Digital Guru Clay Shirky on a Newspaper Plan B

“ ‘You’re gonna miss us when we’re gone’ has never been a great business model,” Clay Shirky says.

View from poet Donald Hall’s window: on ageism, writer’s block and the wonder of Andro-Gel

Poet Donald Hall spoke lustily of language — a tonic for a room of middle-aged journalists being encouraged to write in 140-character exchanges and HTML. Photographer Gary Knight were so hooked, we drove up to New Hampshire to hear more.

Alzheimer’s deserves to be on the front page

“This disease is reaching epidemic proportions, and every one of us will be affected in some way with this disease.”

Journalism Ethics: Mystery desserts, midnight karma and the best story I never wrote

War was hell, and so was coming home and spilling it out to a newspaper reporter, no matter how empathetic she seemed.

Notes from a South African newsroom

But the biggest challenge for South African journalists isn’t just the Internet; it’s also illiteracy, combined with new government threats to press freedoms.

Old-school lessons for the new-media generation

What I’m describing here is a life of trying to balance family with work; balancing taking care of others with taking care of yourself. … Bad things will sometimes happen, depressing things — teenagers, for instance.

In praise of the fact-checkers

McPhee has written that the worst checking error is calling people dead who are not dead. … It’s the things you think you know that get you into trouble every time.

Bull castration, mountain bikers and other joys of returning to the Star City

There are no good stories in the newsroom.

Lynn Forbish: “I have dementia, not [expletive] herpes!”

Not long ago, she re-asserted her legendary will by refusing to roll balls of yarn — she never was the crafty type. “It was down with the yarn, up with the Beatles!” her daughter-in-law said.

Rough drafts (Or, why it’s good for your stories to get peed on every now and then)

I try to heap praise on the folks who toil behind the bylines. Does it hurt you to bring the news researcher a decadent brownie every now and then?

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