If you haven’t been there already

I am now reporting and producing on a weekly basis for Columbia News Tonight, a weekly webcast from The Journalism School at Columbia University. So far I was fortunate enough to be Executive Producer, Managing Editor, Producer and Reporter for back-of-the-books stories and for breaking news.

I designed the website and the two flash graphics and installed a Google Analytics account. Click here for the entire site and here for my stories only.

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This week in Der Spiegel

In this week’s title story of DER SPIEGEL, I am featured on page 127. The article deals with social networks, and I am talking about the news I broke on twitter (N.Y. Times hiring Bono as an op-ed writer) and how J-school students twittered the Obama-McCain forum on national service.

Click here to buy the whole issue as an e-paper or browse through the pages.

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Ira Glass: “Newspapers and network news deserve to die”

Christiane Amanpour attended the DuPont Awards Winners’ Circle inside the Lecture Hall this year to talk about her winning documentary “God’s Warriors” but also to react to criticism by earlier remarks from Ira Glass who said he could have never voted for this years winners.

Amanpour: “Yes, we are serious about that. The world is a serious place. The things that confront us are serious things. We don’t want to make fun or make light of the serious things. That does not mean that we cannot create compelling, interesting television.”

(Click more for full Ira Glass remarks) (more…)

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Changing Media Landscape - Discussion at the J-School

On November 11, 2008, the Graduate School of Journalism hosted a panel on the changing media landscape and invited Sewell Chan, blogger/editor, The New York Times “City Room” blog, Adriano Farano, executive editor, CafeBabel.com, Erica Smith, news designer, St. Louis Post-Dispatch and “Paper Cuts” blog and Jacob Weisberg, chairman, Slate.

A half hour before and after, the evening was used to eat, drink and network in the World Room. The panel itself was one of the most highly attended since I came to the school this summer.

> Event Archive
> Article about event
> J-School twitter feed

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New Media, New Opportunities

Erin Rosa writes in the Columbia Journalism Review: “Journalism is becoming a more egalitarian profession—and that’s a good thing. Although many media outlets will remain the property of a small bloc of parent corporations, more and more members of the public who may not be traditionally considered journalists are becoming involved with news coverage.”

Click to read full article.

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Life in a Radio Bubble - Recap of Election Night Coverage

Just a few minutes before midnight, President-elect Barack Obama took the state at Grant Park in Chicago to speak to an electrified crowd. The 44th President greeted the people in the park and around the world with the words, “Hello, Chicago. If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible, who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time, tonight is your answer.”

At the same time, I opened the door of the radio booth inside the Graduate School of Journalism and took a seat next to the hosts Kelly Ann Senyei and Jamie Jordan. Completely exhausted from the last 50 minutes of live coverage, the three of us missed every single word of this historic acceptance speech, and I for myself could not have cared less.

In January of 2008, I began covering this great spectacle with three weekly blogposts for a German media outlet, hoping in each primary that the underdog would win, and the next primary therefore matter. Back then, I looked at the schedule and would not dare to dream that I would ever write about April 22 and the Pennsylvania primary, much less an party in-fight that would carry on well into the summer.

The climax of all this came last night, with a live four-hour radio broadcast in which I had the great honor to be one of the Senior Producers. Meeting after meeting in the preceding weeks, it dawned on me that this was not only a tremendous challenge but probably a historic night in which a team of three dozen students would have to show flexibility and decision-making on the fly, while not forgetting the intense we had received since our arrival at the school in August.

(more…)

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Rachel Sklar will do twitter interview after leaving Huffington Post

Just this Monday Rachel Sklar paid a visit to my class at the Journalism School at Columbia University. Delighted that we were spared of another AP Stylebook drill it wasn’t hard for her to win over the broadcast students that were gathered in the room - not that she wouldn’t be able to do that anyway.

Together with Jay DeDapper from WNBC, the senior contributing editor of the Huffington Post discussed political reporting in a changing media world. When DeDapper mentioned twitter, she proudly took out her Blackberry and started typing away.

