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I would love to chat with you about this horrific event…
How do you cover a tragedy in an age where things can come back to haunt you? Well, our friends at Gawker have pointed up a LiveJournal site where you can read all manner of journalistic appeals, and the public’s response (think ‘whores,’ ‘vultures,’ etc.) – God bless them. The site is the cyber equivalent…
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The social consequences of media technology
It’s not often I find myself recommending the Archbishop of Canterbury to journalists, but one of my minor obsessions is the changing social impact of media technology. Here’s the Archbishop, in a recent lecture, reminding us that it applies to dead tree technology too, and in making his appeal reminding us too that some tides…
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Virginia Tech
Jack Shafer posts a typically abrasive column at Slate on the VT killings which concludes: As reporters intrude into the lives of the grieving to mine the story, they should be guided more by a sense of etiquette than ethics. If they don’t risk going too far, they’ll never go far enough. I was early…
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Proliferating Pulitzers
There are few prizes in journalism as famous as the Pulitzers. But now in their 90th year (but launching their 91st awards), they illustrate a tendency all too frequent in awards – inflation. Back in 1917 there were just three categories of journalism gong: public service, reporting and editorial writing. Now there are fourteen. Everyone…