Listen to an audio file of the first session. (Unedited, 57:30) The first day of the Intercollegiate Online News Network founders conference at the University of Tennessee saw a journalism academics, students and professionals come together to discuss ways to better integrate online journalism into journalism curricula. Above are pictures from the first day’s sessions. • Read More »
Yes, you can do the old forms on the web. But should you? This “old media” type says we should re-think the forms of our content. This New York Times article by Virginia Heffernan is bit depressing but very perceptive. She writes: . . .they should think about what content suits these new modes of • Read More »
The stories behind the 1977 verbal confrontation between Richard Nixon and David Frost continue to fascinate. The release of the Ron Howard movie Frost/Nixon has given us some great stories from that era. We looked at the transformation of David Frost from satirist to journalist a bit in an earlier post. National Public Radio’s Fresh • Read More »
The Union Army, under the command of William Tecumseh Sherman, decamped from a devastated and burning Atlanta on November 16, 1864 and marched across the expanse of Georgia until it reached Savannah. The purpose, according to its commander, was to bring the horrors of war into the farms, fields, parlors and living rooms of the • Read More »
This pretty much speaks for itself and can be filed under the “it’s about time” category: Prizes broadened to include online-only publications primarily devoted to original news reporting The Pulitzer Prizes in journalism have been expanded to include many text-based newspapers and news organizations that publish only on the Internet. The Pulitzer Board also has • Read More »
With the release of the movie Frost/Nixon, Clive Irving (books on Amazon) describes the transformation of David Frost from satirist to journalist. Irving was on the inside of this story, and the view is fascinating. In the summer of 1966, Irving was one of two people hired by David Frost as “creative consultants” for The • Read More »
Charles Dickens had a lot to do with the image we have of the Christmas season — Victorian England and all that — but he didn’t invent Christmas. Several months ago I posted on an earlier blog an essay on book titles that make too much of a claim for their subjects. And I have • Read More »
A Most Wanted Man by John le Carré I gave up on this book after 100 pages. Nothing happened except for the author introducing some rather dull characters in a rather dull place. Every time I picked the book up, I did so with the hope that this time, something important and exciting would happen. • Read More »
Recent memory holds the idea of the “permanent Republican majority.” It had the Republicans crowing and the Democrats quaking. Ron Brownstein gives us an idea of how far through political space we have traveled since then: The consistent thread linking the 2006 and 2008 elections was the narrowing of the playing field for Republicans even • Read More »
Dana Milbank, one of the Washington Post‘s top political reporters, had an item in his blog Rough Sketch on Wednesday saying the Republicans in Congress had awarded the failure of their leaders by retaining them in their leadership jobs. Interesting post, to which I commented: The Republicans are acting like any great American corporation. Your • Read More »
William Ayers, head of the 1960s radical antiwar group Weather Underground who became a major issue in the presidential election campaign, told a radio interviewer Tuesday that he had “no regrets for taking a stand” against the war in Vietnam.Ayers appeared on Fresh Air with Terri Gross, a National Public Radio show, and talked with • Read More »
The New York Times has an article this morning on non-profit journalism — an idea that has been around for a while. In fact, the Christian Science Monitor had a similar article, spotlighting the VoiceofSanDiego as the Times article did, back in February. There are also articles in the Columbia Journalism Review, American Journalism Review, • Read More »
Richard Monastersky, a senior writer for the Chronicle of Higher Education, has an article in a recent edition of the publication pointing out a number of things about the election of Barack Obama and Joe Biden with regard to higher education. Obama is a former professor. He taught at the University of Chicago Law School • Read More »
National Public Radio had a story this morning speculating on how open the new Barack Obama administration will be. The story quotes former University of Alabama student (and friend) Christi Parsons, who covered the state legislature in Springfield for the Chicago Tribune when Obama was a state senator. The gist of the story is that • Read More »
The Brass Verdict by Michael Connelly Lincoln Lawyer Mickey Haller returns in Michael Connelly’s last mystery/thriller. And this time, Connelly teams him up (sort of) with Harry Bosch, the author’s long-running detective character. Haller is not your paragon of virtue, but he is clever and interesting. Haller is returning from a year off, much of • Read More »
Congratulations, Barack Obama. President-elect. Truly remarkable. Truly. And congratulations to Senator John McCain for your unquestioned patriotism and courage and your service to your country.
Barack Obama wrote his own book — no ghostwriters or co-authors. He did the literary heavy-lifting himself. It was with plenty of audacity and no small amount of hope that Barack Obama sat down in the early 1990s to write his life story. He had just turned 30 in 1991 and could reasonably assume that • Read More »
A good book review in the mainstream media (MSM) is getting harder to find. Not many of the MSM have retained strong book pages or coverage. The New York Times, of course, is the exception, as it has always been. There is not only the Sunday Book Review, which I have read for many years, • Read More »
Supreme Courtship by Christopher Buckley rating: 4 of 5 stars Just finished Christopher Buckley’s Supreme Courtship. Very funny in places and a bit silly in others. Still, an enjoyable read and always a dig at the powers that be. Pepper Cartwright is a very popular TV judge who is nominated for a U.S. Supreme Court • Read More »