Writers and Editors

Organizations, sites, and resources for journalists
· Links to sites and resources for journalists and news junkies
· Links to journalism organizations
· Books on the craft of journalism
· Books on the journalistic essay
· Will journalism survive? In what form?

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Sites and resources for journalists and news junkies

From Silent Mode to Heated Mode: Reconstructing the Magazine Future… the Popular Science Way. Samir Husni's interview with Mark Jannot; includes “six basic principles that underlie the Mag+ digital platform.” Sidebar: Me and My iPad, in Mr.Magazine blog

How to Conduct Compassionate Interviews at the Scene of a Tragedy & Dealing with Our Own Responses to What We See and Hear: A Guide for Journalists by Russell Friedman and John W. James (The Grief Recovery Institute Educational Foundation--a 28-page PDF file well worth downloading).

Link journalism, Google's power on the Web, and the backlash against URL shortening. Start with Nicholas Carr's Rough Cuts piece, Google in the Middle, about how, as a news aggregator, Google capitalizes on the fragmented oversupply of news and the current structure of the news business. Go to Scott Karp's pieces, on Publishing 2.0: How Google Stole Control Over Content Distribution By Stealing Links ("Google isn't stealing content from newspapers and other media companies. It's stealing their control over distribution" 4-10-09) and Mainstream News Organizations Entering the Web’s Link Economy Will Shift the Balance of Power and Wealth (10-16-08). As Karp points out in his April piece, the backlash against URL shorteners (see Joshua Schacter's blog on url shortenders) and site framing (see Joshua Topolsky on Why Engadget is blocking the DiggBar) "is all about who controls the links, and which links Google is going to read and credit." We'll no doubt be seeing more stories like this one by Nicholas Kolakowski, on Publish: AP, Google Deny Conflict, But Bloggers May Be in Sights.
Later, more stories came: Scott Karp on How Networked Link Journalism Can Give Journalists Collectively The Power Of Google And Digg, Mindy McAdams on Link journalism: Credibility and authority), Jack Lail in Link journalist , Josh Catone,ReadWriteWeb asking Link Journalism: Is Linking to News a form of journalism?, and Catone refers to the Public Editor piece in the NY Times, by Clark Hoyt: What That McCain Article Didn’t Say .
Sue Russell referred us to this excellent related batch of stories.

Media Beat
• Behind the News (Columbia Journalism Review)
• Howard Kurtz, Media Notes (Washington Post)
• On the Media (NPR's invaluable weekly show)
• Poynter Online (Romenesko, Scanlan, Clark and others)
•The Press Box (Jack Shafer's column at Slate; here's the archive and The three tides of JS's Daily News Cycle)
•The Public Editor's Journal (archive of columns of Clark Hoyt, "readers' representative" for the NY Times)
•Regret the Error: Mistakes Happen (Craig Silverman reports on corrections, retractions, clarifications, and trends regarding accuracy and honesty in the media). This includes its annual Plagiarism/​Fabrication Roundup

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Media Myth Alert. Joseph Campbell's blog sums up myths reported in his book Getting It Wrong: Ten of the Greatest Misreported Stories in American Journalism. Tom Ashbrook interviews Campbell about the myths on NPR's radio program On the Point: When the Media Got It Wrong.

Process Journalism. Instead of the finished story as posted in a print newspaper in, say, 1980, fully researched and reported and fact-checked and final, stories on the Web are being reported as they are investigated. Here are some pieces online about process journalism (which seems to be different from link journalism but I'm not sure how):
•Product v. Process Journalism: The Myth of Perfection v. Beta Culture (Jeff Jarvis, guesting on The Huffington Post)
•The Imperatives of the Link Economy (Jeff Jarvis, The Buzz Machine), who compares the content economy and the link economy. "Links are a key to efficiency. In other words: Do what you do best and link to the rest." And: "The market needs help finding the good stuff; that curation is a business opportunity."
•Get the Tech Scuttlebutt! (It Might Even Be True.)(Damon Darlin, Ping, NY Times)
•The Morality and Effectiveness of Process Journalism (Michael Arrington, TechCrunch)
•Bloggers Defend 'Beta' Journalism (Nicole Ferraro, Internet Evolution).

