Tag: Newspapers

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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Philadelphia Business Today: A newspaper doing video right, mostly

philadelphia-business-today

I think the Philadelphia Inquirer is doing at least one of its online videos right – mostly.

The storied newspaper’s business section puts out a daily, noontime, three to five-minute news show called Philadelphia Business Today, and it has developed into one of the best newspaper-produced videos online. What are they doing right? What are they doing wrong? What can newspapers across the country learn. And Is anyone watching?

Continue reading Philadelphia Business Today: A newspaper doing video right, mostly

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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Give an excerpt of your stories in a feed, get more clicks

inquirer-google-reader

You gotta give something to get something, man.

So, I’m tired of newspapers ignoring the details of an RSS feed. In a mobile world, I have to believe that choosing what Internet news, information, and blog updates come to you will be the future.

So why aren’t newspapers figuring out the details?

Continue reading Give an excerpt of your stories in a feed, get more clicks

Marketing yourself online: your byline is your brand

Last week I announced my intentions to give one of the hardest professional roads a try. I’m trying to be a freelance journalist – in Philadelphia, a city in a persistent media hiring freeze.

So if it’s always important to brand yourself, now is a particularly important juncture for this underemployed writer. For more than a year now though, leading up to and continuing beyond my college graduation, I have employed and developed a growing online community of methods to take control over my Web presence.

I am obsessively trying to find ways to market myself online like more and more multimedia journalists of all ages and experiences. So, what are you doing to promote your name?

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Look at the comments, stupid

Man, who doesn’t have a blog.

Any newspaper that can even be tossed in the conversation has someone adding to it. There is no end to the number of jerks like me doing much of the same, with less experience and knowledge but increasingly more interest than the more professional.

The question, of course, is if any of it is working. One of the simpler answers, I’d say, is, well, look at the comments. If they’re improving, you’re improving.

Continue reading Look at the comments, stupid

Why this college graduate is choosing to stay in Philadelphia: should a graduate move on?

Standing on the famed steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art in October 2005.
Standing on the famed steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art in October 2005.

I was given an open invitation for an entry level job writing copy for CNN.com in Atlanta. The pay was bad, and the reporting probably rudimentary, but it was a good name, a position with a clear line of succession and a straight path to New York or Los Angeles – the media markets in which professors and professionals tell young journalists we want to be. There the money is good and the reporting is top-level.

Instead, I am trying to get a job in Philadelphia – a city that has hated itself for at least the last half-century. Let me tell you why.

Continue reading Why this college graduate is choosing to stay in Philadelphia: should a graduate move on?

Young, new media writer and journalist looking for Philadelphia accommodations: a cover letter

Somebody hire me.

I have returned from more than a month of backpacking Europe and travel podcasting at WeDontSpeaktheLanguage.com.

Now I am excited to put all I have learned to work in one of the world’s great cities. So, here’s my idealistic plea.

I want challenging work in Philadelphia; work that requires me to write about, learn and explore this city and the people living in it. I want to live in it too, riding my bicycle and SEPTA and eating water ice the whole while. Oh, and let’s get one of those 44 million uninsured Americans on the right path.

See my resume here; check my portfolio.

If you know of something, contact me. Even if you just have a suggestion or some advice, or if your grandmother’s neighbor once freelanced for TV Guide. While I have applied for a few opportunities, believe me, I am open to others.

Want to know more read on.

Continue reading Young, new media writer and journalist looking for Philadelphia accommodations: a cover letter

Journalists are victors of the moment

Perhaps more than any other profession, journalists live in moments, that hour’s story, that day’s deadline.

Zack Stalberg was made a legend for his Frank Rizzo moment. As a 2001 Philadelphia Weekly profile suggested:

Within two years the night rewrite kid is a City Hall reporter covering Frank Rizzo at a time when Rizzo was, as Stalberg recalls, “unstoppable … He was going to be governor and his image was untarnished and then–boom!” Boom, of course, was Stalberg himself, who persuaded the mayor to take a lie detector test to resolve a political dispute. Rizzo, as the whole city knows, failed the test in grand fashion, and Stalberg, as the whole city also knows, became someone who would make a name for himself. [Source]

Continue reading Journalists are victors of the moment