Essay
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November 1, 2012 12:00 AM
Flag on the play
Why a great sportswriter blew the story of a lifetime; the undoing of Joe Paterno
For those who care about sports and sports writing, the recent publication of Joe Posnanski’s book on the late Penn State football coach Joe Paterno was perhaps the event of the summer. Posnanski, a former Sports Illustrated columnist held by many to be the best sportswriter in the country, originally had planned to shadow Paterno during what would likely be...
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September 11, 2012 10:56 AM
Fighting words
How war reporters can resist the loaded language of their beat
Last year, I visited Bogotá, Colombia, to teach a seminar on conflict reporting. Afterward, a soldier missing two legs and most of one arm rolled up in a wheelchair. As we spoke about land mines and their evils, I asked where his “accident” had occurred. My choice of words provoked a fierce outburst from the soldier, whose voice sounded strangled...
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March 27, 2012 06:00 AM
Why Kael is Good for You
It's time to defend a critic's 'contrarian' viewpoint
Last fall, The New Yorker published a long feature on the life and legacy of Pauline Kael, the most celebrated and distinguished arts critic in the magazine’s history. The piece, by Nathan Heller, ran under a headline that shocked me when I read it: “Pauline Kael, Film Critic, Contrarian.” “Contrarian” is also the brickbat regularly cast at me by bloggers...
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January 25, 2012 06:00 AM
When the 99% Had a Paper
The brief, wondrous life of PM
For months, the journalism world had been abuzz with the rumor that Ralph Ingersoll, the editorial genius behind Time, Fortune, and Life, was leaving Henry Luce to start his own publication. Supposedly, it was going to be a daily newspaper in New York City.
Finally, on the morning of June 18, 1940, Ingersoll was poised to unveil what...
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December 6, 2011 06:00 AM
A Mad Libs Keynote
The future of journalism? Just fill in the blanks.
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November 18, 2011 09:00 AM
What Can I Build Today?
Online startups can win the future by staying in the present
There are hundreds of local and regional online news startups in America, but only about five that media observers discuss with any frequency. The names will be familiar: Voice of San Diego, The Texas Tribune, MinnPost, the Chicago News Cooperative, The Bay Citizen. All are well-funded, big-city nonprofits backed by large foundations and staffed by veteran journalists. In other words,...
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November 17, 2011 06:00 AM
On Facebook and Freedom
Why journalists should not surrender to the Walmarts of the web
In September of this year, the Internet briefly burbled with the news that Facebook, the market leader in workday-wastery, would soon debut several fundamental changes to its site. For some of the more excitable online pundits, this was akin to the discovery of a heretofore-unnoticed ocean, and as the date of the redesign drew closer, they devolved into hysterics. Ben...
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November 16, 2011 06:00 AM
Money Changes Everything
Independent journalism can't lean on a few rich donors
In lower Manhattan as I write, thousands of protesters, recently joined by some unions, local New York politicians, and a few celebrities, are thronging Zuccotti Park. While their message is by design not a unified one, and specific demands of the sort one expects at a protest are evidently not forthcoming, there is a loose, common belief that explains why...
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November 14, 2011 06:00 AM
What About Modesto?
The digital-news parade threatens to pass some communities by
In Modesto, California, the need for news far exceeds the current supply. A city of 200,000 with one midsized newspaper, a large Hispanic population, 16 percent unemployment, and the second-highest rate of car theft in the nation, Modesto lies just ninety-two miles east of San Francisco. But the spirit of news experimentation that pervades the Bay Area hasn’t crossed...
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November 14, 2011 05:00 AM
Just Press On
Templates for Anytown, USA
Nic Roethlisberger and Dhyana Levey now live in the foggy Richmond District of San Francisco, flanked by the Pacific Ocean and the Golden Gate. The couple spent the mid-2000s in and around Modesto—Nic as a copy editor at The Modesto Bee and Dhyana as an environmental reporter for the Merced Sun-Star and the Sonora Union Democrat. In 2008 they gave...
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November 14, 2011 05:00 AM
Modesto, California
By the numbers
Population 201,165 Eighteenth-largest city in California; 107th-largest city in the US, between Des Moines, Iowa, and Fayetteville, North Carolina Location Race and ethnicity 65% white 35.5% Hispanic 6.7% Asian 4.2% African American Median household income $47,983 Major employers Stanislaus County, E&J Gallo Winder, Modesto City Schools, Foster Farms, Seneca Foods, Del Monte Foods Unemployment rate 16% One of the... Continue reading -
November 14, 2011 05:00 AM
A Paperless Bee
Making the future online
In 1993, I was driving home to Modesto after covering a Bay Area conference on cryptography, having spent the past fourteen hours with hackers, phone phreaks, and other libertines who inhabited the pre-web text warren called the Internet. My head buzzed with encryption algorithms, social engineering schemes, and visions of an emerging digital frontier as I crested the Coastal Range.
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November 14, 2011 05:00 AM
Class Struggle
Tech won't end the digital divide
Like many American cities, Modesto has been decimated by local media layoffs and cutbacks in recent years. Journalists have more responsibilities than ever, and so they’ve come to rely on Twitter, Facebook, local blogs, and Google as vital parts of their news-gathering efforts. Before this digital shift, journalists too often under-reported, stereotyped, and misrepresented poor and working class Americans. Now,...
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November 14, 2011 05:00 AM
School’s Out
A lost generation of journalists
A journalist walks across the Modesto Junior College campus in the mid-1990s and peeks in the newspaper office, where dedicated students ankle-deep in gluey paper strips are laying out eight broadsheet pages, scissors and pencils in hands. Though their backgrounds vary, they have each discovered in the task of producing a newspaper the purpose they need to keep coming to...
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Desks
The Audit Business
- Audit Notes: pyramid people, Disney and ABC, no USA Today paywall Roddy Boyd digs into a diet-shake pyramid scheme
- Hot air Rises Above on CNBC An anchor pins a minor dip in stocks on the TV appearance of a minor politician
The Observatory Science
- Dull news from Doha UN climate summit a ho-hum affair for the press
- Highway to the danger zone Following Sandy, HuffPo and NYT dig into the folly of coastal development
Campaign Desk Politics & Policy
- NBC News sets good example for Medicare reporting People perspective leads to clear explanation of impact of proposed changes
- In Pennsylvania, a niche site with wide reach PoliticsPA drives political conversation in Keystone State
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