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Tips for da beat (RSS)

Simple suggestions for covering a beat.
Monday, June 23, 2008 8:06 AM

Social networking as a journalist

Hey everyone. Now, I'm going to guess here, but I'm pretty sure everyone who reads this blog is on at least one social networking site.I'm not exacty average, but I'm on plenty. Those include: Facebook, MySpace, Friendster, Twitter, ColourLovers, LastFm,
posted by SonyaSmith | 2 Comments
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Wednesday, June 11, 2008 4:15 AM

Early election coverage

What topics do you focus on when covering city elections? What is the best and worst thing about covering politics? This will be my first year covering an election and I'm looking for tips!
posted by ElysseJames | 0 Comments
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Wednesday, June 04, 2008 3:07 AM

Angry phone calls

Journalists get lots of calls from the public. What do you do about angry calls? Do you let readers vent their frustrations on you? Do you try to solve their problems?
posted by ElysseJames | 2 Comments
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Wednesday, May 28, 2008 11:06 AM

Revisiting Excel

Excel is an excellent tool for journalists. Here's how I've started using it to catalogue sources and keep a log of sources used for particular stories.
posted by ElysseJames | 2 Comments
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Tuesday, February 05, 2008 10:15 AM

Organizing sources

Lately I've been working on a crazy project: to organize and categorize all of my sources into one Microsoft Excel spread sheet.I know, I know most of you out there will think it is just some crazy pursuit and one that takes too much time. But, I'll try
posted by SonyaSmith | 2 Comments
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Sunday, January 27, 2008 5:46 PM

Stuck in the habit

When my editor is reading my work, I have a tendency to sit behind him, reading over his shoulder and doing some "backseat editing" (I guess you could call it that... kind of like backseat driving). After copy editing for a few years, and doing
posted by ElysseJames | 0 Comments
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Sunday, January 20, 2008 1:42 PM

Determining an agenda

Somehow, the media often knows news first. Much of the reason behind that is people tip us off. Reporters are frequently getting calls from the public letting us know when something's going down.But we can't forget to ask ourselves why they call.For big
posted by ElysseJames | 0 Comments
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Tuesday, October 09, 2007 7:21 PM

Ethics revisited

After much anticipation, here's the ethics post, as promised!For review, here's what I said: Media are the gatekeepers of information. Indeciding what's news and what isn't, we're essentially biased. Our bias is cultivated by those
posted by ElysseJames | 3 Comments
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Tuesday, October 02, 2007 3:50 PM

Clearing the record

There was a brief I wrote about a theft case. It was simple, it was just a brief, and it was not a complicated case. Unfortunately I got the suspect's sex and age wrong, as well as the time and place of the incident. Needless to say it was the worst correction
posted by GenePark | 0 Comments
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Monday, September 24, 2007 2:36 PM

Quotables

Q.I am just starting my journalism career.  I'm in j-school and work at the local daily, and though I'm reporting stories, I'm kind of learning on the fly.  A problem I've run in to is that when I'm taking notes and trying to quote someone,
posted by SonyaSmith | 2 Comments
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Thursday, September 13, 2007 9:49 PM

And now an ethics question

In conversation with a nonjournalist friend last week, the topic of bias in the newsroom came up. My friend stated that all media is bias in some way and I stoutly defended my profession in its news objectivity.But then! I was reading a book by one of
posted by ElysseJames | 1 Comments
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Monday, September 10, 2007 2:33 PM

Campaign finance

Who out there crunches campagin numbers? I do.My beat is covering Irvine, Calif., where the campagining is bitter and never stops. And my idea is to get ahead on covering the city's 2008 elections by starting a campaign finance database now.I'm looking
posted by SonyaSmith | 1 Comments
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Wednesday, August 29, 2007 9:20 PM

Vacations

I'll be off the blog for the next few days as a I take a trip with my boyfriend and his family to Washington. Gee, every vacation I remember how difficult it is to take off time as a reporter. Trying to do the same amount of work in half the normal time
posted by SonyaSmith | 2 Comments
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Tuesday, August 21, 2007 3:58 PM

RE: Responding

I just got back from a three-week vacation (too long, I know) and just came into the office to wade through hundreds of emails, and it got me thinking.Obviously we get tons of emails from readers regarding our stories. What is your personal policy in
posted by GenePark | 4 Comments
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Wednesday, August 15, 2007 8:56 PM

Do-it-yourself mentality

Sonya's last post was inspiring - I checked my high school paper and proudly discovered that a .pdf version of each issue from the past year is easily accessible online from the high school's Web site. Now the question is whether the staffers or the campus's
posted by ElysseJames | 1 Comments
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