Video Journalism
Citizen Tube
Pulitzer Center: Tips for Video Journalists (part of YouTube Reporters' Center) "The golden rule in video journalism is that you never have enough B roll."
Using Google Maps in your online coverage (IJNet)

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Journalism organizations

American Society of Journalists & Authors (ASJA), professional association of freelance/​independent journalists and nonfiction book writers, who share info about markets, writing rates, contracts, editors, agents, etc. Members have access to samples of successful query letters and book proposals, among other resources. Non-members may attend the annual conference; there is also a more advanced day for members only.

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BOOKS ON THE CRAFT OF JOURNALISM


· The Art and Craft of Feature Writing, by William E. Blundell (saying that reporting and writing are part of the same process, equally important)

· The Art of Fact: A Historical Anthology of Literary Journalism, ed. Kevin Kerrane and Ben Yagoda

· Creative Interviewing: The Writer's Guide to Gathering Information by Asking Questions, by Ken Metzler (required reading for info-gathering interviews)

· Intimate Journalism: The Art and Craft of Reporting Everyday Life, ed. Walt Harrington (the how-to's of human interest reporting)

· Literary Journalism, ed. Norman Sims and Mark Kramer (includes essays by John McPhee, Susan Orlean, Tracy Kidder, Ted Conover, Richard Preston, Joseph Mitchell, Calvin Trillin, Adrian Nicole LeBlanc, David Quammen, Brent Staples, Joseph Nocera, Mark Singer, and Walt Harrington)

· Literary Nonfiction: Learning by Example, ed. Patsy Sims (with selections by includes selections by Madeleine Blais, Tim Cahill, James Conaway, Joan Didion, David Finkel, Jon Franklin, Tom Hallman, Jr., Walt Harrington, Tracy Kidder, Jane Kramer, John McPhee, Michael Paterniti, Mike Sager, Susan Sheehan, and Tom Wolfe)

· The New New Journalism: Conversations with America's Best Nonfiction Writers on Their Craft,Robert S. Boynton (excellent and new, from broad picture down to how they organize their notes, what color pens they use, and other nuts and bolts details)

· Story Building: Narrative Techniques for News and Feature Writers, by Ndaeyo Uko

· Telling True Stories: A Nonfiction Writers' Guide from the Nieman Foundation at Harvard University, ed. Mark Kramer, Wendy Call
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Tom Brokaw's Five Picks
Five books that Tom Brokaw says provide a "peerless portrait of journalism's high aims and low comedy":

1. The Boys on the Bus by Timothy Crouse (Random House, 1973)

2. All the President's Men by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein (Simon & Schuster, 1974)

3. Scoop by Evelyn Waugh (Little, Brown, 1938)

4. Murrow by Ann M. Sperber (Freundlich, 1986)

5. Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman (Viking, 1985).

The Journalistic Essay

Jack Hart, when he taught the journalistic essay at The Oregonian, found these books useful:

· Phillip Lopate, ed. The Art of the Personal Essay: An Anthology from the Classical Era to the Present (Lopate's introduction especially)

· Robert Vare, ed. The American Idea: The Best of The Atlantic Monthly

· Joyce Carol Oates and Robert Atwan, eds. The Best American Essays of the Century.

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Will journalism survive? In what form?

What are some alternatives, as the advertising-pays-for-print-journalism model stops working? Am providing links here to some of the many debates and articles circulating on this topic.

• All Hands On Deck: 4 Editors on the SF Chronicle Implosion (the Daily Anchor Editorial Team)

• An extremely expensive cover story — with a new way of footing the bill Zachary M. Seward, Nieman Journalism Lab. Sherri Fink's 13,000-word story about the New Orleans hospital where patients were euthanized in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, a New York Times Magazine cover story that is simultaneously available on ProPublica's site, may be "the most expensive single piece of print journalism in years." The new economics of journalism. Investigative journalism is labor-and-brain-intensive! Mother Jones on the same story: Cost of the NYT Magazine NOLA Story Broken Down (Clara Jeffery, Mother Jones 8-28-09)

• Brill's secret plan to save the New York Times and journalism itself (Stephen Brill, Romenesko, 11-08)

• Content Farms: Why Media, Blogs & Google Should Be Worried (Richard MacManus, NYTimes, 12-13-09)

