Eight Things I Learned as a 40-Year-Old Online InternPoynter Online
The worst thing a professor can do is stop learning. That's why, after three years out of the newsroom, I wanted to be a 40-year-old intern this summer. My inspiration was a session at the American Copy Editors Society national conference, where I participated in a discussion about the Web's impact on editing. As worthwhile as that session was, I knew I needed more firsthand experience at a newspaper Web site. I needed to learn.
NBC, Like Phelps, In Record Pursuit At Olympics
Los Angeles Times
As recently as a week ago, a ratings gold medal for coverage of the Beijing Olympics might have looked beyond NBC's grasp. The average U.S. household has more than 100 channels from which to choose, and Games held in foreign countries - as seen in Greece in 2004 or Australia in 2000 - just don't tend to grab the attention of Americans like Olympics held closer to home. What's more, the yawning time difference between China and the U.S. makes it difficult to air big events live. There are so many video-sharing websites now that intrepid fans can simply bypass packaged broadcasts and get real-time coverage if they want.
Convention Cutting
Forbes
Forget April. For bean counters at financially troubled newspapers, August is the cruelest month. Their budget-stretching began with coverage of the Beijing Olympics, which ends Aug. 24. A day later, the Democratic National Convention kicks off in Denver, and the Republican National Convention begins Sept. 1 in St. Paul, Minn. The result is predictable.
Blogging From The Front: At Great Personal Peril, Russian Bloggers Report on the Georgian War
Columbia Journalism Review
At 6:19 p.m. this past Saturday, Russian journalist Mikhail Romanoff added a two-line post to his personal blog from the chaos of Tskhinvali: "They’re shooting like fucking mad over here." Eighteen hours and a couple posts earlier, he was blogging from the basement of the city’s Alan Hotel, where he was holed up with Russian journalists and peacekeepers.
Welcome to New Jersey, Media Wasteland
The New York Observer
Is New Jersey really that uninteresting? Since the start of summer, The New York Times emptied out its two New Jersey bureaus in Trenton and Newark; in June, The Record of Bergen County announced it would shut down its headquarters and its reporters would be homeless; in July, The Star Ledger announced that it was cutting about a third of its newsroom, and its owners said they would consider selling the paper. It’s becoming reasonable to wonder if, at this rate, there will be anyone left to cover the state soon.
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