View from the top: the life of an editor

What’s it really like to head up a world class news organ­iz­a­tion? The New York Times’ Bill Keller shares with read­ers the loneli­ness of command:

Q. I think a lot of young journ­al­ists and edit­ors, myself included, are curi­ous about what a day in the shoes of Bill Keller is like. Can you walk us through a nor­mal work day for The Times’s exec­ut­ive editor?
— Devin Baner­jee, Stan­ford, Calif.
Con­tinue read­ing

The White House Press Corps: when enough is too much

Things we won’t miss about declin­ing polit­ical cov­er­age c/o John Robin­son:

From the front page of the New York Times today:

Pres­id­ent Obama’s order freez­ing the salar­ies of his senior aides and the pen he used to sign it. Doug Mills/The New York Times

Answer­ing the burn­ing ques­tion, how many news pho­to­graph­ers does it take to shoot a pen.

Political Blogs

I missed this from biz school prof Kevin Dooley back in August, 2008:

[H]ow are polit­ical blogs the same or dif­fer­ent from MSM? Through Wonko­sphere, we have noticed that polit­ical blogs are con­sumed in much the same man­ner as main­stream media is, which indic­ates that read­ers treat polit­ical blogs not as sep­ar­ate from, but rather as part of, main­stream media. Wonko­sphere traffic is greatest on Monday, and tends to peak before break­fast, lunch and din­ner, i.e. when people are cruis­ing on the net to end a por­tion of their work day. Blogs act as news­pa­pers for most. Con­tinue read­ing

Yet more thoughts on journalism and democracy

Newspaper pressesI’ve been pon­der­ing the rela­tion­ship between journ­al­ism and demo­cracy of late, and so too have the aca­demic com­menters gath­er­ing at the blog of Social Sci­ence Research Coun­cil boss, Craig Cal­houn.

Cal­houn asks the ques­tion Sam Zell has already answeredWhat is the future of news­pa­pers? And when social sci­ent­ists smell blood, they’re mostly rub­bing their hands at the pro­spect of a fresh cada­ver to dis­sect rather than offer­ing sym­pathy or solutions.

There’s not much in the com­ments that reg­u­lar read­ers won’t be overly famil­iar with — foundation-funded journ­al­ism any­one? But bur­ied within them is Michael Schud­son offer­ing his usual top class, ana­lyt­ical two cents: Con­tinue read­ing