Month: June 2009

Notes from an ombudsman

NPR’s Alicia Shepard calls it “the loneliest job in the newsroom.” As NPR’s ombudsman, Shepard serves as a bridge between public radio listeners and staffers, explaining each side to the other. A large part of her job involves responding to…

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Award-winning stories on diversity

In all the discussion of journalism’s economic troubles and the need to embrace technological change, it can be easy to forget some of the basic tenets of good journalism. Reflecting the community in your coverage is still critical, and the…

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Who was Fred Friendly?

“The greatest innovator and producer in the history of television journalism.” That’s how Ralph Engelman of Long Island University sums up the late CBS News great Fred Friendly, even as he wonders whether students today have ever heard of him.…

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Inside a hyper-local blog

What motivates a person to devote almost as much time to a neighborhood blog as they do to a full time job? For Jacqueline Dupree, it’s a desire to document history. Dupree works for the Washington Post, maintaining the company’s…

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Telling visual stories with “no visuals”

There are few television journalists who have missed out on the pleasure of getting assigned a story where a mug shot is the “best” visual element. With creativity, though, some are able to create compelling stories. So, how do they…

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How to use Twitter with your blog

Poynter recently hosted an online chat with NYU professor Jay Rosen and PressThink blogger on the subject of teaching people to blog. Advice: Break news, say something that hasn’t been said, collate what no one has collated, and then link…

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Broadband growth important to journalists

Forget my MTV, I want my high-speed Internet access. The Pew Internet & American Life Project just released its latest survey on broadband penetration in the U.S., and even in these tough economic times, broadband adoption is growing. According to…

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Experimenting with digital storytelling

Improv actors, a soundtrack and very little text. Is this the future of online journalism? Consider what staid old Fortune magazine has been doing lately, in collaboration with the online magazine Flyp Media. Flyp has turned some of Fortune’s editorial…

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News anchor roles changing

It’s an unfortunate reality that a good portion of students go into broadcast journalism because they want to be on TV.  They dream of being someone like Oprah or of anchoring a newcast because they think it looks fun and…

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Pros and cons of sharing news video

It’s happening everywhere. Stations from Tampa to Los Angeles are forming local partnerships to share news video. The arrangements vary from market to market, but so far stations owned by Fox, Gannett, Scripps, Tribune and Meredith have jumped into the…

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