Journalists write stories. Most stories are intended to convey information. The strategic thinking that should be the next step — who needs this information, how might they act on it, how will they find it, how will they share it, how is it useful to them? — gets little attention in most newsrooms. This piece ...
Creativity in journalism is an uncomfortable process. It involves twisting your brain into odd shapes, looking in strange places, talking to people others don't talk to. Then you have to find ways to relate that story through complicated methods, such as writing, photographing, graphing, networking, videoing and hundreds of other new methods. One lesson we learned ...
At the Poynter Institute we were asked “Why do you do journalism?” Why, amongst all the hell we endure through the economy, through reader scorn, low pay and crazy hours, do you do journalism? For some people it’s a moment; a tangible anecdotal moment. For others it’s a purpose or a concept or a goal. ...
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Kim Pearson, a guest contributor on E-Media Tidbits at Poynter, writes the following about the need for more computational thinking in journalism: There’s no longer an argument about whether journalists need to be digitally literate. Today, newsgathering requires the ability to write programs that scrape public records databases and design interfaces that make the information ...
Josh Marshall, founder of Talking Points Memo, spoke at Journalism Day ceremonies at Columbia University today. His talk was summarized by Megan Garber of the Columbia Journalism Review: We also need to embrace, rather than question, the notion of audience engagement. “In this period of not only rebuilding the practice of journalism, but what sustains ...
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Ed Wasserman, Knight professor of journalism ethics at Washington and Lee University, wrote a column for the Miami Herald yesterday titled, “What readers want vs. what they need.” It represents in one concise package the cultural divide that is preventing so many newsrooms from progressing. This column neatly identifies some of the tenets of journalism ...