In case you didn't see this posted yesterday on Romenesko, here it is. Marc Eisen quotes or refers to Bill Johnston, George Hesselberg and Andy Hall. Woven through this long, doom-and-gloom piece are some nice turns of phrase, so I figured it was appropriate for our good reading blog. David
Thursday, March 19, 2009
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
Story endings
I thought we could talk about story endings (and whatever else people want to talk about) at our next writers' group lunch at noon in the board room on March 25. I liked the endings of these three recent articles in our paper. Maybe you have seen others in the WSJ or elsewhere you want to share? Also, I have a confession: I think I rely on quote endings too much. But they're so easy; how to get around this? Any suggestions?
(By the way, I'm testing out Nick's new, easy way to post blog entries. We'll see if it works…)
Chris Martell:
http://www.madison.com/wsj/topstories/443075
Deb Ziff:
http://www.madison.com/wsj/mad/top/441562
Karen Rivedal:
http://www.madison.com/wsj/home/local/440697
David
Monday, March 16, 2009
Online living
DigiDave, a blogger who has a keen interest in the news industry (his tagline is "Journalism = Process not product"), has an interesting blog post about personal branding as a new mode for journalists in the digital age. His advice: start "living your life online." I think the post would also qualify as a good example of web-first writing. It's chopped into short, easy-to-digest sections with plenty of bulletpoints and links to further information. It's not going to get any awards, but it's engaging and personal and sometimes funny. Pretty good stuff.
It is NOT personal branding - it's Just living your life online.
The logical flow goes like this....
- "Journalism will survive the death of its institutions."
- This leads to the conclusion that we will have lots of independent journalists.
- Which means independent journalists will have to create "personal brands" since they can't rely on institutions to warrant a readers trust.
This is true - but I think the word "brand" is loaded and as such "personal brands" are being mischaracterized.
[...]
So here is what "personal branding" means to me.
Being a "brand" doesn't mean anything. What we really mean is: Live parts of your life online.
• Be findable online.
• Show your personality - whatever that is (you can be shy....online)
• Just be yourself.Journalists don't need to do "personal branding" but they do need to live their life online. In fact, that is what LOTS of people are doing anyways.
Young people live their lives online naturally (Facebook). Journalists will have to do so with a bit more fervor and transparency, because readers will want to trust them. To do that you must show who you are through various means. And that means using tools (blog, twitter, flickr, etc) to make your life accessible online.
Personal branding doesn't mean slapping a logo on yourself. It just means being exactly who you are right now (yes, you... the one reading this) but doing that online.
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
WSJ Good Reading blog: now with email posting!
Hey folks,
If you've been put off by the difficulty of posting to the WSJ Good Reading blog, I have great news for you. You can now post by simply sending an email.
Just write your blog post as an email in Outlook or Gmail or Hotmail or whatever, with the subject line being the title of the post. Then, send it to: [EDIT: Email address redacted so spammers don't take advantage], and vioala! It's posted!
Don't believe me? Head over to the blog now. You'll see that this very email was posted using this method when I sent it to you.
Come see me if you have questions or if you never set up a login to post to the blog and want one now that it's so freakin' easy.
If you've been put off by the difficulty of posting to the WSJ Good Reading blog, I have great news for you. You can now post by simply sending an email.
Just write your blog post as an email in Outlook or Gmail or Hotmail or whatever, with the subject line being the title of the post. Then, send it to: [EDIT: Email address redacted so spammers don't take advantage], and vioala! It's posted!
Don't believe me? Head over to the blog now. You'll see that this very email was posted using this method when I sent it to you.
Come see me if you have questions or if you never set up a login to post to the blog and want one now that it's so freakin' easy.
Monday, March 2, 2009
"To be a prince of the city"
Steve tweeted a link to this Washington Post article in his Twitter feed and I thought it warranted rebroadcasting in this blog.
I like it because it's highly literate and simultaneously highly readable. I like the anecdotes of police reporting (something I do often enough) before the Internet and the unapologetically combative attitude of the reporter when it comes to items he thinks the public has a right to know. The author's musings on the changes in the news industry are also worth reading (though not particularly revelatory).
I particularly like: "To be a police reporter in such a climate was to be a prince of the city, and to be a citizen of such a city was to know that you were not residing in a police state. But no longer -- not in Baltimore and, I am guessing, not in any city where print journalism spent the 1980s and '90s taking profits and then, in the decade that followed, impaling itself on the Internet."
I like it because it's highly literate and simultaneously highly readable. I like the anecdotes of police reporting (something I do often enough) before the Internet and the unapologetically combative attitude of the reporter when it comes to items he thinks the public has a right to know. The author's musings on the changes in the news industry are also worth reading (though not particularly revelatory).
I particularly like: "To be a police reporter in such a climate was to be a prince of the city, and to be a citizen of such a city was to know that you were not residing in a police state. But no longer -- not in Baltimore and, I am guessing, not in any city where print journalism spent the 1980s and '90s taking profits and then, in the decade that followed, impaling itself on the Internet."
In Baltimore, No One Left to Press the PoliceRead on.
By David Simon
Sunday, March 1, 2009; B01
BALTIMORE In the halcyon days when American newspapers were feared rather than pitied, I had the pleasure of reporting on crime in the prodigiously criminal environs of Baltimore. The city was a wonderland of chaos, dirt and miscalculation, and loyal adversaries were many. Among them, I could count police commanders who felt it was their duty to demonstrate that crime never occurred in their precincts, desk sergeants who believed that they had a right to arrest and detain citizens without reporting it and, of course, homicide detectives and patrolmen who, when it suited them, argued convincingly that to provide the basic details of any incident might lead to the escape of some heinous felon. Everyone had very good reasons for why nearly every fact about a crime should go unreported.
In response to such flummery, I had in my wallet, next to my Baltimore Sun press pass, a business card for Chief Judge Robert F. Sweeney of the Maryland District Court, with his home phone number on the back. When confronted with a desk sergeant or police spokesman convinced that the public had no right to know who had shot whom in the 1400 block of North Bentalou Street, I would dial the judge.
And then I would stand, secretly delighted, as yet another police officer learned not only the fundamentals of Maryland's public information law, but the fact that as custodian of public records, he needed to kick out the face sheet of any incident report and open his arrest log to immediate inspection. There are civil penalties for refusing to do so, the judge would assure him. And as chief judge of the District Court, he would declare, I may well invoke said penalties if you go further down this path.
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