reporting
August 9, 2009
- Where has all the real news gone? Why does the news media rely on “I Reporters” to give newscasters sound bites worth thirty seconds of important information? When American soldiers are dying in Iraq and Afghanistan why did the cable news networks spend 22 out of 24 hours reporting on the death of Michael Jackson? And that single story went on for over a week! Did nothing else important ...
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July 21, 2009
- The two sweetest words in a writer's lexicon are "on assignment." These words validate your skills. You have been recognized as a writer, as one whose words are flexible enough to cover a range of topics. You're the one to bear witness to the shocking, the new, or the heavenly. You will "cover" it.Poets & Writers has assigned me to cover the writing residency at ...
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May 12, 2009
- Today's Los Angeles Times has an article about some of the people whom Obama might tap to fill David Souter's Supreme Court seat. It mentions Solicitor General Elena Kagan, federal judge Sonia Sotomayor, federal appeals court judge Diane Wood, Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm, and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano. A fascinating list. But where does it come from? The writers ...
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April 24, 2009
- I have a couple of gripes, sorry for posting them: sometimes I can't help myself. First: What happened to unbiased reporting?I seem to remember there being a basic tenet of of news that reporters were to report on the news to the best of their ability, to show all sides, to dig deep and figure out the truths of the story. I honestly remember that being part of the curriculum in my Social Studies ...
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March 21, 2009
- Last month I wrote about how a longtime newspaper gig went the way of many newspapers: poof!Since then, Seattle's second biggest daily, the Post-Intelligencer, morphed into a web-only publication, trimming the writing staff from 160+ to 20-something folks "doing it all." I was sitting in a press reception at a local theater and heard a longtime P-I reporter bemoan the fact that he ...
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December 14, 2008
- I don't know why I thought that outsourcing would skip the world of ideas, but apparently American editorial services and reportage are about to go the way of the U.S. manufacturing and auto industries. Out the window. It's an open secret that U.S. publishers and newspapers have been between a rock and a hard place for some time, but now the bottom line has taken over completely. They would ...
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November 22, 2008
- When I was a community news reporter, I found that one of the hardest things about the job was that, no matter how much reporting you did, you never had enough information. For example, imagine you’re reporting that a well-known chocolatier, whose store burned down the year before, is about to reopen. You sit down to begin writing and you come up with a lede like, “After a bitter setback and ...
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January 18, 2008
- It’s difficult to express the ire I felt encountering the San Francisco Chronicle’s headline and accompanying article on Tuesday morning written by Sabin Russell, Chronicle Medical Writer, about a supposedly new staph infection epidemic at which San Francisco’s gay community is at the epicenter. Along with the sensational headline, S.F. gay community an epicenter for new strain of virulent ...
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