wide array of different types of lives, your publication will have holes.” —Hamilton Nolan, …
[View the story “Key insights from#ASJA2016” on Storify]
What is social media? It’s a billboard a live broadcast channel an archive and a library. It’s also a conversation. Unscripted and unpredictable. A customer service feedback line and a crowd-sourcing tool. It’s a polling center a debate arena an angry mob and an echo chamber. Social media is a snark machine. It offers publishing …
The Association of Opinion Journalists hosted a Minority Writers Seminar on Nov. 12-17, 2015 at the Poynter Institute in St. Petersburg, FL. The diverse group of participants, myself included, hailed from all over the country and included freelance writers, full-time news reporters, editorial writers, academics and college students. I’m the one in blue in the …
I spend a lot of my time mulling over ways for journalists to elevate online discourse on news stories. Below is a presentation I gave at the 2015 Excellence in Journalism conference in Orlando, FL on September 18. Joining me was Talia Stroud of the Engaging News Project. My prepared script for “To Comment or …
Social networks are changing from open to closed. See WhatsApp, FireChat, Weibo. These are private spaces, invite only. New/old sourcing skills required for journalists looking for access. Finding reliable sources via social still boils down to relationships, journalism verification skills, ethics. Use Twitter lists. It helps you organize your sources. Vicarious trauma is being brought …
Journalists are more than storytellers. We are more than researchers. Journalism requires skill and bravery, a strong ethical center, flexibility and creativity, social skills, technical smarts and an inherent desire to serve the public and the greater good. It is dynamic and important and still one of the best jobs in the world. Let’s nurture …
One of the best aspects of working as a journalist is the profession’s unanticipated path of discovery — and opportunity. My newly found knowledge of drones is a recent example of this. It started in late July 2014 when an editor/friend at The Hartford Courant asked me if I’d be willing to write an essay …
Journalism students with little exposure to data, spreadsheets or graphic design are often intimidated by the idea of information “visualization.” There are myriad ways to adapt text and numbers into interactive pictures. To ease my “Introduction to Online Journalism” students into the practice of visualization, we embark on a three-part initiation. During the 2015 Journalism/Interactive …