Author: Deborah Potter

New Newseum worth a trip

The opening date still isn’t set, but the Newseum is shaping up to be a must see for journalists in DC when it finally does open this spring. The “interactive museum of news” on Pennsylvania Ave. will be ten times…

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Making the most of numbers

Everyone knows that people who go into journalism aren’t any good with numbers, right? I often joke that if they were, they’d be in a more remunerative line of work. But however math averse most journalists are, they have learn…

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Learning from TV news

Finally! A newspaper editor has acknowledged that “still folks” can actually learn something from TV photojournalists. And he’s done it in public, no less. Colin Mulvany, the new multimedia editor for The Spokesman-Review in Spokane, Wash., writes on his new…

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Managing user-generated content

How much attention should a news organization pay to the comments on its Web site? Should comments from users ever drive coverage? Is it ever appropriate to shut off comments altogether? BBC news manager Peter Horrocks raises these questions in…

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Remembering Ray Farkas

Legendary. Pioneering. Irrepressible. Ray Farkas was all of those things, and more. He died of colon cancer January 4, 2008; anyone who had the good fortune to know him will miss him terribly. Ray had a long career with NBC…

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Advice for online news sites

Get a breaking news blog and learn to love widgets. OJR editor Robert Niles offers those two suggestions and more in his summary of lessons learned in 2007. Niles says coverage of the Southern California wildfires made the case for…

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Archives pose digital dilemma

How should news organizations handle requests to alter their online archives? Most just say ‘no,’ according to a survey of newspaper executives, which found that 95% of respondents consider their print and digital archives to be a “historical record” that…

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Overused and abused

Every year since 1975, Lake Superior State University has put out a list of words that should be banished for misuse, overuse or general uselessness. The school accepts nominations through its Web site and a committee selects the final list…

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Predictions 2008

Yes, it’s that time of year again. Lots of people are risking future derision by telling us what to expect in 2008. Consider some of the dumber predictions from years past. Back in the 1940s, the head of 20th Century…

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What’s an online journalist?

It may sound like a simple question, but Craig McGill says it wasn’t easy to find a definition for the term online or digital journalist: I’ve asked a bunch of people this question over the last few days – inside…

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