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50 blogs by journalists, for journalists
This is a great list of blogs by Journalists who are blogging and also journalism academics. This list includes 50 blogs, including journalists who share some tips and expertise. This is a treasure.
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“We invited people to nominate blogs via Twitter and received a good number of responses, many of which we have included here.” -
Fair Observer
Fair Observer is a website that offers analysis on the Arab Spring, especially on the developments in Egypt. The website is easy to navigate and you can search for analysis by region or topic.
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Amos Oz, The Art of Fiction No. 148
This is an interview with liberal Israeli writer Amos Oz. I enjoyed reading the answer to “Does it ever snow in the desert?” Take a moment to also read his answer on finding time to work on journalism as well.
“I write articles not because I’m asked to, but because I’m filled with rage. I feel I have to tell my government what to do and, sometimes, where to go. Not that they listen. Then I drop everything and write an essay, which is always published here first, then picked up by The New York Times, or England’s Guardian or another publication. You see, I’m not a political analyst or commentator. I write from a sense of injustice and my revolt against it. But I can write an article only when I agree with myself one hundred percent, which is not my normal condition—normally I’m in partial disagreement with myself and can identify with three or five different views and different feelings about the same issue.”
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How to edit your story for accuracy
12/10/12
by Rana F. SweisAs a reporter, you must gather information and interview sources quickly, then explain what you’ve learned concisely and clearly. Once that’s done, it’s tempting to ship the story to your editor or hit “publish” on your blog.
Resist that temptation. You need to do one more thing to ensure your story contains only accurate, unbiased and verified information: edit your story line by line.
Investigative reporter Nils Hanson shared his advice for line-by-line editing at the recent Arab Reporters for Investigative Journalism (ARIJ) conference in Cairo. More than 200 journalists and academics, mainly from the Middle East, attended the conference, which included training sessions and networking opportunities with international investigative reporters and trainers.
Hanson, who reports for the popular Swedish TV news station SVT, and is a member of ARIJ’s board, offered these tips for editing for accuracy:
Have your address book and notes handy
Make sure your list of sources and their contact information, as well as notes from your interviews, are close at hand. There may be facts you will need to double-check as you edit.
Keep an open mind
“Are you hit by tunnel vision? That’s the big trap,” Hanson said. Tunnel vision is the tendency to hold on to a certain belief even when evidence points elsewhere. Reporters sometimes do this without realizing it, Hanson said, so stay open-minded when reporting and editing your story.
“Listen to the skeptical, examine the expert and question the victim,” Hanson said. Think of the recent BBC scandal, in which an alleged sex-abuse victim admitted to wrongly accusing a former politician of attacking him. “Can victims prove their allegations?”
Examine each fact
Ask yourself if there is essential information missing and if all assertions are grounded in fact. Mark each fact, name, figure and quote in your story, and then verify it. “Watch out for overstatements, such as ‘everybody says’ or [that] they haven’t done anything,” Hanson said.
Verify all data, including statistics. “Even data presented by interviewees must be verified,” he says.
Evaluate your sources and decide if you need more interviews
Do your sources make conclusions that others might criticize? Point that out.
Reporters need to make sure they talk with many people, including those they don’t like or who don’t like them. They should also include people who are controversial or who may seem a bit odd—or just wrong—to the reporter.
“Did the people criticized in your story have a chance to reply to all serious criticism aimed against them?” Hanson asked.
“Look at the overall picture and check if it is unbiased or if it is written in an accusatory tone,” he explained. “Who or what could give a different picture?”
Protect sources and check copyrights
Make certain that a source you have promised not to identify will not appear in published documents or in photos or video. Also examine graphics and copyrights, including logos and statistics revealed in charts or graphs.
Check your gut
After examining your report line by line, Hanson says to ask yourself two final questions. First, ask yourself, “Are you troubled by anything?” If the answer is affirmative, be honest with yourself and your editor about what that is.
Finally, ask yourself, “What might generate criticism?” Don’t automatically take those parts out. Instead, address those critiques in your story.
If you follow these steps, you’ll be much less likely to need to issue a correction—or to regret publishing the story at all.
