I could tell you what Mitch has to say about this, or I could just let you read his wonderful blog post yourself.
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Blogroll
- AHCJ: Association of Health Care Journalists Go-to place for health care journalism — and they’re great people, eager to help
- American Journalism Review A publication of the University of Maryland Foundation. Great resources for journalists, always great articles.
- Buzz Machine Jeff Jarvis’s blog: All the things he is, for better or worse
- Columbia Journalism Review Always an interesting place to spend some time
- Daring Fireball John Gruber is techy and cool and (sometimes) brutal. But he knows his stuff.
- How to Use a Semicolon you will laugh, you will learn
- Investigative Reporters and Editors Resources, job listings, scholarships, tips… and they’re right across the street from the Missourian!
- Jim Romenesko A blog about media and other things he’s interested in
- Journalism 2.0: A conversation about journalism and technology Mark Briggs, the guy who wrote the excellent textbook we use in this class, has a good blog, too.
- Media Matters Media Matters for America is a Web-based, not-for-profit, 501(c)(3) progressive research and information center dedicated to comprehensively monitoring, analyzing, and correcting conservative misinformation in the U.S. media.
- MediaShift Your guide to the digital media revolution
- Missourian Multimedia Tumblr Have a look at what we’re doing
- News Lab An online resource and training center for journalists
- NICAR: The National Institute for Computer-Assisted Reporting another great resource, right across the street.
- Nieman Journalism Lab So much good stuff here, you’ll just want to dive in and start looking around.
- OJR: The Online Journalism Review Interesting people on interesting subjects related to online journalism
- PolitiFact Pulitzer Prize-winning Web site that sorts the truth from the cr**.
- Poynter's MediaWire Media industry news and commentary
- Source Watch “Your guide to the names behind the news” — this is a place to check out an organization for agenda and, sometimes, funding.
- Stuff Journalists Like Want a good laugh? Read this.
- Talking Points Memo Eclectic, habit-forming and hilarious
- TechCrunch “a weblog dedicated to obsessively profiling and reviewing new Internet products and companies”
- The Lede Blogging the news with Robert Mackey (a NY Times blog)
- The Open Notebook Awesome site for anyone interested in the process of in-depth, authoritative science journalism
- WordPress.com
Course documents
- Chip Scanlan on Nut Grafs Chip Scanlan, a great writing coach formerly of the Poynter Institute, talks about nut grafs.
Cute. Great job Mitch!
Journalism at its craziest is many times journalism at its best. Rock the kid interviews, Mitch. They’re tough.
Nice way to localize the feeling of interviewing people who are actually excited that you work for a newspaper. Cute reporting tale. I’m happy that I got to read it!
Awesome blog post, Mitch. I really like how you show that even a simple story of about an elementary school exercise program can bring a smile to someone’s face.
Love it. I think there’s a good reminder here: a large part of reporting is in the relationships, and in embracing those random, crazy, surrounded-by-swarming-people moments.
Besides, that’s part of what makes reporting fun!
I agree! Through this semester, I’ve learned that the best conversations and interviews come from those who I have built a relationship with through consistent communication (email, face-to-face, etc.).
I like the language/narrative style used in Mitch’s blog post and the article itself.
I don’t know if anyone else felt this way, but in the movie, I wasn’t surprised to see the whole village out to meet Kristof and sneak a peek at him.
Not to take away from Mitch’s coverage (it’s nice to know at least kids in Columbia will never be journalist-weary), but in Kristof’s case, they were probably more interested in seeing him for reasons other than his profession.
It’s the ‘white-American-in-our-land’ syndrome.
Amrita just beat me to that comment. I, too, think the Nick Kristoff fascination case was not entirely because he’s a journalist (although camera crews have strange effects on all sorts of people), but because of what might be termed as a fascination of the White Man or as Amrita put it, the “white-American-in-our-land” syndrome. The crowds that gathered to see Kristoff might also have done so because they were expecting humanitarian aid distribution, but usually, we third-world folks get excited pretty quickly at the sight of western foreigners. Maybe it has something to do with being subjected to psychological conditioning through decades of racial colonialism and the resulting inferiority complex, an idea that was also explained by Frantz Fanon in his book, “Black Skin, White Masks.”
I’m going to go with Amrita and Waqas on this one. Kristof’s writing is great for moving the American public and I love how his definition of news is not dependent on the “newness” but the severity etc. Yet, I can’t help but wonder if his success is partially due to the “white-American-in-our-land” syndrome.
Then again, I can see Dustin’s blog post alluding to that (unintentionally?). It’s not everyday a first-grader gets to meet a college-aged photographer = instant fascination.
Amrita — that’s why I felt a little uncomfortable watching the movie, felt like propaganda, almost…journalists shouldn’t be welcomed as celebrities. But everything else about the moving was powerful and touching.
Lovely story. There’s no story too trivial. I used to have bias against community newspapers, thinking that they don’t do quality journalism, until I interned at one. They may only serve a small audience, but they really focus on issues people care about. Even when Kristof does his journalism and tries to bring peace to the world, he starts with a local angle and finds one person to zoom in on. We can all do that, no matter the scale of our stories.
I like this post! The lighthearted nature of it made me feel like I was right there with the kids with you. I love how you handled being swarmed by kids with everyone throwing out names and wanting attention. You made it work for you.
This post kept me smiling and interested the whole time. Great comparison, great writing! Good job!
nice work – simple and effective
A great post about the important of relationships in journalism.
I think this is great! Who doesn’t love hearing about the innocence and curiosity of little kids? This is really tasteful and it’s great to see that he knew just how to capture his surroundings. Great job Mitch!
For some reason, I must have skipped over this post. It was great Mitch, really. I wish more people could read your blog. Actually, I wish more people could be reporters & get to experience enlightening situations like we do. It’s truly amazing sometimes.
I love that story. Journalism at its best, I think, is valuing and showing people for who they are.