Today, she announced via AJR that she was leaving her position at the HuffPost to pursue other jobs in the industry:

“One of the things she will miss most, she says, is the adrenaline rush that comes with the constant demand to produce. As of November 7, Sklar, senior contributing editor for the Huffington Post and writer and editor of the Web site’s blog “Eat the Press,” will be parting ways with her all-consuming gig to pursue other projects.”

The good news is, within the next week I will have an interview with Rachel via twitter, a first time for her and me. In the meantime I will figure out the best way to organize and archive this, but it would not hurt if you start following the both of us. Suggestions and possible questions are welcome.

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Andrew Rosenthal explains why McCain wasn’t published in NYT

Photo: Andrew Rosenthal (by Katya Wachtel)

Andrew Rosenthal, the New York Times Editorial Page Editor, visited the student center at the Journalism School tonight and talked for 90 minutes about his job.

It would be an understatement to say he surprised people in the school with his pointed comments. He managed to make everyone laugh out loud at least once - and that after a long day in classes or on the reporting beat.

Talking about the controversy around Obamas published op-ed piece, followed by denying McCain the same opportunity - at least when you ask his campaign management - Rosenthal had the following words to say about a process that started with telling Senator Obama of what to write and what not.

(audio temporarily removed…)
“We can’t accept this piece but if you take out all those quotes from last week’s speech and the ones from the commercial and you focus less on attacking John McCain and you focus more on your own policies. And they sent us two more drafts and we accepted the third one.

“And when we accepted it I said to David Shipley, our editor, ‘okay here’s how this is gonna go. We are going to run this thing and the McCain people will ask for equal time. And we are going to give it to them because it’s only fair. And they are going to send us a horrible, unprintable op-ed piece. And we’re going to ask them for the same exact changes we asked Barack Obama for and we are never going to hear from them and they’re going to leak it to Drudge and attack us for dissing McCain and that is exactly what happened.

“Our public editor has criticized us. They sent in the piece. They called on a Thursday and wanted it to go on Sunday. I said ‘fine.’ Our editor said to them ‘you understand the rules, it can’t be a press release, it can’t be a rehash speech and we really don’t want you to just criticize Obama, we need to hear about your opinions.’

“They said ‘yes, yes, yes.’ They sent us a rehash speech that criticized Obama and said nothing about what McCain wanted. We wrote them back - a slightly inartfully worded email but basically said them same thing: ‘We can’t accept this.’ And they just went straight to Fox News, Drudge.”

Click more to read my tweets during his talk (Start at the bottom) and take a look at the slideshow.

(more…)

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On the bus with no good reason

Howard Kurtz is asking: “Does the campaign trail still matter much in an age of digital warfare? Or is it now a mere sideshow, meant to provide the media with pretty pictures of colorful crowds while the guts of the contest unfold elsewhere? And if so, are the boys (and girls) on the bus spinning their wheels?”

Read the entire article.

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Columbia J-School is blogging

Outside the Journalism Building - Foto by Jeremy Herb

Blogs have become an important tool at the Graduate School of Journalism. For most, it is another opportunity to publish articles, for some it is a requirement for class, and for one single person it is used to showcase the clothing style of everyone else.

Here is a list of some of the blogs of my fellow students:

The Highbridge Lowdown
> a blog of unedited work by Sarah Maslin Nir. Already linked by Huffington Post and other local Bronx blogs.

Collin Crowell
> blog of new media student Collin Crowell, who also worked on the J-School coverage of the presidential forum at Columbia University.

The LES Free Press
> this blog was already linked by Gothamist.com and represents the unedited reporting by Gregory White.

Greg Wears Skinny Jeans
> Claire Moses came up with the idea of following the style of above mentioned J-Schooler, Greg White, and it has become an instant success - somehow.

More to come in the future, so bookmark this article for more…

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