Currents
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May 18, 2012 06:50 AM
Title Search
User Experience (UX) Designer
Susan Rits is a User Experience (UX) Designer who worked at Time Warner, Fox, and Google. She is founder and CEO of Zazum, based in San Francisco. Jay Woodruff interviewed her in March.
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Give us your Tweetable definition of a UX Designer. UX designers live to wipe out tech rage—we make using software a... -
May 17, 2012 06:50 AM
Hard Numbers
Retracting "Mr. Daisey and the Apple Factory"
888,000 downloads of “Mr. Daisey and the Apple Factory,” the January 6 This American Life episode based on Mike Daisey’s one-man play that chronicled his travels to the Foxconn factory in China where Apple products are manufactured
750,000 typical number of downloads for a TAL episode
73,000 Google searches for “Mike Daisey”...
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May 16, 2012 06:50 AM
How I got that story
RealRural
In March 2011, Lisa M. Hamilton, a writer and photographer, began a series of road trips around rural California. She had a grant from the Creative Work Fund—a San Francisco-based foundation that supports collaboration between artists and nonprofits—to tell stories that would help bridge the cultural divide between the rural and urban parts of the state. Initially she...
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May 11, 2012 06:50 AM
What’s in My…
Dean Takahashi from GamesBeat unpacks
It’s fitting that veteran tech journalist Dean Takahashi, who grew up a self-described “arcade rat,” weaned on classics like Pong and Galaga, has become one of the country’s most prominent writers about the video game industry. He opened his “nice, big REI bag” for Tyler Orsburn to prove a bit of hard-earned journalistic wisdom: “You gotta have...
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April 3, 2012 06:00 AM
Sree Tips
Social-media etiquette for journalists
Q:
I’d like to improve my Twitter bio. Any tips?
A:
Make sure you have your full name spelled out. Include your news organization’s name (if you are a freelancer, say that and mention some regular outlets); your e-mail address; your office phone number. If you are brave, like @BrianStelter, put your cell-phone number. I have...
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March 23, 2012 06:00 AM
Open Bar
The Red Carpet Lounge
Year opened 1976
Distinguishing features Red carpet, of course, and booths, plus five video-lottery machines. Thursday is Steak Night: $14 for ribeye, salad, bread, and two sides. Smoking was banned in 2008, but resinous walls still evoke a more decadent past.
Who drinks here Blue-collar locals, plus journalists, lawmakers, legislative staffers, and lobbyists from the nearby state capitol....
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March 21, 2012 06:00 AM
Acronyms You Should Know
FERN: The Food & Environment Reporting Network
Even as interest in all things food-related skyrockets, space devoted to serious food issues continues to lose out to the gastroporn of hot restaurants and hotter chefs. So last year, a group of fed-up food writers launched the Food & Environment Reporting Network (FERN), a nonprofit that funds investigative journalism on matters of food, agriculture, and environmental...
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March 16, 2012 06:00 AM
Words & Deeds
Murdoch finds it’s not easy being green
In 2007, News Corp. Chairman and CEO Rupert Murdoch unequivocally acknowledged the reality of climate change and launched “a global energy initiative across News Corporation to reduce our energy use and impact on the planet.”
But while corporate pursued his green dreams—Dow Jones, for example, installed a 4.1-megawatt solar installation on its New Jersey site that...
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March 15, 2012 06:00 AM
Shelf Life of…
A Mort Zuckerman editor
The news that Kevin Convey was out as editor of the New York Daily News after less than 24 months, in favor of Colin Myler, late of the (late) News of the World, reminded us how precarious life has been for Daily News editors since Zuckerman bought the paper in 1993. It also had a delicious subtext: Myler, who challenged...
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March 8, 2012 09:00 AM
Hard Numbers
Super PACs and Stephen Colbert
9 days before South Carolina’s primary when comedian Stephen Colbert announced his presidential bid
157,876 dollars spent by Colbert Super PAC on ads in SC; one urged voters to support Herman Cain, who was by then out of the race, after Colbert was unable get on the ballot
6,000+ number of votes received by...
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March 5, 2012 11:00 AM
How I Got That Story
Death Metal Angola
In September 2009, Jeremy Xido, a New York-based filmmaker, went to Angola with a colleague and two hand-held video cameras to research a film he hoped to make about the reconstruction by the Chinese of the Benguela railroad, a major artery that once stretched 1,000 miles from the Atlantic coast through the belly of the...
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February 29, 2012 01:20 PM
What’s in My…
David Carr's powerful backpack
David Carr, veteran newspaperman and indie-film star (Page One), can’t quite remember the year he started his career at The Twin Cities Reader in Minneapolis (it was 1982), but he can say with confidence: “This backpack contains more firepower than the entire newsroom that I walked into” back then. To prove it, he unpacked.
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February 29, 2012 06:00 AM
Lost & Found
The AP Stylebook turns 99!?!
The Associated Press has always maintained that its first Stylebook - the essential reference bible for professional journalists - was published in 1953. “Sixty pages,” they say, “stapled together.”
But this isn’t exactly true.
Actually, there were hundreds of pocket-sized “circulars” distributed to correspondents for at least a half a century before that. Some focused on...
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February 2, 2012 06:00 AM
Florida Roots
A native son discusses environmental journalism
On any day, there are six novels hiding in the pages of The Miami Herald, says Carl Hiaasen, the green-minded columnist and author. One example: in the 1990s, the Herald covered a string of tourists who paid to swim with bottlenose dolphins and experienced “manifestations of physical attraction.” Tickled by the idea, Hiaasen saw to it that...
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Desks
The Audit Business
- Audit notes: Buffett on newspapers, Times-Picayune, SEC lets Lehman go A vow to invest in newspapers and protect them from interference
- Audit notes: No more daily in New Orleans, McClatchy, private equity The NYT reports the Times-Picayune will print two or three times a week
The Observatory Science
- Reparative journalism Reporter sinks a controversial paper on “ex-gay” therapy
- The western frontier KQED Quest, Pacific Standard keep their eyes on the other coast
Campaign Desk Politics & Policy
- Herald’s Caputo dives deep on diverging polls Do other news organizations undermine their credibility when they don’t do the same?
- Many stations don’t factcheck super PAC ads: survey Conference highlights difference in attitudes between industry, watchdog groups
Behind the News The Media
Blog
The Kicker last updated: Thu 11:20 AM
- The Times-Picayune cuts staff and print runs
- Broadcasters sue to keep political ad buy data offline
- The Pulitzer Prize luncheon, storified
- A game of telephone fools the Times
- What Warren Buffett sees in local newspapers
