Today, I’m turning over my blog to a friend and colleague, Amber Smith, Health and Fitness editor at The Post-Standard in Syracuse. She and I share a love of journalism, new media and connecting with readers and often swap ideas. (Check out her Health and Fitness blog.) She turned me onto City University of New [...]
It’s time for some short-takes: stuff I find interesting around the blogosphere for journalist bloggers: Blogger tip — be alert: I’ve visited this topic before, but it warrants repeating. You can’t blog in your niche well unless you’re reading what others are saying and know what’s going on in the news. One way to do [...]
“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.” — Albert Einstein When I read this Einstein quote (which was posted in an office at my kids’ elementary school), I thought: Wow! Einstein could have said this today about the newspaper industry. To me the quote sums up so much [...]
Today, I’m not blogging as a journalist. I’m taking off that hat and writing as a news consumer — a regular person who has been devouring newspapers since I was about 6 and read my parents’ daily delivery of the New York Daily News. Dear newspapers: I know. I know. Times are tough. You’re cutting news hole because next to [...]
I haven’t done short takes in a while, so here are some interesting finds from around the blogosphere: The value of small talk: Steve Yelvington has the best explanation I’ve read so far for the value of social media. He compares the gabbing over Twitter, for example, that so many find banal to the glad-handed [...]
When I blogged last week about whether blogging is journalism, several people — through comments on Twitter and this blog — raised a key concept: Well, if blogging isn’t journalism, what is journalism? That seemed a fair question, so I decided to consider it. First, I crowd sourced the idea, asking my Twitter followers to [...]
The shooting in Binghamton, NY, Friday left 14 people dead, including the gunman who apparently killed himself, in a community center filled with people from other countries who were learning English. The news is tragic, and I feel for the families of all those involved. But I think the story provides a compelling example of [...]
Most of my posts on this blog focus on new media, changing content, and embracing interaction with readers. I do that because I really believe those are vital as journalism evolves. However, I think there’s much about so-called “old journalism” that should be retained as journalism evolves. I’m no newbie. I’m 42 years old, and [...]
A colleague of mine asked today: “Is blogging journalism?” She was helping her step-daughter write an essay, an assignment for a college ethics course. Two co-workers and I jumped in to answer the question to help my colleague assist her step-daughter. I found the question compelling because it goes to the very heart of this [...]
I’ve come across some new Twitter tools that I’ve found useful as a journalist, so I’ve decided to compile a new post of my favorite tools for Twitter. (Read my earlier list of favorite Twitter tools here.) Blip.fm: A colleague of mine, @LauraTRyan, turned me on to this great tool. It allows you to search [...]
I'm Gina Masullo Chen, a 20-year veteran newspaper journalist who is a Ph.D. candidate in mass communications. I want to see journalism survive. I believe news organizations need to embrace new media, change their thinking, improve their content and innovate. Read more about me here. I also blog once in a while at Harvard University's Nieman Journalism Lab.
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