I’m amassing people’s favorite stories of the transition from hot type to cold type back in the mid- to late ’70s. (Here’s the first item). Here’s one sent along by John McClelland of the journalism faculty at Roosevelt University in…
Month: October 2003
Alert the Food Desk
Food is not safe as long as you pick it up within five seconds of its hitting the floor. From snopes.com: Drop a cookie onto a clean floor, and you could eat it with impunity. Drop it onto a contaminated…
Henthoff’s 9,273rd defense of the First Amendment
Read the latest and ask yourself why almost half of the public thinks we have too much freedom. Then ponder how we get it into their heads that freedom of the press matters to people who don’t own one.
Chi Trib stunned to learn bloggers can write
This one (reg. required) was linked on Romenesko … it’s about how some people are blogging their way into mainstream media jobs. (Hint: dish on celebrities and you’ll attract a lot more eyeballs than, say, dishing on news of interest…
Walter Mears writes the book on campaigns
From a review in CJR. It is a puckish survey of the blunders and idiocies political flesh is heir to, and a lament that today’s stage-managed campaigns make it so hard to put gaffes in context. As old cultural taboos…
Buy it for the one you love
The ACES CD of nifty editing stuff. Description: ACES ventures into interactive training with this compilation of more than 130 files on editing and writing, advice to students, discussion of journalism issues and reference resources.
Welcome to Arnieland
Well, they’ve done it. Elected Arnold Schwarzenegger governor of California. Ken, who sits next to me and is the rare desk hand old enough to have been of voting age when Ronald Reagan became governor of this state, insists his…
All journalism is visual
Something that annoys me: when designers call themselves “visual journalists.” It’s a problem of semantics that only a copy editor could love: When “visual” modifies “journalist” it creates a subset. Of course they don’t mean it because they are nice…
Job update
Washington Post needs somebody to take Bill Walsh’s job when he becomes National Desk copy chief. Amusing aside: the Post’s collected copy desk bosses call themselves the Joint Chiefs of Copy. Refreshing aside: The St. Pete Times posts a straightforward…
BONG update
Charley Stough’s latest BONG Bull is out. Among the fun stuff is an anecdote from one of the folks at F5, a free weekly in Wichita that seems to demonstrate that coolness can stand up to a strong west wind.…