The explosion of news about deceased U.S. broadcaster Tim Russert (at one point in the week a Google news search returned some 10,000 hits) reminds me of how O.J. Simpson burst into the global public consciousness in 1994 via a live televised police chase of Simpson in his white Bronco. Simpson, I maintain, was previously…
“Why,” asks the Globe and Mail, “are newshounds around the world so enraptured by a grim West Coast story about human flotsam?” OK, it’s a rhetorical question — every reporter and reader knows it’s an engaging story; the fact that it’s engaging is why the Globe devotes yet more ink to a story about the…
The American National Council on Public Polls has a piece on its website that looks like a worthwhile read: 20 Questions A Journalist Should Ask About Poll Results. Hat tip to the U.S. discussion list,IRE-L, of Investigative Reporters and Editors.
A free paper published by former journalists at the Journal du Québec has survived (thrived?) for 15 months. The paper was started to protest against the tabloid’s plans to integrate and boost the workload of reporters, with multimedia job requirements. Hey, we CAN be independent! The original story by Agence France-Presse, in French, is here.…
From the BBC: A soaring glass and steel cone on top of BBC Broadcasting House in London, England, will shine a beam of light into the sky every night at 10 p.m., as a memorial to journalists and assistants killed on the job. The light sculpture, called Breathing, was created by Spanish artist Jaume Plensa…
“Copy editors are more powerful than proofreaders. They untangle twisted prose. They are surgeons, removing growths of error and irrelevance.” Nice. Most copy editors never see elegant sentences like this published under their own bylines. Copy editor Lawrence Downes represents his kind well, in an op-ed in the New York Times. Too bad he does…
The Associated Press is trying “to define clear standards as to how much of its articles and broadcasts bloggers and Web sites can excerpt without infringing on The A.P.’s copyright,” reports the New York Times. Fair Use of articles, and how much can be quoted, is a hot topic in the blogosphere, and on this…
Journalists in Gaza staged a boycott of news about Israelis in Gaza on June 16. The reason was sound: journalists want to hold Israel to account for its apparent slaughter of Reuters camerman Fadel Shana this spring. But boycotting the reporting of news strikes me as bizarre, at least. Perhaps someone can convince me that…
Montreal radio station 940 AM will lay off 18 employees and switch to an oldies/greatest hits format from an news-talk format, reports CBC, because “owner Corus Entertainment announced the station’s news format was not profitable enough to stay on air.” A response from the Canadian Media Guild demands that the CRTC “ensure that local news…
American journalist Tim Russert has died at age 58. The Washington anchor of the U.S. NBC network and host of “Meet the Press” was “a towering figure in American journalism,” said the New York Times, who “revolutionized Sunday morning television and infused journalism with his passion for politics,” said the Washington Post. The NBC report…