Aggregation

Ah, a diatribe. That wonderful time when one gets to take the reporter hat off and just, well, go off. On the subject of aggregators I’m not actually that violently opposed to them, it just occurred to me how relatively worthless things like news.google.com or the amazing looking news visualizer are. 
You see, there was a time when Google [...]

Time

Two and a half months, eh? That’s a long time with no writing. Better get back on the old horse and see what I can dredge up as writing-worthy experiences here at the ol’ weekly newspaper.
Seems to me, when I was in high school, then college, then immediately out of college I had a tremendous [...]

Sources

When you have a certain philosophy towards journalism it can hold you back. Quoting people heavily and letting them dig their own hole doesn’t work when you get a taciturn person as a source. I generally operate with this philosophy because it’s what my boss likes. Thus, I’m often in a situation where I don’t [...]

Theory

I’ve never been to school specifically for this thing called journalism. I thought about it, but I only tolerated my undergraduate education from a formality stand-point. At the time that the decision was made, writing and conducting interviews seemed like something better learned by experience, at least for me.
Despite my lack of a higher-higher degree [...]

Should have called back

I got called out today. A lawyer dialed up the paper after it went to print. Apparently she felt blindsided by the harshness of a fellow lawyer’s comment in the paper. She thought I should have called her back to ask her what she thought about the other’s words.
I feel a little mixed on the [...]

Disaster in Cameroon

As someone who covers local government here in the United States, this just gets me all riled up. The editor of a weekly in Cameroon was recently given a sentence of a year in prison and a hefty fine for printing an article about possible corruption of the mayor in the provincial city, Kumbo.
The [...]