There was a satanic ritual abuse scare in my neighborhood back in the ’80s

Back in 1984, in Rogers Park, Chicago, there existed (and still exists today) a Jewish preschool on Touhy Avenue, the street where I currently live. It happened that a woman was picking her four-year-old daughter from school, and as they were walking through the hall, a janitor tried to tickle the little girl, and the … Read more

“What I Learned in 40 Years of Doing Intelligence Analysis for US Foreign Policymakers” (PDF)

So here’s an interesting thing, particularly for my friends in the journalism universe. It’s an article from a former high-level CIA officer about how to produce high-quality intelligence analysis. It’s a really good read, though, for anyone who produces (or consumes) intelligence of any kind, including news. One of the best things — the notion … Read more

The Web surpasses newspapers as source of news

ReadWriteWeb reports today on a study by the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism. The takeaway? According to the survey, 46% of people now say they get their news online at least three times a week, surpassing newspapers (40%) for the first time. Only local television is more popular among Americans, with 50% indicating … Read more

I’ve accepted a new job

Hello, friends. After almost six months of working as IT Specialist for Leslie Hindman Auctioneers, it’s time for me to move along to a new job. I’m happy to say I’ve accepted a position as Web Producer for the ABA Journal, the trade publication of the American Bar Association here in Chicago. I think this … Read more

Information architecture for news websites

Here’s a great series of articles about how to structure and present information on news websites. The link will take you to the first of a series of seven posts outlining some pretty advanced thinking about content management, the semantic web, and what makes sense for consumers of web content in terms of navigation, metadata, … Read more

Should investigative journalism get a public subsidy?

Another thing that came my way via the excellent Overcoming Bias site. The author of this piece, Paul Starr, is a professor of Sociology and public affairs at Princeton University, and he floats the idea that public subsidies of investigative journalism might be one way to combat the deluge of journalists that have given up … Read more

If it isn’t there, you can’t fix it.

This fellow gets it. Everyone knows by now that the newspaper industry is broken, possibly beyond repair, but, particularly over the last three or four years, I’ve come across countless folks that want to sell you a solution to “fix” it.  But it can’t be fixed.  The environment has changed, and the niche that newspapers … Read more