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journalism

SECOND HEARING ON MA JOURNALISM COMMISSION BILL A SUCCESS

  Over 80 journalists, journalism students, and professors answer DigBoston’s call to turn out   Amazingly, I’m on my first real vacation in four years this week. But I think it’s important to pen a truncated version of my usual column to thank the 80 plus people (about half of whom were journalism students… yay!) […]

GIVE MA JOURNALISM COMMISSION SEATS TO WORKING JOURNALISTS

This week, I joined fellow journalists, journalism educators, and members of the public at large in testifying on a bill to form a Mass journalism commission that is currently before the state legislature. In view of the potential importance of the initiative, my column this week is simply the text of my testimony. For more […]

EDITORIAL: THE ARTS SPEECH

  DigBoston wants to hear from Boston-area neighborhood artists and arts reporters   Every few months, we start a new intern cohort at DigBoston. And since we’ve taken to accepting larger numbers of interns—we currently have 16 for the summer—inevitably several are arts reporters. Naturally, we want reporting interns to know what we expect of […]

SECOND HEARING CALLED ON MA JOURNALISM COMMISSION BILL

  After some fast action by your pals at DigBoston and BINJ   Almost immediately after rising on Monday, I knew that I wasn’t going to have a normal start to my week. Production on DigBoston commences over the weekend for my colleagues and me, and concludes early Wednesday morning when each issue goes to […]

HOW TO FIND NEWS YOU CAN TRUST

  Some thoughts from a working journalist   A few days ago I was at a local hospital for a routine test, and I got to talking to the tech administering it. She asked what I did. I said that I’m a journalist. And her reaction was very much of this era. She started talking […]

DOUBLE HAPPINESS: FOUR YEARS OF BINJ, TWO YEARS OF DIGBOSTON

  Celebrating the simultaneous anniversaries of the Hub’s most independent news outlets   As I’ve written on numerous occasions, Chris Faraone, John Loftus, and I run two very different enterprises simultaneously: an independent alternative weekly newspaper, DigBoston; and an incubator dedicated to producing longform investigative reporting, the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism (BINJ). We’re experimenting […]

HOW TO DO PHOTOGRAPHY AND ILLUSTRATION FOR DIGBOSTON

  In “an age of ubiquitous images”   At the start of this year, I wrote an editorial on how to write for DigBoston that proved quite popular and led to an increase in the number of article pitches we get from freelance journalists weekly. But it also led a growing number of photographers and […]

NONPROFIT MODEL NOT A PANACEA FOR AMERICAN NEWS MEDIA

  Would-be reformers need to keep that in mind   A couple of weeks ago I wrote a column about a bill (S. 80) filed with the Mass legislature by Rep. Lori Ehrlich (D – Marblehead) and Sen. Brendan Crighton (D – Lynn) that aims to start a volunteer commission to assess the state of local […]

PROPOSED STATE JOURNALISM COMMISSION NEEDS BROADER MEMBERSHIP

  More working journalists, less elite institutes   Chris Faraone,* John Loftus,** and I spend a lot of time thinking about how to rebuild American journalism. Pretty much from the ground up, since so many news outlets and jobs in the field have been destroyed in the last quarter century. And a growing number of […]

THE FALL OF THE GE BOSTON DEAL, PART II

  AG Healey should form independent commission to investigate the failed agreement   Last week in the first installment of this two-part column, I ran through the many problems with the January 2016 deal between General Electric, the city of Boston, and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts that has now collapsed for all intents and purposes. […]