We were reporters once, and young
A treasure found in an old file drawer – a 1995 congressional press pass:
Archive of posts filed under the journalism category.
Science literacy, numeracy and science policy challenges
Dan Kahan, the Yale “cultural cognition” guy, has a new paper highlighting the problem with the argument that a more scientifically literate public will solve all our scientized problems, things like climate change, GMOs and nuclear stuff where the scientific argument has become intractably embedded in a political context. (The paper’s actually targeted at climate …
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The changing duty to bear witness
I don’t know who “qbertplaya” is, but I am eternally thankful to him or her for this: It’s Patti Smith closing CBGB, the last song played there, a moment in history captured by someone wise and generous enough to hold up some sort of mobile recording device. I was struck by that act when I …
Mike Taugher tells us what’s really going on with Sacramento Delta diversions
A group with one set of interests in California water has tried to frame the discussion over how much water can be diverted from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta in the classic “farmers vs. fish” framework. Others disagree. Traditional “view from nowhere” journalism quotes one from Column A and one from Column B and calls it …
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Central Basin Municipal Water District ignores the first rule of holes
In my automated news searches on California water issues, I’d run across a number of stories of late on a web site called “News Hawks”, which seemed to be devoting an inordinate amount of time to detailing the efforts of an obscure Southern California water agency called the Central Basin Municipal Water District. I didn’t …
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Elephant Diaries: The Revenue Problem
Heartbreaking words by Josh Brodesky inside the Arizona Daily Star newsroom last week as another round of layoffs came: The cuts filled the newsroom with an eerie stillness accented only by tears and typing. The next day’s paper still had to be put out. I think most staffers knew a day like Thursday would come, …
What I did with my week, social media edition
Up early this morning to watch the team time trial at Le Tour, I flipped on the computer to check what was going on with the Los Alamos fire. (I was hoping to take a few minutes during a commercial break to post an updated fire map.) It was a little before 8 a.m., and …
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Protecting the Tribe
Seen in the morning print edition of the Sacramento Bee, Tim Johnson on the dangers faced by those plying our trade in Mexico: Some 66 Mexican journalists have been killed in a little more than five years, many if not most for exercising their professions. Just last week, authorities found the body of Noel López …
Worn Proudly
When I’m telling stories, I look for the telling example that can represent something deeper – some small but memorable tip to stand in for the rest of the iceberg. There are ways in which Tim Hetherington and Chris Hondros, the two photojournalists killed this week in Libya, are terrible examples, bad choices as the …
Elephant Diaries: Dallas Goes Paywall
In a coda to my old Elephant Diaries series on the economics of news, a brief note from Dallas as the Morning News goes paywall: “Local newspaper websites are never going to scale to page view levels that make the math work,” he said. “The volume of traffic to these sites is inherently limited by …