The Water Cooler RSS
Fri, 16 May 2008
Making it in (and out of) Myanmar
CNN's Dan Rivers, now safe, speaks with CJR
By Posted at 11:06 AM
Aid workers aren’t the only ones having trouble getting into Myanmar after Cyclone Nargis. The nation’s secretive military regime is withholding visas from journalists and going to unusual lengths to root out those foreign reporters who manage to slip into the country. CNN correspondent Dan Rivers, just back from Yangon, spoke with Mariah Blake about close calls, lucky breaks, and... Read More
Mort Rosenblum on Dispatches
New quarterly bucks industry trend, exudes smart idealism
By Posted at 10:51 AM
During decades spent racing to cover struggle and strife around the world, Mort Rosenblum, a longtime AP correspondent, and Gary Knight, a photojournalist and one of the founders of the VII Photo Agency, had a dream: to publish the kind journalism that transcends the institutional and commercial restrictions that plague the business—the false balance of “objectivity,” the filters of editing-by-committee,... Read More
Fri, 9 May 2008
Campbell Robertson, Sometimes Cartoonist
The New York Times does non-fiction, political, comics
By Posted at 10:09 AM
Usually, Campbell Robertson, as a thirty-one-year-old theater reporter for The New York Times, writes articles on Broadway and the actors and shows that populate it. But recently the paper dispatched him to North Carolina, where he used the traditional tools of a newspaper journalism—pens and a camera—to untraditional ends. Campbell produced “Primary Pen & Ink,” three twelve-panel reported comic strips... Read More
Fri, 2 May 2008
What's New at Science News...
And what is familiar
By Posted at 12:43 PM
Science News, the eighty-seven-year-old weekly staple of dedicated science news enthusiasts is making a few changes this month. Or rather, it's making "Change Without Change," according to an editor's note by Tom Siegfried, the publication's captain of seven months, which appeared in the first redesigned issue. The content, the quality, and the mission are all the... Read More
Fri, 25 Apr 2008
Garbage Island Diary
Viceland’s alternative model for environmental reporting
By Posted at 12:19 PM
Fledgling online video Web site VBS.tv scored an environmental journalism coup this month with "Garbage Island" - a quirky, travelogue-documentary about man-made debris floating in the North Pacific Gyre. Currents in that part of the ocean naturally swirl around like a giant whirlpool, drawing in decades of pollution. Since the flotsam and jetsam first popped up on... Read More
Fri, 18 Apr 2008
Mayhill Fowler on the Post Heard 'Round the World
The blogger who started BitterGate: "I had a sense of peace about it"
By Posted at 01:00 PM Comments (3)
On April 11, sixty-year-old Mayhill Fowler sent a blog post to “Off the Bus,” a citizen journalism project of the Huffington Post. The post, among other things, reported remarks Barack Obama made at a private California fundraiser suggesting that small-towners in the Midwest are bitter at their economic state and turn to guns and religion and anti-immigrant sentiment out of... Read More
Thu, 10 Apr 2008
Doping's Next Frontier
Sports Illustrated reporter explains the intersection of gene therapy, athletics, and the press
By Posted at 08:00 AM
In mid March, Sports Illustrated ran a three-part series titled "Steroids in America," which chronicled the "the culture of personal physical enhancement" through past, present, and future. The third article was about what might be the next big thing - gene therapy - a "technology that will make even today's most inventive doping methods look primitive." Like steroids... Read More
Fri, 4 Apr 2008
Dave Marash: Why I Quit
The veteran newsman says Al Jazeera English’s mission changed
By Posted at 11:26 AM Comments (9)
In February 2006, David Marash, a veteran correspondent (and substitute host) for ABC’s Nightline, raised eyebrows in the U.S. journalism world when he took a job as the Washington anchor for Al Jazeera English, the new sister channel of the Arabic-language news operation in Qatar. For American viewers, Marash brought instant credibility to the new channel, even as it... Read More
Fri, 29 Feb 2008
Wiring Journalism 2.0
Brad Stenger on the intersection of the press and computer science
By Posted at 11:00 AM
How are the media adapting to the new digital technologies that power blogs, interactive graphics, and social networks? Quickly is one answer, but the advent of digital (what used to be called "new") journalism is more complicated than that. Last weekend, the Georgia Institute of Technology held a two-day symposium titled, "Journalism 3G: The Future of Technology in the... Read More
Fri, 15 Feb 2008
An Obama "Embed" on Access, Inspiration, Oppo
And what not to ask her
By Posted at 09:13 AM
Aswini Anburajan is a twenty-seven-year-old campaign reporter (a.k.a. “embed”) who has been traveling with Barack Obama’s campaign for NBC News/National Journal since September 2007. As such, Anburajan: writes for the National Journal and The Hotline’s On Call blog; reports for National Journal On Air, a weekly radio show on XM satellite radio; writes for MSNBC.com and MSNBC.com’s blog, First Read;... Read More
