My guest post on studying in Ghana and other personal travel blogs of interest

dateline-accra

I was asked to guest post on Dateline Accra, the small, personal travel blog of Stephen Zook, a young journalist whose spirit I adored when I was editing his copy a few years ago at The Temple News, the college newspaper I once worked and this year he’ll lead. He is studying in Accra, the capital city of Ghana in West Africa, this summer.

This was my contribution:

Don’t be afraid of the satchel water.

Pretty quickly on in the urbanized sprawl of greater Accra in coastal Ghana, you just might notice that the kids buy plastic bags of water, a corner of which they bite off to chug the contents. If no one convinces you otherwise, you just might stick to the bottled variety.

Don’t be afraid of the satchel water — that much I learned.

I spent a portion of summer 2005 studying at the University of Ghana in East Legon outside of the capital city of Accra. It wasn’t long enough to fully familiarize myself with even the university, set aside the city, the country or the region and Hell if I have even a taste of the continent, as one of the great lessons from travel should be that cultural learning comes from decades not days in a place. I did, however, pick up that the satchel water was refreshing, cheap and unique. Read the rest here.

Before he left, I promised him a beer when he returned. Now, I think he owes me one.

I hope he has a transcendent summer, explores and shares everything he can on that site. I also hope he builds traffic to share his story. He’s using Twitter, though he has some ground he can certainly make, as he’ll have plenty of compelling stories to tell.

Of course, this made me realize I follow a handful of low-traffic, personal travel blogs of friends or acquaintances who offer interesting reading. After the jump, peep seven such blogs that might be worth your time, whether you know the writers and their locations or not.

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My 10 favorite journalist bloggers

There are blogs and there are bloggers. There are mainstream blogs and there are those that aren’t.

Blogging, in my mind, isn’t necessarily, but a new transition that is one part of a test of big media. Can they develop and innovate quickly enough?

Below find my 10 favorite journalist bloggers: reporters associated with a mainstream medium who actively blog.

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My five favorite pieces of journalism ever (and of 2008)

Ever think about the best stories you’ve ever read?

What’s special about newsprint is how we clip those stories. We save them. I wanted to collect my favorite journalism pieces of my short life and share them with you. I have wanted to do this for sometime.

Below, find my five favorite and a slew of my favorites from 2008, more generally than my favorite Philadelphia pieces of the year that I shared earlier this month.

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The seven best pieces of Philadelphia journalism in 2008

The 2008 list-spree continues here, and, really, I hope to build on this next year.

No one makes the sensible move to keep a check on the best stories in the fourth biggest media market in the country.

Below, in chronological order, find my seven favorite pieces of journalism from the city’s largest and most influential publications.

Why MySpace sucks, is lame: its shortcomings and possibilities

I got a comment from “Mike” on a post early last month.

Interesting post. Curious on why you say “MySpace is lame.” I read recently that MySpace is among the most-visited Web sites with over 1b visits per month…

Of course he is right. MySpace remains one of the most popular Web sites in the world. I have a MySpace profile page, too. So why do  I still contend it’s one of the lamest sites on the Internet?

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My problems with Google applications: holes in these journalism tools

AP file photo from 05 June 2005
Getty Images file photo from 05 June 2005

Updated 6/27/10 @ 8:50 p.m.: Added additional Gmail improvement suggestions

Yeah, we’re all on Google’s bird. It may be a phenomenon, financially and socially, but I still have my complaints. I’m sure you do too (even if you just blame them for killing newspapers, like the French do.)

As Google applications have grown in popularity during the past few years, journalists have taken to see Google aps as a way to better unite newsrooms.

The advantages are clear, but having only used Google aps for a couple years, and a couple for half that, but I have already found a number of faults with these free Web-based services, particularly for journalists.

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Five books I reread in 2008 that you should try in 2009

Today is Jan. 2, 2009.

Looks like you ought to find something new to read. For me, there are those books I can’t seem to put down, even if I’ve already read them and have a stack of new stories I hope to try.

In 2008, I returned to more old friends than I normally do. Below, see the five books to which I returned and why you should give them a go if you haven’t, or a second look if you can.

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My five most viewed posts of 2008

Fireworks over the Delaware River in Philadelphia, celebrating 2009. Photo by Shannon McDonald.
Fireworks over the Delaware River in Philadelphia, celebrating 2009. Photo by Shannon McDonald.

Everyone does their lots of lists to end of the year. So, consider this my wishing you a grand, happy and successful 2009 and my doing just that.

I celebrated my one-year anniversary on this site early December with some of my most popular and favorite posts, so, because they might otherwise overlap, this is strictly my five most viewed posts of 2008.

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Twelve months of top journalism blog posts in 2008

bestjournalismposts

Tomorrow 2009 begins. Instead of doing a top ten list of posts like most, I want to review the year in important journalism-related blog posts.

There are  a lot of bloggers who focus on journalism. From grizzled veterans, tech geeks and corporate stiffs who are looking for the future, to those who blog the news, and younger cats like me, who have some of the experience, all the enthusiasm and a fresh perspective to offer. Yes, while some have written newspaper obituaries, some are looking toward the future.

So, with all of us running around blabbing on about new media and the future of newspapers, it turns out that every once in a while something I think is pretty meaningful comes to light. This year has been a big one, so below, in my humble opinion, see a guide to 12 months of the best journalism-related blog posts of 2008.

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Professional Resolutions for 2009

It’s a new year, so it’s time for resolutions. Here are my professional ideas, as I shared some more specific personal ones here.

Here are a few I’ve been thinking about:

  • Write: I want to write more here, journal more, more establish my freelancing career, get pieces into big newspapers and magazines and be part of meaningful journalism. Most important, I want to think I am a better writer, reporter and journalist a year from now than I am now.
  • Technology: I need to toe more into the obvious steps of tech, multimedia and web design. I want to invest time in using my point and click camera, editing video and audio and move this website maybe to a self-hosted version without the wordpress.com.
  • I want to make $30,000: Making that pre-tax total would mean I made more than I did as a post-graduate intern and allow me to save a little bit of money. I could do this freelancing, but I also might look for some writing and journalism jobs.
  • Make a book out of WDSTL: I created a lot of content with the cheap travel video podcast while backpacking in Europe, so I’d like to do something more with it.
  • I want to say ‘I don’t know’ more: All of us get trapped into making educated guesses and generally trying to answer questions or offer opinions for matters we don’t know. I want to stop that. If I don’t know something, I want to
  • Frame clips and diploma: I have some great newspaper clips and that diploma I paid so much for, so I’d like to display them to show them off a bit and be reminded of how hard I worked for them.
  • Update portfolio: I have a print portfolio that I’d like to update.

Those are my clearest objectives for 2009. What are yours?