• Craig Newmark: I Didn't Kill Newspapers, it's an "urban legend" and David Carr Agrees (Beet.TV)

• The Death of Journalism (Gawker Edition) by Ian Shapira (Washington Post, Outlook, 8-2-09), with follow-up discussion on Tuesday, August 4: Outlook: How Gawker Ripped Off My Story and Why It's Destroying Journalism

• Disrupted: The Internet and the Press Jay Rosen and Clay Shirky discuss what's happening in journalism after its disruption by technology, conversations sponsored by NYU Journalism/​Primary Sources)

• 8 Industries That Will Sit Out a Recovery. (Rick Newman, US News & World Report). Moody's rates media as one of the industries that won't be climbing back up any time soon. "... Media. It's hard to imagine what else could go wrong for traditional print and broadcast media companies. Even without a recession, newspapers, magazines, and TV and radio broadcasters have been losing their audience to the Internet. At the same time, a crushing downturn in the retail, automotive, and financial industries has led to double-digit cuts in advertising, the biggest source of revenue for many media companies. And there's no historic election, accompanied by millions in political advertising, slated anytime soon to help pick up the slack, as there was in 2008. Many newspapers are in such bad shape that investors have virtually no interest in buying them, at any price, according to Moody's. Magazines are doing so poorly that McGraw-Hill is struggling to find a buyer for BusinessWeek, one of the most venerable titles on the market."

• The End of Hand Crafted Content (Michael Arrington, TechCrunch, 12-13-09)

• End Times:Can America’s paper of record survive the death of newsprint? Can journalism? (Michael Hirschorn, The Atlantic, January-February 2009) and End Times: A Response from the Times

• Enter Austin Post: New online venture seeks to create a 'conversational democracy' (Kevin Brass, Austin Chronicle, 7-10-09, on how "citizen journalism" may be an aggregation of "sloppy bloggers" in a system offering exposure for personal agendas instead of payment for professional journalism).

• Five questions publishers need to ask before charging for content, or Pitfalls of the pay wall. "Before they jump into charging for content, news organizations must bypass the 'quality journalism' argument and answer these five questions instead," writes Michele McLellan, and you can read about those five questions on the Knight Digital Media Center website.

Among columnists she thanks for blogging about paid content, which helped her understand the issues: Steve Yelvington (Fatal Assumptions), Steve Outing (Attributor: Will it be used for good or evil?) and Jeff Jarvis, BuzzMachine The Golden Link, on whether to charge for linking to content. (I don't know if those are the specific blogs she was grateful for, but they are interesting, and take you to those bloggers' sites.)

• Gerry Marzorati on the future of long-form narrative

• Google CEO Eric Schmidt's Q&A at Newspaper Association of America convention, on advertising, micropayments, and subscriptions (Julie Moos, Poynter Online, and you can listen to the speech)

• Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations and BoingBoing on Clay Shirky's masterpiece (with links to more Clay Shirky pieces)


• How to Save Your Newspaper (Walter Isaacson, Time) and The bell tolls for Time, too (Alan Jacobson, Brass Tacks)

• The Intelligence Briefing model of media (Conover on Media, a front-row seat at the final bonfire, 9-23-05)

• Lesson from WisconsinWatch: Nonprofit Journalism Isn't Free (Robert Gutsche Jr., Poynter Online, 8-11-09)

• Let’s Invent an iTunes for News (David Carr, NY Times, argues for a pay-for-news-by-item business model to save newspapers)

• Losing the News: The Future of the News That Feeds Democracy by Alex Jones. "[S]ignificance may not be governed by the clock. The most valuable element in journalism is often enough not an episode that occurred today, yesterday or, horrors, the day before. It’s the creation of a new awareness provided by either months of investigation or relentlessly regular coverage," writes Harold Evans in The Daily Show, his review in the NY Times of this book, which Howard Gardener calls an "authoritative account of why journalism is vital, how it has lost its bearings," and what can be done to reinvigorate this foundation of a democratic society.

