‘Lede’ vs. ‘Lead’
Early in my career somebody I obviously respected — can’t remember who now — told me the correct newspaper spelling of the opening of a newspaper story is “lede.” There’s lot of romanticism and...
View ArticleIndependent Local Online News Publishers Trade Group Formed
This is something I’ve been hoping would happen for the past year or more — glad to see a first formal step forward: On September 30, 2011, during the Block by Block conference at Loyola University...
View ArticleA prescriptive look at the news business
The clip above came to mind while scrolling through comments on Dean Starkman’s CJR piece, Confidence Game: The limited vision of the news gurus. As Starkman points out, there’s two camps in the game...
View ArticleTen things journalists can do to reinvent journalism, the new list
For no particular reason, I found myself looking at Google Analytics and decided to open the calendar all the way back to 2007. I discovered that the most popular post I’ve written in that time (and...
View ArticleAdvocates of pay walls should consider the fate of the New York World
First, let me remind you of a post November, 2009, in which I quote Walter Lippmann: We expect the newspaper to serve us with truth however unprofitable the truth may be. For this difficult and often...
View ArticleThe Batavian’s basic rules for scanner reporting
Once again, scanner reporting is controversial. The Batavian does a lot of scanner reporting. It works for us. It’s not hard to find people in our coverage area who say they love The Batavian, that...
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Photos: NY Farm Bureau Foundation, Food and Farm Experience 2015
This past weekend I participated in the Food and Farm Experience, hosted by the NY Farm Bureau Foundation for Agricultural Education. The two-day seminar was a chance for members of the media to learn...
View ArticleStop the insanity: The government has no business messing in the news business
This tweet: Why didn’t I watch Senate hearing today? Because I’m busy working on journalism’s future, not worrying about its past. Proved quite popular this evening. I posted it in light of news about...
View ArticleEvents that have contributed to the decline of newspapers
The professionalization and creation of "objective" journalism in the 1920s Movies, 1920s Radio, 1930 Mass migrations caused by Great Depression and World War II, dislocating communities and families...
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Newspapers started small, cheap and with different standards
There are those in our industry who seem to assume that newspapers emerged in 1835 in full flower, that many of the elements of the newspaper world that were until recently taken for granted were all...
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