Digging into the Dollar Store

Take a tour through the Dollar Store. Jack Hitt  explores the economy and workings of the Dollar Store, and Tim Davis snaps a colorful series of photos for the slide show. A fine feature on a place — and more.

Covering international news at the New York Times

What’s life like at the New York Times’ foreign news desk? Public editor Arthur Brisbane takes a close look in this column.

Photo essay by WCC journalism student

Lauren Owens wrote her feature story for Journalism 210 on the fish processing company of Bellingham Cold Storage. Lauren’s a great photographer, so she took plenty of photos even though she couldn’t turn them in for a grade in the 210 class. Those photos, along with the informative caption text taken from her feature, was published on the Bellingham Business Journal’s Web site. Take a look here!

Your brain on computers

In this feature, Matt Richtel takes a close look at how multi-tasking with computers is affecting our lives — and examines if technology is re-wiring our brains. Here’s an excerpt:

Scientists say juggling e-mail, phone calls and other incoming information can change how people think and behave. They say our ability to focus is being undermined by bursts of information.

These play to a primitive impulse to respond to immediate opportunities and threats. The stimulation provokes excitement — a dopamine squirt — that researchers say can be addictive. In its absence, people feel bored.

The resulting distractions can have deadly consequences, as when cellphone-wielding drivers and train engineers cause wrecks. And for millions of people like Mr. Campbell, these urges can inflict nicks and cuts on creativity and deep thought, interrupting work and family life.

While many people say multitasking makes them more productive, research shows otherwise. Heavy multitaskers actually have more trouble focusing and shutting out irrelevant information, scientists say, and they experience more stress.

And scientists are discovering that even after the multitasking ends, fractured thinking and lack of focus persist. In other words, this is also your brain off computers.

Read the rest of “Attached to Technology and Paying the Price “

Does this feature have any relevance for you or the people you know? In what ways does it ring true–or not?

A story is born….

This isn’t about journalism, but it’s just so interesting I had to post it. John Grisham talks about the jobs he’s had, and how he came to writing in Boxers, Briefs and Books.

Like most small-town lawyers, I dreamed of the big case, and in 1984 it finally arrived. But this time, the case wasn’t mine. As usual, I was loitering around the courtroom, pretending to be busy. But what I was really doing was watching a trial involving a young girl who had been beaten and raped. Her testimony was gut-wrenching, graphic, heartbreaking and riveting. Every juror was crying. I remember staring at the defendant and wishing I had a gun. And like that, a story was born.

Advice on jobs in journalism

A few years ago I went to a conference where editors and reporters gave advice to journalism students about getting a job. Mostly, this applied to students looking for work after getting a B. A. or more, but some of the advice could apply to anyone. I found my notebook full of interesting things that people said, so this seems as good a time and place as any to write it down.

General career advice: A career counselor from University of Oregon gave this advice: “Look outside your dream market but don’t forget your dream job. Look at small markets, smaller places. Networking and internships are still the number one way to get a job. Be flexible.”

Print journalism: About a quarter of students go into print journalism. It’s important to get an internship if you can, which is very competitive on a big paper. The Oregonian, for example, takes 12 interns — out of 400 applicants. One reporter who had an internship that led to a job with the Oregonian gave seven tips for students who wanted to find a job:

1. Get decent grades
2. Get experience — work on a college newspaper
3. Have good clips of stories you’ve written
4. Have a flawless application and material –if you use it’s when you mean its, the letter will get thrown out. Be sure to address it to the right person.
5. Timing — it has to be right
6. Humility –Be willing to take any assignment or go work on a little weekly. “This is your chance to go live in Prosser for a year.” Be flexible.
7. Show that you have a hunger or a passion for the work.

Radio:

There are still jobs and opportunities if you’re patient and focused. Take what you can get — it’s a fun place to work, with more freedom.

Cable news:

• Look at small cable shops, get your foot in the door. “You might have to suck it up on occasion” with graveyard shifts and boring jobs.
• TV is a war of attrition — there will be jobs “but you have to come in on  a lower level than you imagine or take horrific hours” — such as midnight to 8 a.m. However, being an overnight operator, you learn the basics. “Opportunities arise if you have a balance of experience.”
• “People burn out. Those committed to it will advance as jobs open up. Just get in and take advantage of turnover. Cross-training itself is vital. Understand the technology.”

Target for attack: journalists

In Russia, journalists who expose corruption have been savagely beaten in a wave of unsolved attacks and official harassment in the region surrounding Moscow. “Rarely, if ever, is anyone held responsible,” writes Clifford J. Ley in this New York Times story of 5/18/2010, “Russian journalists, fighting graft, pay in blood.”

