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‘Alternative story telling’? No — just telling the story
Sometimes reporting, editing and producing a breaking news story can be frustrating, because two new developments land on your doorstep before the last one has made it through the production process....
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Pro tip: Chimpanzees are not good interviews
Click the image for the video. Full story (KRNV-TV of Reno, Nev.) Filed under: Journalism, Why I Love Local News Tagged: animals-in-the-news, chimpanzee, local-news, nevada, reno
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Nope, I haven’t changed jobs, or: Welcome to NBCNews.com
But my employer changed names: NBC News has acquired full control of msnbc.com and its digital network from Microsoft Corp. and is immediately rebranding the site as NBCNews.com. Many details of the...
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Can you scientifically quantify social media opinion?
Over at NBCNews.com, we’ve started publishing daily charts tracking what people are saying about the presidential and vice presidential candidates on Twitter and Facebook. Here’s today’s for the...
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#JournalismRules update: ‘exclusive’; ‘scoop’
I’ve updated The Reader’s Guide to Journalists with two new entries. Check it out and pass along your proposed rules. Filed under: Journalism, Journalism Rules, Language Tagged: journalism, Journalism...
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Shepard Smith apologizes for the wrong thing
Watch the full apology (YouTube via TPM) After Fox News broadcast a man’s shooting himself in the head near Salome, Ariz., after a hundred-mile car chase Friday, anchor Shepard Smith abjectly...
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Quotation of the year
“I refuse to let my professionalism and my femininity be defined by a piece of fabric.” — Melissa Medley, Enterprise Florida Florida answers critics of ‘sexist’ logo: ‘It’s just a cartoon’ (M. Alex...
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Sometimes, you do a story just for the picture
(Jody Taylor/Sixty5 Media via NBC San Diego) Driver stuck in midair after car rams California clinic (NBC News) Filed under: Journalism, Why I Love Local News Tagged: california, nbc-news, san-diego,...
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Life on general assignment
In the new world at NBC News, I’m now doing general assignment after many years covering various beats. That yields a certain variety to one’s work week. At 1 o’clock this morning, I was hunched over a...
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And sometimes you do a story just for the headline
An 18-year-old Florida woman was only slightly injured when she was shot by her friend’s oven, police said. Yes. An oven. She was trying to cook waffles and didn’t know her friend was storing...
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The Reader’s Guide to Journalists
Rule No. 56: All heroes are “unsung” up until the moment they appear on morning network television. Read all the rules.Filed under: Journalism, Journalism Rules, Language Tagged: journalism, Journalism...
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The Reader’s Guide to Journalists
Rule No. 57: Adding “-gate” to a noun means we think something’s fishy here but no one’s been convicted yet. Read all the rules.Filed under: Journalism, Journalism Rules, Language Tagged: journalism,...
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The Reader’s Guide to Journalists
Rule No. 58: A public official is always “beleaguered” if anyone has said anything negative about him or her in the past two weeks. Read all the rules.Filed under: Journalism, Journalism Rules,...
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The Reader’s Guide to Journalists
Rule No. 59: Real-world values rarely increase “exponentially.” It just sounds cooler than “a lot.” Read all the rules.Filed under: Journalism, Journalism Rules, Language Tagged: cliches, journalism,...
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Dear P.R. practitioners: We are not idiots (Updated)
Follow-up Nov. 19: The enterprising promoter behind this pitch wrote back today — not to complain about this post, but to “briefly followup” (noun as a verb from the original) to see whether I was...
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Dear P.R. practitioners: At least try
Filed under: Journalism Tagged: journalism, public-relations
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Dear P.R. practitioners: Dictionaries aren’t expensive
Filed under: Journalism, Language Tagged: public-relations, spelling
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Dear P.R. practitioners: .’Tisn’t the season
Filed under: Journalism Tagged: holidaze, public-relations
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The Reader’s Guide to Journalists
Rule No. 60: TV journalists never “interview” people. They always “sit down with” them. Read all the rules. Filed under: Journalism, Journalism Rules, Language Tagged: cliches, journalism, Journalism...
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Dumber’n a Box of Rocks: How to Slime an Entire City
Under the headline “US town rejects solar panels amid fears they ‘suck up all the energy from the sun,'” The Independent today picks up on a five-day-old local story from Woodland, North Carolina,...
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