news bugger

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In mid-April, we went live with a half dozen articles which we call “stubs.” The idea here is to plant a flag in a story right away with a short post—a “stub”—and then build the article as the story develops over time, rather than just cranking out short, discrete posts every time something new breaks. One of our writers refers to this aptly as a “slow live blog.

This Is What Happens When Publishers Invest In Long Stories ⚙ Co.Labs ⚙ code community

The results of Fast Company’s experiment with “stubs” — which allowed them to gradually create long-form journalism — pleasantly surprised the team when it brought a lot of traffic. Learn more about their strategy and check out snapshots of their site analytics from Chris Dannen. (via onaissues)

FJP: SBNation, the network of sports blog, rolled out a feature similar to this when Vox Media redesigned the entire ecosystem. This is how Jeff Clark of SBNation’s CelticsBlog described “Storystreams” when the redesign launched:

This is a kind of post that has several updates within that post. It is a smarter way of handling big stories that have many updates (like trade deadline day and media day) rather than editing a single post or breaking it into several smaller posts.

And yes, I’m a Celtics junkie. — Michael

(via futurejournalismproject)

05/15/13

Well, both involve cutting shit down.

04/23/13

The Star-Ledger's front page today is extremely bloody.

From what I can tell on Newseum, most newspapers steered clear of this photo on their front pages. Probably because I’d say it doesn’t pass the old-school “breakfast test.” Click through to see for yourself.

My gut reaction was they shouldn’t have run it. But now I’m reconsidering. I think it’s an important, invaluable photo. What do you think? Does it go too far?

Also: Even the NY Post cropped off the really bloody part: http://www.nypost.com/archives/covers/. And the Daily News made it a spread: http://www.newseum.org/todaysfrontpages/hr.asp?fpVname=NY_DN&ref_pge=gal&b_pge=1.

Gotta hand it to the Ledger for being ballsy.

04/16/13

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It’s because all the women are at home painting nails and checking Facebook while they wait for their husbands to come home from work.

An editor and chief, to a predominantly female editorial team during a meeting about why a reader survey was being answered by mainly women (via saidtoladyjournos)

GRRRR

04/5/13

The newspaper I used to work for, The Asbury Park Press, printed the f-word — THE ENTIRE WORD — not once, but TWICE, in its Mike Rice story. And the f-bombs are followed by anti-gay slurs.

Now, even though there is an editor’s note preceding the story warning of derogatory language, was it really necessary to print them out? I think the majority of people could guess what they are even if they contained dashes.

What do you think? Should news organizations still adhere to stringent rules about profanity? Or should it not faze us anymore? Does it even matter?

Photo: Al Bello/Getty Images

04/3/13

This British 17-year-old just sold his app, Summly, to Yahoo! for $30 mil. Not bad.

Summly uses an algorithm to extract key sentences from news stories, providing the user with a bite-sized version. The concept is actually very cool and attractive, but it makes me a bit boiling mad.

I just tried to get the app, but it’s not available in the U.S. yet. Booo.

03/26/13

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Don’t be surprised if someday Iraq is remembered as the war George Bush won and the peace Barack Obama lost.

From a Wall Street Journal editorial published on March 19: “… All this was achieved by the time Mr. Bush left office: Unlike President Clinton, he bequeathed his successor an opportunity instead of a crisis.”

OK, SURE.

03/24/13

Texas Monthly Hires Full-Time Barbecue Editor - NYTimes.com

shortformblog:

journalofajournalist:

Daniel Vaughn, the on-staff (and, we presume, salaried and health insurance’d) barbecue editor at the Texas Monthly, might have the best job in journalism.

The captions on this piece tell great stories in and of themselves:

“Mr. Vaughn has eaten at more than 600 barbecue places since 2007.”

“He has custom boots with a butcher’s chart.”

Here’s to hoping he has a bib to wipe off his keyboard.

also the most-hated-by-other-journalists job in journalism

03/24/13

The Washington Post will soon go behind a paywall.

Well, this was inevitable. Let’s see if it’ll be able to be successful, like the NYT.

03/18/13

I’ve been reading for the last hour about the poverty on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. It’s enough to make anyone feel like a complete asshole for ever complaining about what they don’t have.