Rana F. Sweis is a freelance journalist and media researcher. She writes mainly about political reform, refugees and social issues in the Middle East. She is also the lead researcher in Jordan for the Open Society Institute-sponsored Mapping Digital Media Study. You can visit her website and follow her on Twitter.
Photo courtesy of Rogue Sun Media, used with a CC-license
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Reporters, like diplomats, can’t work in a fortress.
This is an excellent oped in the New York Times on the importance of reporting from the field and ‘being there’. To go where the story is. Sounds simple but as violence, chaos and kidnappings become increasingly common in places where reporters must go, the risks are high. The writer argues that reporters have to be there and working from fortresses can come at a high price.
“the occasional price of a noble but risky profession” — struck rather close to home. It is a calculus familiar to the tribe of foreign correspondents who work, as Bobby Worth often does, in places that can blow up in your face. If diplomats are withdrawing behind blast walls and armed escorts, and if that is costing us some useful understanding of the world, is the same thing happening to those who cover the news, and with what consequences?
“Like the truly committed diplomat, the truly committed foreign correspondent is something of an endangered species. News organizations began their retreat from the world long ago, driven by economics and a wrongheaded belief that Americans don’t care that much about foreign news. The American Journalism Review, which began charting the decline of foreign reporting in 1998 (that first article was entitled “Goodbye, World”), reported two years ago that 18 American newspapers and two entire newspaper chains had closed every one of their overseas bureaus. Other news outlets, including most TV networks, have downsized or abandoned full-time bureaus in favor of reporters or anchors who parachute in when there’s a crisis. They give us spurts of coverage when an Arab Spring breaks out or Hamas fires rockets into Israel, but much less of the ongoing attention that would equip us to see crises coming and understand them when they erupt.”
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New Adventures in the Newspaper Industry
An article in The Economist finally delivers positive news about the newspaper industry after several years of terrible news. The Newspaper industry has taken a real fall the past few years and the process of digitization has been tough for many – those who survived were the innovators. Many didn’t make it.
“Things have started to look a bit less grim, particularly in America. Revenues from advertising are still falling, but those from circulation have at last started to stabilise. At some papers, such as the New York Times, circulation revenues this year are forecast to offset the decline in advertising for the first time in at least five years.”
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Why Telling a Story is the Most Powerful Way to Activate Our Brains
“A story, if broken down into the simplest form, is a connection of cause and effect.”
This is a great post on the power of storytelling. The brain remembers stories and that is the main argument the author makes in this article. Stories are powerful and now there is scientific evidence to prove it.
“If we listen to a powerpoint presentation with boring bullet points, a certain part in the brain gets activated. Scientists call this Broca’s area and Wernicke’s area. Overall, it hits our language processing parts in the brain, where we decode words into meaning. And that’s it, nothing else happens. When we are being told a story, things change dramatically. Not only are the language processing parts in our brain activated, but any other area in our brain that we would use when experiencing the events of the story are too.”
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The Art of Being Still
This is a great post – something writers are guilty of: Not finding enough time to write. “they fret about writer’s block or about never having the time to write,” writes Silas House. “Yet as they complain, they spend a whole lot of that precious time posting cartoons about writing on Facebook or putting up statuses about how if they only had more free time they just know they could get their novels written.”
I just recently saw tweets from an author who was in the process of writing a book, who was writing reflections on Twitter on the process of writing and then complaining of not being able to concentrate on writing. So take a look at this blog. So much of it rings true in this ‘digital era’.
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Why social media – not violence – could bring change to Oman
“The Arab Spring left the Gulf state of Oman relatively unscathed, with long-term ruler Sultan Qaboos moving to quieten discontent by introducing reforms, but how long can tradition hold back calls for change?”
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Crowdfunding Citizen Journalism in Cairo
“Mosireen, a media collective in downtown Cairo that has become a vital source of video reports about life in post-revolutionary Egypt, is engaged in an online crowdfunding campaign.”
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Twitter to Add Photo Filters to Compete With Instagram
Adding filters may seem like a trivial addition to a social network that processes a billion 140-character missives every two days, but it could be an important part of the company’s business.
