Ask more questions

Sam Donaldson, who has spent most of his long career at ABC News covering politics, said he’s “apprehensive” about some of the campaign coverage on radio and television this year, suggesting that journalists haven’t been tough enough in questioning the candidates.
“It’s not our job to tear them down or fall in love with them,” [...]

Raising the ante

How has the Internet changed journalism? Can journalism survive in a world where there are no longer any “gatekeepers” and if so, what will it look like? I’m at a symposium in honor of Phil Meyer, author of Precision Journalism, at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill where these big questions and many [...]

Faked out (again)

The Los Angeles Times has apologized for a recent story that it says was partly based on fake documents. The story quoted records obtained from the FBI as saying that associates of rap producer Sean “Diddy” Combs set up the murder of Tupac Shakur. But the paper’s editor, Russ Stanton, now says [...]

Context counts

The scandal involving New York Gov. Elliot Spitzer brought out a raft of commentators and “expert” analysts, which is to be expected.  But viewers should also expect to be told a little bit about who these experts are and why they’re worth listening to.  Context makes a difference but often it’s not provided.
Last night, for [...]

Perfect pitch

Too many good stories never make it on TV because they fail the “pitch test.” With resources tight and air time limited, news managers aren’t going to green light every story idea. If you want the opportunity to tell a story, you have to know how to sell it.
Last weekend, I moderated a [...]

50 years of scoops

How does he do it? Bob “Scoop” Phillips has spent half a century chasing breaking news in Dayton, Ohio, and he’s still going strong. Featured on the cover of this month’s News Photographer magazine, Bob is a reporter/videographer at WDTN-TV. He works alone and tells writer Julie Washington that he never goes [...]

Remembering McWethy

The death of former ABC correspondent John McWethy came as a shock. He died this week doing something he loved–skiing in Colorado. He was 61.
I knew Jack as both a competitor and a friend. When I covered the State Department for CBS News in the mid-1980s, Jack was on the beat for [...]

Pros and cons of social network reporting

The list of online tools you can use in reporting keeps growing, along with the benefits and pitfalls of relying on social networks for information. Jennifer Woodard Mazerazo, associate editor of PBS MediaShift, says her latest favorite tool is Twitter:
The service acts as what some call a “gate jumper.” Because of the way it’s [...]

Students covering campaigns

“Fresh political coverage like you haven’t seen before.” That’s how KDFW-TV in Dallas describes what it hopes will result from a new partnership with Southern Methodist University.
FOX 4 News has teamed up with the school to cover the Iowa Caucus and New Hampshire primary. Eight student journalists will cover the events extensively, providing [...]

The look of hyperlocal news

What does hyperlocal news look like? The answer is, it depends on where you look. MediaShift’s Mark Glaser has put together a useful guide to what constitutes hyperlocal news online, examining how it’s gathered, produced and sustained. He defines it simply:
Hyper-local news is the information relevant to small communities or neighborhoods that has [...]