I’ve seen poverty in Appalachia, but that doesn’t seem to even come close to this poverty.

In Wounded Knee, with a population of 382, males had a median income of $0, and the per capita income for the CDP was only $2,403. A whopping 80 percent of the population was below the poverty line.

There’s also deep problems with gangs, alcoholism, and teen suicide.

Photographer Aaron Huey has some amazing images from a National Geographic shoot, found here. He captured the photo above.

And the nonprofit Trees, Water & People have volunteer programs to provide employment and assistance to Native American families living in Tribal Lands. See a video here.

03/10/13

theatlantic:

In Burma, the End of Censorship Means a Scramble to Figure Out Journalism

The country’s media will be free to print daily newspapers for the first time in five decades starting on April 1. But first, they have to learn how.

Read more. [Images: Jake Spring]

03/7/13

Hi! Here is my “alternate cover letter” for Buzzfeed.

Journalism is not the easiest business. But there’s many reasons why I want to be an editor in digital news. And, as all things, it is best expressed through GIFs.

Working in news can feel like this:

Source: http://weskette.tumblr.com/post/33175041012/how-i-feel-write-now-is-i-wrote-up-most-of-the

Or this:

Source: http://tumtumace.tumblr.com/post/24956070795/watching-movies-online

But at the end of the day, it’s totally worth it:

Source: http://fuckyeahthenewsroom.tumblr.com/tagged/jim+harper/page/10

I’m obsessed with news and social networks:

Source: http://whatshouldbetchescallme.tumblr.com/post/34052554615/when-someone-asks-what-im-doing-today

I can write in even the most trying conditions:

Source: http://imgur.com/gallery/jATso

Plus I’m a skilled editor and multi-tasker:

Source: http://whatshouldwecallsocialmedia.tumblr.com/page/4

And this is how I’d feel every day coming in to work at Buzzfeed:

Source: http://gifs.tastefullyoffensive.com/post/41173180471#.UTi-4BngK8o

Thanks for your time!

03/6/13

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I know the pressure these debts can put on you. I know how angry it makes you, at yourself, at other people, at the world. Why didn’t I save more? Why did I buy that thing? Why did I have to pick up that tab when I didn’t have any goddamn money? How could I support a family like this? Why won’t the world recognize my talent is worth more!?

And so when Nate Thayer published emails with our newest editor (second week on the job), I can see how that might happen. How you might finish writing your last email, “No offense taken,” and then staring at your blog’s CMS that night, decide, you know, what? I’m tired of writing for peanuts, because fuck that. And if a young journalist in her first week on the job was part of the collateral damage, hey, the world just isn’t fair, kid. Pay it forward.

I get it, but it was still a nasty thing to do.

Alexis Madrigal in A Day in the Life of a Digital Editor, 2013 (via theatlantic)

I tried not to read this, but I couldn’t stay away. Now I am hyperventilating because today is only Day 2 of my “funemployment” and I am about to dive back into the cold waters of job searching in journalism. AND I’M TERRIFIED. I wake up tossing and turning and thinking “Why am I so stupid? Why have I allowed myself to love something that will never love me back? What does the future look like? Why have I picked something that will never allow me to have an ‘easy’ life?” I don’t know. I just can’t imagine myself doing anything else. I tried to do something different, something I thought would be easier and fun (advertising). But it wasn’t. And I ended up being booted out because of budget cuts anyway, so it’s all the same. Like the author of this column, I don’t have a good answer for any of this. No one does.

03/6/13

"The Joy of Dreading the Next Season of 'The Newsroom'"

It doesn’t start til June, and may have an episode about the Newtown shooting.

Get ready to cringe.

03/5/13

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Hi, we reach 13 million readers but we can’t afford to pay you freelance types for your work. Can we have 1,200 words for free?

The Atlantic

Meanwhile, Marco Arment’s The Magazine has just 25,000 subscribers who pay $1.99 a month, allowing him to pay writers $800 per article.

(via chartier)

The second this-makes-the-Atlantic-look-really-bad thing to happen this year.

(via shortformblog)

well, this is discouraging.

(via shortformblog)

03/5/13

news bugger

Hi! Here is my “alternate cover letter” for Buzzfeed.

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