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The 15 Best Movies About Journalism
The list. The 15 Best Movies About Journalism
“1. His Girl Friday (1940)
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Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell butt heads in this story of an ex-husband and editor trying to win back his star reporter and ex-wife, whom he still loves. But it’s about more than that. It’s about the dehumanization of their subjects. There’s one bleak exchange about changing the time of a hanging to make the evening edition. It’s cutthroat. Russell’s character laments that she doesn’t want to be a reporter, she just wants to be a woman. It’s a bit dated, but the ethical dilemmas are devastating. And in the end, Hildy is more journalist than lady.
2. All The President’s Men (1976)
There’s three types of freshman journalism majors: ones who want to be Carrie Bradshaw, ones who want to write for Rolling Stone, and ones who want to be Woodward and Bernstein. I was the last one. All The President’s Men follows the Watergate scandal and features Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman as sexier versions of Woodward and Bernstein. Nice.” -
‘Irish Times’ to change in look and size
“‘The Irish Times’ is enhancing the newspaper and its journalism at a time of rapid digital development, writes Kevin O’Sullivan, Editor.
From tomorrow, The Irish Times will change in look and size. Most significantly, our journalism will be strengthened to better serve our readers from Monday to Friday, and to do so in a distinctive way at the weekend.
Renowned designers Palmer Watson have joined us in redesigning the newspaper to make it more modern, more readable, and more convenient to consume by virtue of being a little narrower in size.
We have talked to readers, regular and occasional, about how they read the paper, their preferences and what engages them. We have taken on board research on the case for change in presentation of our journalism today, particularly in response to how people consume news through a wide variety of devices and yet retain an affinity for print.”
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Chronicling Lives After Guantanamo Bay
“Shephard has followed the stories of several prisoners after they were released, including Salim Hamdan, who was Osama bin Laden’s personal driver, and Canadian Omar Khadr, the youngest Guantanamo prisoner. Recently, she traveled to Albania to meet with Abu Bakr Qassim, one of several Muslims belonging to China’s Uighur minority who were captured in Pakistan and mistakenly detained at Guantanamo.”
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This Is Not a Revolution
“Darkness descends upon the Arab world. Waste, death, and destruction attend a fight for a better life. Outsiders compete for influence and settle accounts. The peaceful demonstrations with which this began, the lofty values that inspired them, become distant memories. Elections are festive occasions where political visions are an afterthought. The only consistent program is religious and is stirred by the past. A scramble for power is unleashed, without clear rules, values, or endpoint. It will not stop with regime change or survival. History does not move forward. It slips sideways.”
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Book: The Dawn of the Arab Uprisings
“The Dawn of the Arab Uprisings sheds light on the historical context and initial impact of the mass uprisings that have shaken the Arab world since December 2010. The volume documents the first nine months of the Arab uprisings and explains the backgrounds and trajectories of these popular movements and regime strategies to contain them. It provides critical analysis and at times first-hand accounts of events that have received little or superficial coverage in Western and Arab media alike. While the book focuses on those states that have been most affected by the uprisings, including Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain, Libya, Yemen, and Syria, it also covers the impact on Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Algeria, Palestine, Lebanon, and Iraq.
As the initial phase of the uprisings subsides, counter-revolution sets in, and grand narratives crystallize, it is important to take note of the diversity of reactions that emanated from activists, scholars, and others as the uprisings were first unfolding. In this sense, the volume archives the realm of possibilities, both imaginative and practical, optimistic and pessimistic, that were opened up as people sought to make sense of the rapidly unfolding events.”
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Where does language come from?
“How do we understand what words really mean? New science suggests we make meaning by creating mental simulations.
