No need for this with public documents
My tour of journalism books continues with William C. Gaines’s Investigative Journalism. Gaines is a more exciting writer than Ullman, the last author I read, and he wisely steers away from technology issues that will soon become outdated.
My favorite part of Investigative Journalism, though, is that it taught me [...]

After I went after Alvin Chang, I feel like I should point out I wasn’t mad because he said the emperor has no clothes. The journalism industry is in for a shake-up, and I don’t think there will ever be as many jobs as there are now. Before I say what I think it’ll be [...]

I haven’t delved into The New Republic’s Politico article yet, but TNR’s blog The Plank has a delicious memo full of advice on Politico’s style. The Politico folks may be tools, but they were the biggest media story of the election season until Nate Silver came along, so their method is worth studying and maybe [...]

Bring your books because you’re gonna get schooled!
The best part about study abroad at the American University of Cairo is the awesome collection of journalism books in the library (that and, you know, culture or whatever). Georgetown doesn’t have many books about reporting, since we don’t have a journalism major. But AUC does, requiring two [...]

Oh f*ck
Terry Heaton posited that the internet means advertising will never achieve equilibrium. It pointed the way for where news sites need to start looking to stay solvent (hint: not display ads).
The most sobering part of Heaton’s post was the above chart. For a while, I have been hanging my hopes on the LA Times, [...]

Scott Karp, one of the journalism blogging kingpins behind link journalism site Publish2, announced a Publish2 project called Digital Sunlight to help newsrooms and citizen journalists pool resources on covering the stimulus. It’s not ready to go yet, but here’s Publish2 friend Howard Weaver describing it:
Using Publish2’s free system, individual websites can easily let users [...]

Soon, you’ll be slinging information like this guy
Brian Murley at Innovation in College Media is trying to put together an informal list of online journalism ideas that could help improve a college paper’s website (or any news site, really).  They’re arranged in descending order of difficulty.
He hasn’t added resources for implementation yet, so I’m electing [...]

Forget the micropayment debate–the real backward-looking talk in journalism is coming not from the oldsters, but from the youngsters. At least that’s the way you’ll feel after reading New York University student Alvin Chang’s op-ed about his inability to find a journalism job:
I want someone to tell me I will be unemployed if I stay [...]

Two weeks ago, bloggers and Twitterers got angry about the return of a pretty terrible idea: small payments for each newspaper article, or micropayments. Former TIME managing editor Walter Isaacson thought he had saved newspapers, Steven Brill agreed, and David Carr was all, “Let’s make an iTunes for newspapers“.
The idea won’t work for a variety [...]

Knowing even a little Flash can add a new dimension to your journalism. Here’s why Flash journalism guru Mindy McAdams thinks journalists should learn Flash (emphasis added):
Six hours with Flash is akin to taking a six-hour cooking class about an exotic foreign cuisine that you have hardly ever tasted before, much less tried to re-create [...]