My friend Aneesa has a lovely review of the poet Kay Ryan’s work published over at Fanzine today. I’m a poetry fan, myself, but I’d never heard of Kay Ryan before. Aneesa’s review made me want to go out and purchase her books, though, so I wanted to share it. I’ve included my favorite of the excerpted poems after the jump. Read the rest of this entry »
Archive for the ‘Journalism’ Category
A Fine Piece of Journalism
In Journalism, Personal on 18 February 2010 at 5:31 pmThis is apropos of nothing I usually write about on this blog (if you can even say I “usually” write on this blog at all), but if you happen to stop by and find that you haven’t read the Esquire magazine profile of Roger Ebert yet, do it. I read a lot of writing for work and for pleasure, but mostly for work. Words can get exhausting by the end of the day, and this was one of the first pieces of long-form journalism that I’ve had the patience to read through from start to finish, with no breaks, workload be damned, in ages.
Reporting and Reader Engagement, Again
In Journalism, Reporting on 12 February 2009 at 10:50 amI was perusing the Public Editor page on the New York Times today, wondering what exactly it means to be the “readers’ representative.” While I was noodling on this question, this piece on “The Promise of Real-Time Reporting,” caught my eye. I jumped into journalism via the magazine (monthly, print) world and now work at a seven-site blog network that never sleeps (literally — you can log on to our system at 11pm or 2pm or 4am and there’s always someone working). I wrestled a little with the constraints of the “need for speed” approach to writing, but have come to appreciate some of the perks. Read the rest of this entry »
Experiments in Journalism!
In Journalism on 1 February 2009 at 10:29 pmSometime last year I heard about Spot.Us, an organization that lets readers invest in stories they’d like to see covered by local journalists; print and online media organizations can run the story for free. (There’s more to it than that, but check out the site for more info.) The project got off to a good start with my friend Alexis Madrigal’s multi-part story on ethanol infrastructure in California (read it here), and I wanted to get involved. So I gave its founder, Dave Cohn, a buzz. While I initially expressed interest in pitching a story about recycling/zero-waste/garbage/etc., I got more excited about being a fact-check editor for the project. Now, I’m about to dive into my first piece. Read the rest of this entry »
Stuff That Matters
In Personal, Reporting on 13 January 2009 at 7:00 pmIn the last few months, I’ve become enamoured of Tim O’Reilly’s writings over at O’Reilly Radar. One of the points he makes often that resonates with me is this: “work on stuff that matters.” I think it’s a great philosophy, all around, whether you’re talking about a career, troubleshooting a project that’s gone awry, or navigating a personal relationship. He wrote a post this weekend to explain what he means, and I thought it was worth sharing. Read the rest of this entry »
Reporter’s Notebook: When Green Isn’t Enough
In Reporting on 9 December 2008 at 6:00 pmI was catching up on my weeks-old RSS feeds this morning and I came across this article on Triple Pundit. I’m a sucker for cool-looking computers (my colleague Stacey recently gutted my productivity with a link to this site), so the image of the rocket-ship-like computer caught my eye. As I started reading, I noticed a problem that plagues many green product reviews — a lack of insight into the actual performance of the product. Read the rest of this entry »
