Riding into the White House, the angle was that Barack Obama would be a president whose celebrated communications skills would work to balance his governing inexperience. But Jonathan Alter, a Newsweek senior editor and author of a new book chronicling Obama’s first year as president, says Obama has instead taken to private, dispassionate discourse on [...]

I like projects. I enjoy pointing out skills, traits, knowledge sets or the like that I lack and want to develop and finding practical, fun, realistic ways to develop them as best I can — in small, attainable steps. I love storytelling. I want to be a better, more captivating, more experienced storyteller. I also [...]

They weren’t from around here, were they, shouted my neighbor across the street over the weekend. She was talking about a pack of young journalists — from Florida and Washington state and California — who had invaded my Fishtown rowhome the weekend before. That was perhaps one of the largest take aways I drew from [...]

Nearly 200 journalists, bloggers, innovators and technologists have signed up to attend the free-to-attend second national BarCamp NewsInnovation un-conference held this Saturday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. at Temple University in North Philadelphia. Last year, lots of attention came from the first national un-conference dedicated to news, information and journalism, and it was when [...]

A tidy and frail little old man asked me to direct him to the coat rack. To walk him around the corner from the long and elegant main corridor of the nearly 150-year-old Union League of Philadelphia was my first deed. If nothing else, it made for interesting conversation when I made it to the [...]

Forty leaders in Philadelphia media were on hand last week for the unveiling of a structure to develop more public affairs journalism in the region, as proposed by a university research center on behalf of the William Penn Foundation. From 8:30 a.m. to after 2 p.m. on Jan. 7 inside the Delaware Valley Regional Planning [...]

Highly localized news and its intersection with profitable, sustainable news is already starting to dominate conversations about the future of news in the United States. The numbers and business plans, relationships with each other and with legacy news organizations and who will be written into history for leading the movement seemed trending themes of the  [...]

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 [...]

As these panels tend to go these days, really no new ground was covered, but it’s hard to argue with getting accomplished people in a room to talk about it. Technically Philly partnered with Young Involved Philadelphia this past Thursday to host a panel discussion on the Future of News. A heavy reliance on foundation [...]

Tonight I’ll be in attendance at something of a unique event: an adult film world premiere. I briefed the event for the Philadelphia CityPaper in today’s edition [third item down]. The porn was written by two Philadelphia marketing executives who also lead POPPORN.com, which describes itself as “an adult entertainment blog. We are not a [...]