The federal tax deadline is barreling toward us. I thought I’d share what little I know and what I’m reading about deducting home expenses for those of us who have done just that this fiscal year.
It’s a great way to keep your home costs down, but, of course, the rules are a bit more involved [...]

A crazy thing happened on Dec. 2. I closed on my first home, quite an end to a decade of transition from childhood to adulthood. Something worthy enough to update a bit on.
I’m in the heart of the Fishtown neighborhood of the riverward section of Philadelphia, once a place exclusively for working-class (white) families that [...]

Nothing newspapers love more than a big storm. I jumped into the fray with a few items for Metro on the second largest snowfall in recorded Philadelphia history in today’s paper.
The second worst snowstorm in Philadelphia’s recorded history welcomed John Hutchison to Fishtown over the weekend.
Read the rest of the main story here.
With intrepid [...]

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, [...]

Another ugly chapter in the ongoing battle for the road between motorists, cyclists, pedestrians and the law was the focus of a story I wrote for Metro yesterday.
A few days after one of their own suffered serious facial injuries in a hit-and-run crash, city bicycle messengers upset with what one courier describes as “rising anti-cycling [...]

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 [...]

I spoke to series producer Andrew Dunn and executive producer Dan Flaherty of A&E’s popular reality show “Parking Wars” for last Tuesday’s issue of Metro-Philadelphia.
The show, which has followed staff of the Philadelphia Parking Authority for two seasons, is back for a third, which will also include scenes from Detroit’s parking enforcement agency. Unfortunately, that [...]

In today’s Metro-Philadelphia, I covered the always vitriolic response to the Philadelphia Parking Authority, ahead of next week’s debut of the third season of “Parking Wars,” though I’ll have a more directly related piece next week.
Clarence Shippen Jr. keeps watch outside his office at 8th and Locust streets.
Read the rest here.
Below check some quotations that [...]

I had two stories and a couple briefs in today’s Metro, including news of the arrest of a teenager who allegedly duct-taped a tabby cat now dubbed Sticky.
The North Philadelphia teenager who was arrested for allegedly wrapping a cat in duct tape lost both his father and brother to street violence in the last two [...]

That’s the beautiful twin I call home in Frankford, in lower Northeast Philadelphia, behind me, and, yes, that’s a screen shot of my ugly mug on the last night’s Fox 29 10 o’clock news.
I was interviewed by John Atwater of Fox 29 for their followup to a PBS Frontline documentary on e-waste in developing nations. [...]