Tweet It was almost 6 p.m. when we discovered in the newsroom that Andrew Stack, the pilot who attacked the IRS building in Austin, was a graduate of the Milton Hershey School, right in our backyard. For my first 2.5 years at The Patriot-News I covered the residential school for underprivileged children, so I offered …
Facebook delivers interviews for breaking, after-hours story Read More »
TweetBY DANIEL VICTOR Of The Patriot-News Of the ways Deborah Griffin’s life wouldn’t have been the same without her eight years at the Scotland School for Veterans’ Children, chief among them is that she would have never known what a fishing rodeo was. You don’t see ponds in inner-city Philadelphia, where in her early years …
CLIPS: Alumni want state to save the school that saved them (02/08/09) Read More »
TweetThanks to all who have contributed your thoughts to the evolution of my new community-directed blog: Central PA NewsVote. It’ll be the keystone of my new job responsibility at The Patriot-News. The idea started with a blog post in January, and dozens of comments from other journalists and readers really helped me sharpen the idea. …
TweetThe gears are turning, and pretty soon I’ll be embarking on what Ryan Sholin called a “community-directed reporting” experiment. From here on out I’m stealing Ryan’s name for it, because it’s a good one. The short version: I’ll soon be starting in a new role at The Patriot-News as a hyrbid mobile journalist/general assignment reporter …
In online reporting experiment, a good start is essential Read More »
TweetOnce the equipment arrives, I’ll be starting in a new position at The Patriot-News as a mobile journalist, or mojo. What that means is, correctly, still to be determined. We do know it’ll involve video, still photography, print stories and a lot of updates for the Web. We know I’ll have a laptop and an …
How I want to redefine my role, and the reader’s role, in the newspaper Read More »
Tweet(This is Part 2 on my series about crowdsourcing. Part 1 argued the crowd can help ease the pain of a shrinking staff, and Part 3 defended the underlying principles of crowdsourcing.) I understand that crowdsourcing is a scary word to a lot of journalists. So I thought it would help to offer some specific …
Easy, immediate, responsible deployments of crowdsourcing Read More »
Tweet(This is Part 1 of a three-part series on crowdsourcing. Read Part 2 for specific examples of ways the crowd can be responsibly deployed, and Part 3 for a defense of the underlying principles of it.) Last week, my newspaper said goodbye to nine journalists, a combined 227 years of experience between them. In the …
Crowdsourcing can lead newspapers through buyout blues Read More »
TweetHere’s a nice story by Laurie White for the American journalism Review: All the News That’s Fit to Tweet. Scroll down about halfway and you’ll see me quoted in this story about reporters who use Twitter. Daniel Victor (@bydanielvictor), a reporter at the Harrisburg Patriot-News, says he was originally a Twitter skeptic, but is now …
American Journalism Review writes about reporters on Twitter Read More »
TweetIt was the kind of press release every reporter hates getting: The dreaded check presentation. You’re almost tempted to cover it, but you know it’s only considered news if you’re lazy or desperately need to fill space. I was neither, and backed by an editor who similarly hates canned press conferences, I decided to ignore …
How to turn an inside brief into a front page centerpiece Read More »
TweetA local blogger, proving that he doesn’t just throw hand grenades at our newspaper’s Web site, offers this piece of friendly advice in his blog today: Here’s my good deed of the day: Whoever is in charge of your self-promotion, go over to http://twitter.com and register “pennlive” for an account. We’d hate to see you …