KHIMKI, Russia — Mikhail Beketov had been warned, but would not stop writing. About dubious land deals. Crooked loans. Under-the-table hush money. All evidence, he argued in his newspaper, of rampant corruption in this Moscow suburb.

“Last spring, I called for the resignation of the city’s leadership,” Mr. Beketov said in one of his final editorials. “A few days later, my automobile was blown up. What is next for me?”

Not long after, he was savagely beaten outside his home and left to bleed in the snow. His fingers were bashed, and three later had to be amputated, as if his assailants had sought to make sure that he would never write another word. He lost a leg. Now 52, he is in a wheelchair, his brain so damaged that he cannot utter a simple sentence.

Read the rest of the story here. There’s also a slide show here and a fascinating related story about an editor who was beaten, then pressured by police to say it was his fault.

Pulitzer prize journalism

Pulitzer prizes are considered the highest honor for print  journalism. (There are also Pulitzers given for other kinds of writing, as well as musical compositions).

On April 12, the 2010 Pulitzer Prizes were awarded. They’re inspiring works — check them out here.

In his will Joseph Pulitzer (1847-1911) left an endowment for Columbia to establish a school of journalism and to give “prizes or scholarships for the encouragement of public service, public morals, American literature, and the advancement of education.”

In doing so, he stated: “I am deeply interested in the progress and elevation of journalism, having spent my life in that profession, regarding it as a noble profession and one of unequaled importance for its influence upon the minds and morals of the people. I desire to assist in attracting to this profession young men of character and ability, also to help those already engaged in the profession to acquire the highest moral and intellectual training.”

You can read more about the history of Pulitzer prizes here.

A bright idea and lots of persistence

Looking closely at something ordinary that most people don’t see — that, along with the persistence, investment in time and hard work to see it through, can result in a great feature story.

That’s what Manny Fernandez has in his feature, “Listening in on a Pay Phone in Queens,” published in the New York Times on Feb. 12, 2010. Fernandez took a pay phone across from a courthouse as his subject, and spent two days watching it and talking to those who used .  it it. He added in background facts and research to make a compelling story:

Benjamin Patir called his son because he was lonely and, perhaps more important, because he had a quarter. Robert J. Covelli called his son, too, to find out if, at some point during the more than 24 hours he spent in custody, he had become, for the first time, a grandfather. Frank Federico, fresh from a courthouse jail cell, called his mother, who spared him any lectures and asked him if he needed a ride home.

The three men used the same curbside pay phone on a busy block of Queens Boulevard last week. So did Carlos Luciano, who lent his cellphone to his wife. And Alex Santana, who bought a banana to get change. And Marvin McCain, a subway conductor trying to call in sick, and two men uninterested in giving their names or explaining why, at midnight on a neon-lit stretch of Kew Gardens, Queens, they had to make a call.

Everybody knows the public pay phone is dying, but nobody inclined to watch this one would believe it. It sits across the street from Queens Criminal Court, on a patch of sidewalk facing Fast & Fresh Supermarket Deli & Grocery. In the age of the iPhone and the BlackBerry, in a city where cellphones are cheaper and more plentiful than toasters, the pay phone outside Fast & Fresh is outdated, outnumbered, outperformed.

Yet this grimy phone — in a silvery booth that Superman would have skipped over, for it is doorless and not fully enclosed — survives and, in its own nickel-and-dime way, thrives.

In seven days last week, more than 100 people deposited a total of $52 in the phone, at 25 cents per call. Last month, hundreds of people put in a total of $210 worth of coins. Those who stepped into the booth last Thursday and Friday provided a snapshot of New York’s pay phone user, an elusive, rather anonymous demographic sometimes viewed with suspicion.

Read the rest of the story here. There’s also a great slide show accompanying the story.

Working your beat….

Sportswriter Terry Hutchens gave tips about beat writing, reporting and interviewing to a class at Indiana University’s School of Journalism.

He said that succeeding or failing as a beat writer comes down to one thing: your sources.

Here’s part of the story:

Hutchens said he has 12 years worth of sources, and he was able to acquire all those sources from working hard and building upon the connections and relationships he has with people.

“As a journalist, whoever has the best sources wins,” Hutchens said. “It’s really what sets you apart.”

He said it is about trust and about having those sources know that, as a reporter, you will be fair and accurately quote them.

Hutchens also had some great tips on interviewing:

“It’s about asking the right questions and asking the right people,” Hutchens said.

Hutchens advised students to do research to prepare for the interview and to write out all the questions before hand. He said that his biggest rule is to always write five more questions than the set number of questions he initially writes down.

“You never want to be in that interview where you run out of questions,” Hutchens said. “Craft the questions so people can’t answer ‘yes’ or ‘no,’ and always be prepared to ask people to elaborate.”

Read the rest of the story here.