Journalism & media 
Taking radio journalism online in a multimedia world(0)
Let me just say at the outset that I think the ABC’s response to the new digital media environment has been innovative and outstanding. Not only is their website full of fascinating content from their TV and radio networks but they have also started to produce innovative community projects like Pool, and their mix of [...]
Full Story»Make convergence part of all your editorial workflows
Making the transition from print or simple broadcast to fully convergent, multimedia journalism is not easy and does involve a range of labour and other costs. But I am constantly amazed at how media organisations – from big well resourced mainstream orgs to new and innovative blogs – ignore simple steps because they haven’t come [...]
The problem with iPad news apps
I have been loving my iPad. Many of its features make reading the web a much more intimate, easy and pleasurable experience. However none of the mainstream news organisations – except perhaps NPR, which comes close – have managed to produce a fully functional app which matches the breadth and versatility of their respective websites. [...]
BBC Newsroom Head talks web video
Andy Plesser of Beet TV reports on the BBC’s approach to web news video. Video news reporting for the Web, different than conventional television news, is quickly evolving and the BBC is innovating in a variety of forms including one which the newsroom calls a “show and tell.” Recently in London, I spoke with Mary [...]
Jon Stewart fact checks CNN
Jon Stewart takes a look at recent CNN reporting and asks why they invested time and effort in “fact checking” a Saturday Night Live sketch and let so many whoppers from their guests – outrageous exaggerations in the health care budget for example – go through to the keeper. He says that there idea of [...]
Blogging versus reporting
Two recent reports from the Guardian’s religious affairs correspondent Riazat Butt show the way mainstream journalists are using bogs and traditional reports to cover their beat. Butt filed two reports of the Vatican communication’s director Federico Lombardi’s defense of recent Vatican press gaffes. What is interesting is that her blog report and her news item [...]
Next Gen Evangelicals
A surprisingly detailed and measured look at the changes in the evangelical landscape from gay magazine The Advocate raises some of the same points covered in the Newsweek article I wrote about a few days ago. It notes that young evangelicals are more likely to be concerned about the environment and more likely to believe [...]
The death of Christian America?
Amidst the proliferation of religion stories to coincide with Easter, the Newsweek cover story is a fantastic piece that has depth and currency. Written by the magazine’s editor, Jon Meacham, it is beautifully researched, engagingly written and strongly argued. It draws out a number of different points of view and possibilities around the theme of what [...]
The final edition in Denver
The Rocky Mountain News, has become a regular example in my lectures to young journalists because of their commitment to great story telling, creative multimedia approaches and pulitizer prize winning features. Unfortunately they are about to become an example of a completely different kind: of the difficulties of sustaining a profitable model of journalism in [...]
Charlie Rose Interview with Jon Krakauer
Jon Krakauer talks about Christopher McCandless and what drew him to the story of the young man who went “into the wild”. He says he felt a visceral tingle when he first read reports of the hunters who had found the then unidentified body of the young adventurer.
Billy tells nothing
Pastor in Chief from Time’s Nancy Gibbs and Michel Duffy has a perfect anecdotal opening: You have to climb a steep and narrow road, past the moonshiners’ shacks and dense rhododendrons and through the iron gates to get to the house on the mountaintop that Ruth Graham built after her husband Billy became too famous [...]
Why do men kill their wives? – The Boston Globe
Why do men kill their wives? from the Boston Globe provides a great example of an effective anecdotal lead: A COUPLE OF YEARS AGO, LISA HARTWICK WAS RIDING IN AN elevator in Boston when she overheard a conversation between two men. One of the men was going through a divorce, and he was venting to [...]
Fearsome foodie
Shelley Gare’s Weekend Austraian Magazine cover story on Melbourne Chef d’jour Shannon Bennett isn’t a ground breaking piece of literary journalism but it is a very good example of a lively, meticulously researched and well structured profile that also tells a wider story.Gare inserts a bit too much of herself into the feature for my [...]
But that’s Crazy Talk
Sharon Weinberger’s extraordinary feature for the Washington Post Magazine about “TIs” – people who belive they are “Targeted Individuals” of government mind control experiments – is a fine example of suspending judgement and allowing a sympathetic portrait to emerge from an unusal story. She does not avoid the humour in the story but she never [...]
Grizzley attack
Thomas Curwen’s narrative about Johan Otter’s encounter with a grizzley bear is one of those features that grabs you and wont let you go – just like the grizzley in attack mode: JOHAN looked up. Jenna was running toward him. She had yelled something, he wasn’t sure what. Then he saw it. The open mouth, [...]
Images of death
The Saddam hanging videos have raised key questions about the changing power of circulated images. The brutality of the incident is emphasised in the dirty grain and jerky focus of the mobile phone images. the release of the second video apparently posted on a pro-baathist news site and apparently showing the ugly state of Saddam’s [...]