Advanced Editing

What is journalism?

dancusack — Mon, 04 May 2009 05:20:27 +0000

I found this interview with PTI personality Michael Wilbon on the Northwestern site for their student newspaper. For those of you not familiar, Wilbon is a writer for the Washington Post and a frequent contributor to ESPN programing. He and Tony Kornhieser have a show on ESPN called PTI.

I thought it was really interesting his take on journalism. In the interview, he talks about his writing career and what makes working for ESPN different. He said that his work on PTI is not journalism and that is a personality show, but that most people do not understand this.

Journalist can relate to former Blackhawks coach

dancusack — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 05:38:58 +0000

Melissa Isaacson, a writer at the Chicago Tribune, recently found out she would be losing her job because of budget cutbacks. What she did was take her situation and bring it out through a Chicago figure. Isaacson wrote this brilliant column about former Blackhawk coach Dennis Savard. She talked about how a firing hurts for everyone. Although she never brings up her own situation, you can feel her pain coming through the article.

No internship? There are other options

Spenser Nobles — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 01:16:59 +0000

What should someone a student do during their time off in the summer if they did not receive an internship? This post by Joe Grimm suggests that students make the most of their summers if they were not able to land a job or internship that will keep them involved in journalism. Grimm suggests that students do what they can to stay involved in journalism so that they can try to eliminate the advantage that those who received internships may have.

Poynter starts new job-help membership

adamantlee — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 22:01:26 +0000

Seeming to cash in on a bad situation, Poynter is offering a new job-help membership for people looking for jobs. The membership cost $100, and that buys people: a critique of their resume, half an hour of one-on-one coaching on the phone with a Poynter Career Center coach and participation in an online group of journalists and other media professionals to network and share job ideas and contacts in a professional environment.

In addition to the $100 membership cost, they are also asking for a voluntary donation if a person’s career goal is achieved. This donation would have the persons name put on a brick in their commemorative courtyard.

This seems nice, but also a bit steep for what they are offering. This may be just me, but I think a lot of these features could be found cheaper through different Web sites and sources. While this could turn out to be a good service for people in the journalism industry to help get them a job, this sounds like a way to cash in on a bad economic situation in my opinion.

Breaking News Photography

aburge2 — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 00:08:05 +0000

The Pulitzer Prize winners were announced yesterday afternoon. I was going through the winners and stumbled across the winner of the Breaking News Photography, Patrick Farrell. Farrell, who works for the Miami Herald, won the prize for his pictures of the hurricane devastation in Haiti. Personally I thought this was some great photography. The Miami Herald has posted the pictures on the Web site in the form of a slideshow. It’s a great example of how to put such powerful photos on the Internet.

Just a warning: the pictures are depressing and provocative.

10 rules for a college editor

easteele — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 01:17:10 +0000

I was looking through articles on Poytner institute when I ran across one that was similar to what we’ve been reading about over the past few weeks. It was a list of the top 10 things a great boss needs to know. I agree with everything the author Jill Geisler said, but after working as a copy editor at the DEN for the past semester and as an editor for the yearbook I feel like college publications should have their own top 10 for editors and reporters.

Give new writers a chance: Yes they’re fresh out of news 1 but if we don’t give them a chance who will?
Don’t stare at said newbies when they walk in the door, it’s intimidating and scares them away
Get out of the newsroom: luckily most of us walk from our dorm to the newsroom, because if we didn’t we’d never know what was going on outside this fluorescently lit prison
Call people: whether it’s to set up an interview or contact a reporter, it’s faster and you get better information than compared to emailing
Take it outside: if something is hilarious or enraging take it outside and leave it there, I can’t work if someone is screaming with laughter or anger
Sex sells: battle of the sexperts/rubber lovers/masturbatathon – is there a theme here?
Lola is always right
Caffeine is a lifeline, time is a shark
Experiment: try new things, don’t be afraid to question, look outside the box, because that will get you a job
And when all else fails: call student government stupid

Pay for content?

dancusack — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 05:32:15 +0000

With journalism facing some tough times, publishers are looking for a new way to gain revenue. This fall, veterans of the print newspaper industry will offer a service called Journalism Online that will require people to pay for a subscription to get the content.

With ad revenue going down this seems like an interesting idea, but right now people are used to getting the content for free. This seems like a good idea, but the question is will it work.

Balancing Accuracy and Immediacy

staceymoran — Sat, 18 Apr 2009 03:16:06 +0000

Recently, AJR wrote an article about newspapers having to balance accuracy and immediacy when it comes to online and print stories. Today, there are not as many people available to double-check a writer’s story and it often may go online or out to the printing press without a second pair of eyes looking at it. This article discusses a number of errors people have seen after it was too late- and some of these errors are onces that would of easily been caught if the story had just been looked at again. Also, writers and copy editors are hurrying through their work and one editor at the Post-Dispatch said he is seeing less creative headlines.

Newspapers need to make a bigger effort in making sure copy is read over several times. Some of these errors could cost a reporter and a newspaper their credibility.

Twitter is a great way to break news

adamantlee — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 00:31:24 +0000

Will Sullivan, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch online guru and occasional columnist over at Poynter, had a column that caught my attention this week. Being active on Twitter myself, I really liked his idea of breaking news on Twitter if the online staff of a newspaper is not there.

Twitter is really simple to use when it comes to posting about whatever you want on there, so why not breaking news as well? Just posting a line or two about it can get key information out. And multiple posts can get huge breaking news out easily. I know that an online staff is there to assist with this, but Twitter can help cut out the middleman until the full story is published at night.

Everyone to become a reporter

dancusack — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 06:28:13 +0000

The Washington Post will start a new shift in journalism this week. Everyone will become a journalist. The paper will start a full print page per day written by citizens about there communities. It will focus on six areas in the D.C. area, as well as army bases. The rules will not be anything goes, as there will be no unnamed sources as well as a set of guidelines. the paper will devote a full page in the front section.