Archive for the ‘Commentary’ Category

Can you still start a freelancing career?

After announcing I took a step away from freelancing, a legal aide with aspirations of a cushy freelance career shot me an e-mail.
“Can people still even start a freelance career?”
I did it for just a year and did so out of college, so I don’t pretend to be any sort of expert. Yet, as writing [...]

More »

News forms of the future

We may lose someday newspapers in their traditional form, but we’re seeing a flourishing of alternatives fill those lost pieces of pie.
Some are more skeptical of how quickly we’ll be able to bring back the creation of that news, but through variation, experimentation and loyalty, it my well be done.
I very much see a future [...]

More »

My favorite standard Microsoft fonts

Design and development types take fonts very seriously. They even make documentaries about them.
By almost no one’s standards am I either. Still, I love a good fight over typeface. Why I’d really never fit the mold as a serious graphic designer, though, is because I’m not one to giggle at the standard set of Microsoft [...]

More »

Social media isn’t evil

Social media has this stigma.
In the past six years, those brand-name behemoths of an industry that didn’t exist at this decade’s beginning have reached every corner of the developed world. When something, when anything reaches that level of prevalence, there’s going to be some backlash.
So, yes, a medium devoted to regular updates and structured around [...]

More »

Ten things a journalist should never do

Poynter curated a list of 100 things a journalist should never do.
As these things tend to do, it became a rambling collections of do’s and don’ts, but it was interesting nonetheless. Ten stuck with me as among the most important.

Strive for context rather than information. Information is plentiful, context is scarce. (@rsm4lsu)
Journalists should be skeptical, [...]

More »

I love strikethrough text

I love what should be the new world of corrections.
Bow to the all-mighty strikethrough text. If someone calls you out on an error, fix it and fix it fast, but keep the mistake in with the cross out, so you don’t hide the mistake.
This shows transparency, a story’s growth and, really, keeps you, the reporter, [...]

More »

Hyperlocal news sites worth following

*Updated @ 9:36 a.m. 12/23/09 **Much thanks to Jess Durkin for others.

I don’t think anyone’s arguing that a big portion of the future of news will be this hyperlocal movement that continues to dominate the conversation and has grown in focus for many years.
So, I’m surprised to say I haven’t been able to find is [...]

More »

Clay Shirky: ‘a bad thing is going to happen’ to journalism

I’m not one for posting video clips on this site, nor am I about doing so more than two months late.
But then, by way of the Nieman Journalism Lab, I only now came across a lecture New York University new media professor and internet intellectual Clay Shirky gave to the Shorenstein Center on the Press, [...]

More »

Community newspapers: a panel and their use of the Web at PhIJI

Community newspapers in Philadelphia remain wary of the Web, if any stock is to be paid to a morning panel from a journalism innovation conference held this month at Temple University.
Their thoughts just might be relevant to community-focused news gathers across the country.
Hosted by Temple’s journalism department, the Philadelphia Initiative for Journalistic Innovation was a [...]

More »

Bicycle enforcement campaign launched by Philadelphia police

Update 11/22/09 @ 12:06 p.m.: Signs of this enforcement from Philebrity and the Inquirer.
Philadelphia police are introducing a bicycle enforcement campaign beginning tomorrow in Center City.
Forgive the lack of a direct focus on journalism, the future of news and my clips on this, but, as someone who uses bicycling transport fairly regularly (to save money [...]

More »