Classroom

By Bart Pfankuch All journalists can look back decades or even just a few months to see examples of the “shiny things” that distract us from our core work as information gatherers and sharers. Journalism scholar Kim Bui recently coined the term “Shiny Things Syndrome” to describe a phenomenon in …

By Bart Pfankuch Every now and then inspiration strikes a writer like lightning and a nearly perfect news story is the result. They’ll craft a piece with an engaging lead, a meaningful nut graph, intelligent exposition, on-point factual evidence, colorful imagery, telling details, unforgettable quotes and a kicker that lingers. …

By Kevin Slimp I’ve been noticing a couple of patterns lately, and I wonder if you have been, too. More for fun than anything, and to keep up with as much as possible in the newspaper business, I created stateofnewspapers.com a few months back. A quick check at the unique …

By Peter W. Wagner Some of you may remember the story, strongly circulated a decade ago, about a man who sold hot dogs along the side of a road. The man didn’t hear very well so he didn’t have a radio. He had eye problems, so he didn’t read the …

 By Peter Wagner We published at least three stories recently regarding older Sheldon citizens being scammed over the phone for thousands of dollars. But even though the first two crimes were printed in our Sheldon Mail-Sun in detail, a third individual was taken for soon after for $16,000. When asked …

By Bart Pfankuch A major goal of news reporting is to keep readers abridged of things, so it makes sense that uncovering and understanding trends should be part of any writer’s toolbox. Editors — and readers — love trend reporting. Editors puff up when they’re outlet is first to report …

David Beard’s Morning MediaWire from Poynter has these tips, and he promises more. Here’s the full column, where you can also sign up for the daily newsletter. From Paul Janensch: As an editor at four newspapers and an associate professor of journalism at Quinnipiac University, these were among the writing …

By Kevin Slimp I really didn’t expect to do much traveling this summer, but plans don’t always work out as expected and that certainly has been the case for me. The truth is I really love working with newspapers and when I get a call from a paper within a …