ATLANTA, Georgia, February 22, 2008 If you were going to make a list of websites that wasted your time, would CNN.com be one of them? 8aweek.com seems to think so. A newly-launched Firefox plugin, 8aweek.com keeps track of your internet usage, logging those midnight hours spent browsing those ‘restricted’ sites that eat up your time, [...]

COLUMBIA HEIGHTS, Washington, DC, June 20, 2007 Pandemonium. Lights flashing, a spiral of screaming, hysterical phone calls, a flash fire – combustible Columbia Heights – ignited. It was a war zone, ground zero – not a neighborhood, not even anything physical – hate.rage.fear.heat, low hanging, oppressive smoldering chemicals, waiting for the spark, flash point fire. [...]

I was too young to meet Molly Ivins – barely 21, fresh out of college. So when I found myself at her house, at one of her monthly parties full of intelligentsia, politicos and hangers-on, I was too scared to go in. Austin’s summer greenery draped my battered Corolla. I made a phone call – [...]

####Susan West and Michael Gold, Friday, June 16, 2006 at the Peabody Hotel, Little Rock, Arkansas, 2006 AAN Annual Convention (Association of Alternative Newsweeklies) Unlike most consultants paid to give presentations at conferences, WestGoldEditorial does not suck. Nope – they don’t regale us with irrelevant or outdated examples drawn from daily newspaper websites, or make [...]

####Susan West and Michael Gold, westgoldeditorial.com, Friday, June 16, 2006 at the Peabody Hotel, Little Rock, Arkansas, 2006 AAN Annual Convention (Association of Alternative Newsweeklies) Here’s some notes. Long, text heavy notes. They haven’t been edited or fact checked, so if you see something I goofed on, lemme know! ###Goof #8: Organize and simplify information [...]

###Session: Flash for Print Journalists ####Presenter: R. Scott Horner, South Florida Sun-Sentinel, Friday, June 16, 2006 at the Peabody Hotel, Little Rock, Arkansas, 2006 AAN Annual Convention (Association of Alternative Newsweeklies) Here are my notes, kids. Sorry that this is so text heavy! ###Critical Points * Pair up a reporter/photographer to create a Flash project [...]

####Part One ###Drop everything … … and watch Steven Colbert’s April 26, 2006 performance at the White House Correspondents Association Dinner. Fans of comedy will laugh. Fans of journalism will laugh. Fans of awkward silence will laugh. Sketch comedy with Helen Thomas? The world doesn’t get much sweeter. ####(p.s. The resolution of the clips is [...]

A while back, I was asked to take part in a survey that some academics are doing regarding journalists’ use of blogs. Today, these sweet souls sent out a link with their preliminary data. A link, to a page on the Internet. Not password protected. Sent to 752 journalists and PR people. Where are the [...]

Back when the London bombings hit, I was all on my soapbox about how newspapers should be going out and getting user-generated content when they wanted it — not just expecting it to come to them (read post). I willfully didn’t acknowlege that newspaper.coms do have to worry about copyright infringement — and although many [...]

To pay, or not to pay? Tis the question newsrooms are asking themselves regarding their company bloggers. To blog, or not to blog, might well be the feeling of newsroom reporters asked to take on a double identity: mild-mannered objective reporter by day; witty, caustic and opinionated blogger by night. This Washington City Paper article [...]