Making meaning is one of the most important things we do. For starters, it’s something we’re doing almost constantly. We swim in a sea of words. Every day, we hear and read tens of thousands of them. And somehow, for the most part, we understand them. Constantly, tirelessly, automatically, we make meaning. What’s perhaps most remarkable about it is that we hardly notice we’re doing anything at all. There are deep, rapid, complex operations afoot under the surface of the skull, and yet all we experience is seamless understanding.Making meaning is one of the most important things we do. For starters, it’s something we’re doing almost constantly. We swim in a sea of words. Every day, we hear and read tens of thousands of them. And somehow, for the most part, we understand them. Constantly, tirelessly, automatically, we make meaning. What’s perhaps most remarkable about it is that we hardly notice we’re doing anything at all. There are deep, rapid, complex operations afoot under the surface of the skull, and yet all we experience is seamless understanding.”
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What it was like to work at Newsweek at its best.
“Tina Brown, the founder of the Daily Beast and editor of Newsweek, announced this week that the print magazine was headed to the morgue file, dead after nearly 80 years. A digital offering called Newsweek Global will take its place. Those of us who worked at Newsweek through the turn of the century wish the new venture well, but we can’t escape the feeling that there’s been a death in the family.
Until the Washington Post Co. sold the magazine in 2010, I qualified as a “lifer,” a concept that no longer exists in the American workplace. Over nearly three decades at Newsweek in the pre-tweet era, I was the magazine’s media critic and later a columnist. I interviewed and wrote about five American presidents and authored more than 50 stories, almost all of them on domestic affairs.”
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The newsonomics of The New York Times’ expanding global strategy
“This has been the year of global expansion for the world’s biggest news companies. The Wall Street Journal launched its Deutschland digital edition in January, and Alisa Bowen, WSJ’s head of product, tells me additional international expansion, along with video, is a top 2013 priority. The Financial Times, which had retrenched from non-English language initiatives a number of years ago, just launched a new Latin American homepage on FT.com and rolled out a new mobile app for the region, while initiating “digital printing” through HP. Reuters and Bloomberg have both also upped their presence in the market. For the Times, the Brazil edition follows on its China edition launch in June. (For more on this developing phenomenon, see “The newsonomics of global media imperative”).
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Thirteen Habits of Highly Effective Freelance Journalists
“Colleen Kimmett and The Tyee hosted a series of four expert-led panels called Freelance Survival, to give freelancers practical tools and tips from those already making a living in the industry. Thursday night’s session was called “Freelancers: Save Time, Make Money!” and featured three folks with various expertise in said tools. First was Frances Bula, a columnist for Vancouver magazine and Urban Fix and a regular contributor to the Globe and Mail. She was followed by Trish Mau, an expert in online and database searches who works for public libraries, and then Phillip Smith, The Tyee’s digital publishing consultant, technologist and an online advocacy specialist who works to advance the field of news innovation through Mozilla and The Tyee.”
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NPR leader outlines strategies for digital survival
When Gary E. Knell took over as CEO of NPR in 2011, his assignment was clear, if daunting: “to provide an economically sustainable platform for journalists.” Knell, who spoke at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism on Monday, joined NPR at a time when the organization faced not only internal strife, but also a business environment still reeling from a decade of digital disruption. His response was that of a realist. “You can’t stop technology. People will demand programming when and where they want it,” Knell said. “To not be in the digital space means you’ll be replaced. And you’ll never come back.”
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Internet anti-censorship tools are being overwhelmed by demand
“U.S.-funded programs to beat back online censorship are increasingly finding a ready audience in repressive countries, with more than 1 million people a day using online tools to get past extensive blocking programs and government surveillance. But the popularity of those initiatives has become a liability.”
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Journalism, youth and politics in Jordan
Journalism, youth and politics in Jordan. AmenFM (Arabic Channel) 89.5. Guest Speaker on ‘Successful Women” with Suheir Jeridat.
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Freedom of Expression in Egypt’s Draft Constitution
Egypt is in the midst of a vitally important phase in its democratic transition, and a vibrant debate is ongoing over the nature of its constitutional protections for human rights. In order to provide support to this discussion, the Centre for Law and Democracy today released a set of Comments on the Freedom of Expression and Information Clauses in the Draft Constitution for Egypt.
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Morocco Cracks Down on Democracy Rappers
The North African country has locked up musicians deemed to be critical of the state. Now one jailed rapper’s entourage is fighting against time to get his message out and rally the country’s floundering democracy movement.
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