For journalists, the best lesson from the Confederate flag came from Matthew Guterl, a professor of Africana and American studies at Brown University, in an interview with the Washington Post. Reporter Roberto Ferdman asked this: You’ve talked about how we live in this weird moment, where there are competing representations …
Read More »News as a byproduct of social media
With the vast and unprecedented power of the internet to share news comes vast and unprecedented power also to shape the news people actually see. In this thoughtful piece for the Columbia Journalism Review, Trevor Timm explores the relationship between a major newspaper like the New York Times and social …
Read More »Covering the story on the North Charleston shooting
I’m copying a story from the South Carolina Press Association’s newsletter this morning that traces The Post and Courier’s coverage of a video that exploded across the nation’s headlines. It touches on a number of issues, such as police body-cameras and victims’ rights, that are relevant in Nevada and nationwide. …
Read More »Now they’re stealing fakes?
Here’s a new take on the problem of people stealing images from the internet: Who added that dog to my image? As I understand it, somebody ‘borrowed’ Ben Canales’s photo, photoshopped a silhouette of a dog in the tent and posted it online. When Backpacker Magazine — which had legitimately …
Read More »How Rolling Stone can fix it
Back in January, a month after Rolling Stone’s disaster of a story came to light, I offered some free advice. This was soon after the magazine announced it would have Columbia Journalism School conduct an audit of the story and tell us what went wrong. The CJS report was released …
Read More »How to make police videos a matter of public record
For police body-cam videos to do any good, they have to be seen by the public. That much seems obvious from the many examples floating around the internet, and the results seen by police departments that have started using them. But, as I’ve said before, there are plenty of issues …
Read More »What the Nevada prison didn’t tell us.
Everything. Sorry, that’s not fair. The Nevada Department of Corrections did, in fact, provide an entire paragraph to the press on inmate Carlos Perez in November. Name. Age. Number. The fact that he was dead. The news release ends with this statement: “There is an ongoing investigation and no further …
Read More »Even cowgirls get the news
from RANGE magazine: National recognition for western publisher Caroline “CJ” Hadley, publisher of RANGE magazine, has been nominated to the National Cowgirl Hall of Fame. Her acceptance as a candidate is the first step in the painstaking process of selecting the four or five women who will be honored at …
Read More »Oldest paper is also the newest
Elizabeth Thompson, editor of the Territorial Enterprise, addresses the crowd inside Adele’s during the launch party Thursday evening. MacAvoy Layne readies for his welcome as Mark Twain. It’s always news when a newspaper launches, and the resurrection of the Territorial Enterprise has plenty of story lines. There’s the history itself, …
Read More »Bots can spell, but can they write?
Reporters are among the last remnants of old-time newspapering that haven’t been replaced by technology yet. But they’re working on it. When we moved from typewriters to computers, it was a great thing for the newsroom. Not so good for the paste-up department, where pink slips were handed out. (At …
Read More »