• Monetize Online (Brass Tacks)

• The newspaper business isn't dying, it's evolving (Kirk LaPointe, Vancouver Sun, 5-1-09)

• Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable (Clay Shirky)

• The Newspaper Suicide Pact (Xark 6-3-09, on "paid content")

• Over 60, and Proud to Join the Digerati (James R. Gaines, Preoccupations, NY Times 11-28-09)

**• The Price of Truth (Monika Bauerlein and Clara Jeffery, Mother Jones, Sept/​Oct 2009). "The old model, where journalism was heavily subsidized by advertising, is over. The recession has made the divorce faster and more acrimonious, but the knives were already out. And online advertising is turning out to be a harsh mistress....Sure, information wants to be free. Alas, it's not....Reporting takes money." A concise summary of the issues.

• Priced to Sell: Is free the future? Malcolm Gladwell's review in the New Yorker of
Chris Anderson’s new book, Free: The Future of a Radical Price. See also $0.00, Virginia Postrel's review of the book in the NYTBook Review.

• The Printed Blog ("Publisher Rethinks the Daily" by Claire Cain Miller, NY Times)

• Spackman of Times Online, UK, speaks of interweaving journalism and search optimization, counsels against becoming a "traffic tart" (Martin Stabe, Press Gazette, UK)

• StreetVibes: Advocating Justice, Building Community (Gregory Flannery on a newspaper with a sense of purpose)

• Talk Radio Gets Angrier as Its Revenues Drop (FrumForum on radio hosts who believe that anger is their only path to survival)

• TimeSelect Content Freed (Holly M. Sanders, New York Post)

• True/​Slant: Angling for News Sponsors Howard Kurtz, Media Notes, Washington Post 6-8-09)

• True/​Slant Tests Another Model Of Web Journalism (Walt Mossberg,WSJ, Personal Technology, 4-8-09)

• United, Newspapers May Stand (David Carr, The Media Equation, NY Times 3-8-09)

• Urgent Deadline for Newspapers: Find a New Business Plan before You Vanish (Knowledge@​Wharton Strategic Management Research Article - Requires free membership)

• End Times:Can America’s paper of record survive the death of newsprint? Can journalism? (Michael Hirschorn, The Atlantic, January-February 2009) and End Times: A Response from the Times

• U.S. bill seeks to rescue faltering newspapers (Reuters, 3-4-09, on allowing newspapers to become nonprofits)

• Web Sites That Dig for News Rise as Watchdogs (Richard Pérez-Peña, NYTimes, 11-17-09, onVoiceofSanDiego.org

• Will paid content work? Two cautionary tales from 2004 Tom Windsor, Nieman Journalism Lab, 2-10-09

• Why Obama should stiff-arm "save the newspapers" legislation Jack Shafer, Slate, on Saving Newspapers From Their Saviours, 9-21-09)

• Why iTunes is not a workable model for the newspaper business (Clay Shirky)

• Why Small Payments Won’t Save Publishers (Clay Shirky)

• Why the End of Newspapers Is Not the End of News (Larry Kramer, The Daily Beast)

• You Can't Sell News By the Slice (Michael Kinsley, NY Times opinion page, 2-9-09)

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Is Free the Future?
"At a hearing on Capitol Hill in May, James Moroney, the publisher of the Dallas Morning News, told Congress about negotiations he’d just had with the online retailer Amazon. The idea was to license his newspaper’s content to the Kindle, Amazon’s new electronic reader. 'They want seventy per cent of the subscription revenue,' Moroney testified. 'I get thirty per cent, they get seventy per cent. On top of that, they have said we get the right to republish your intellectual property to any portable device.' The idea was that if a Kindle subscription to the Dallas Morning News cost ten dollars a month, seven dollars of that belonged to Amazon, the provider of the gadget on which the news was read, and just three dollars belonged to the newspaper, the provider of an expensive and ever-changing variety of editorial content. The people at Amazon valued the newspaper’s contribution so little, in fact, that they felt they ought then to be able to license it to anyone else they wanted. Another witness at the hearing, Arianna Huffington, of the Huffington Post, said that she thought the Kindle could provide a business model to save the beleaguered newspaper industry. Moroney disagreed. 'I get thirty per cent and they get the right to license my content to any portable device—not just ones made by Amazon?' He was incredulous. 'That, to me, is not a model.; "
~ by Malcolm Gladwell, Priced to Sell: "Is Free the Future?" in the New Yorker

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