What I should have told a recent journalism grad

I felt rather buoyed this morning after e-mailing a reply to a thoughtful young professional journalist seeking my impressions of her news start-up. Wrote I: “I do see that there is, and will continue to be, a vital role for journalists to use their news judgment and training to filter through information on the Web [...]

My media affliction, identified; seeking a cure

Just as I unwound from Friday’s rant about media coverage of Michael Jackson’s death, Doc Searls applies a salve to what’s been ailing me: “Most of us can’t help falling into conversational black holes. But we can help getting sucked into celebrity obsession.” As I’ve been thinking about what I wrote yesterday — and posted [...]

No old/new media divide for junk journalism

As millions wondered Thursday about the fate of Michael Jackson, a leading Web entrepreneur groused on Twitter about that darn mainstream media: • “@latimescitydesk confirms TMZ report that Michael Jackson is dead. 30 minutes later CNN will not give TMZ credit. very odd.” • “Why wouldn’t @CNN reference the reports from LATimes and TMZ that [...]

Rekindling the single-minded pursuit of passion

I’ve been busy the last couple of weeks working on the creation of two sports Web sites — one of my own and another startup idea with a friend. Both revolve around topics I’ve written about extensively during my newspaper days, and that I have dabbled with on the Web. These topics brought out the [...]

Creative directions for self-directed journalists

Some mostly positive tales of journalists carving out new post-newsroom paths for their work, a hopeful assessment of the increasing maturity of the Web, plus a couple of childish kvetches or two from the usual suspects: • At PBS MediaShift, Simon Owens writes about a group of British soccer journalists who’ve created an online news [...]

As the ranks of volunteer journalists grow

MSNBC cartoonist Daryl Cagle, who’s dutifully been chronicling the diminishing numbers of his fellow political sketchers, lets a Huffington Post contributor have it for carrying on Queen Arianna’s Newspapers Are Dead drumbeat: “. . . they crow about how they are the next new big thing in journalism – although they operate on round after [...]