In school, we expect our professors to answer our questions, to return our emails, to invite us in for a consultation, to pay attention what we say and read carefully what we write. One of the important lessons of being a student journalist is learning how to deal with the unexpected. Unfair things happen in…
On a shelf in the slanty room under the stairs, next to her college textbooks, my mother kept a stash of inexpensive Peanuts paperbacks — dozens of them, which reprinted the newspaper strips, perhaps on a yearly basis, maybe more frequently. I spent many a summer afternoon reading through those books, and I remember sorting…
Similar:The Penance of Eleanor, Duchess of Gloucester, by Edwin Austin Abbey.This painting was inspired by the scene …AestheticsChapbooks — the latest assignment in my “History and Future of the Book” class.Students have already done a 400-word sp…AcademiaAn afternoon with Ben Franklin. CultureEnjoying a visit to the Carnegie Science Center with my son. Mars exhibit…
My laptop drive is full & my comfort-food shelf is empty; however, that package slip was for a new external hard drive and a case of Clif Bars. #winning! Similar:In journalism, nuances such as "sources tell us…" "reportedly…" "it appears…" "confi…I don’t click on headlines that use word…CultureForward is the officers' wardroom. To the right…
Last week, I had a hardware emergency. A kid in a small-town hardware store spent about 15 minutes helping me find the right nut. I had the troublesome part with me, and used a vise on their worktable and their wrench to twist it in place. The nut cost 50 cents. I asked the kid if…
Similar:#4C18 snack still life.PersonalShould you trust media bias charts? – PoynterTraditional journalism values a focus on…CultureSold out opening night of Mamet’s Oleanna. Chilling. Gasps from the audience. Office furni…Sold out opening night of Mamet’s Oleann…PersonalAbove the ready-room desk is the captain's power-napping loft, because self-care is i…AestheticsI’ll be seeing the final performance tomorrow. @bigstormpcI’ll be…
The trick is that most people think they are getting a good deal out of Facebook; we think of Facebook to be “free,” and, as marketing professors explain, “consumers overreact to free.” Most people don’t feel like they are actually paying when the payment is personal data and when there is no specific sensation of…
3,486 words, 120 links, 57 lexias, and currently this is the only ending.
Social media services have put writing tools into the hands of people who probably don’t think of themselves as writers, but there they are, captioning photos and picking hashtags and maybe even pausing just a few seconds to edit before they hit “post.” This radio interview offers a good, informal overview of why people who…
I’ve been fascinated by the rhetoric of headlines surrounding the “Sesame Street moves to HBO” story. * HBO gentrifies ‘Sesame Street’ –VentureBeat * Sesame Street Episodes Will Shrink to Half an Hour –Time * Sesame Street Is Heading to HBO, and Getting Even Bigger –Esquire * This episode of Sesame Street brought to you by…
Similar:For News Outlets Squeezed From the Middle, It’s Bend or BustHundreds of thousands of people on Faceb…BusinessI’m not making a serious attempt at recreating specific architecture, just trying to conve…I’m not making a serious attempt at recr…PersonalGoogle Trends: blog, Twitter, YouTube, Facebook (2004-2012)I rather expected this — popularity of …Current_EventsA pie slice from the ring…
Once classes start again, we will all have less time for the game of life. Let’s do some serious playing while we still can. Similar:Go not to the elves for counsel, for they will say both no and yes.First runner-up for the girl’s Halloween…AestheticsSpent a half hour taming this tangle of cables (left) with a…
Use the command-alt functions to add sexual tension, plot twists, or a humorous interlude. —The New Yorker Similar:5 tips for choosing the right typefaceWhen it comes to picking a typeface, you…AestheticsI felt a great disturbance in the Fandom”…as if millions of voices suddenly cr…AestheticsThe daughter is working hard as a dancer and Flaemchen understudy. @frontporchtheatricalsCultureMy colleague…
Jerz > Writing > Journalism I’ve spent the afternoon touching up some older journalism handouts, seeing which are still in good shape, which need some work, and which new ones I’ll need to create from scratch. I realize I’ve never actually written a handout on the inverted pyramid, writing leads, writing headlines, punctuating quotes from sources… of course there…
I have experimented with rewarding students for embracing complexity, taking risks, and for celebrating their failures. Returning to musical theater after a 25-year break has been a valuable lesson in humility for me, and a reminder of just how scary it is — exciting and scary — to do something new. The truth—for this parent…
I will always love Inform 7, but I chose to develop a journalism training game in Twine (because it will be much easier to teach Twine to my students). To prepare for my game, I spent about 6 hours (during my son’s last chess tournament) roughing out about 20 lexias. Since then, I’ve spent about 6…
The camera’s first good image came back a month ago, which was cutting things a little close for the July 16 moon crossing (NASA released the images on Wednesday), according to Szabo. “We were very much aware that the moon would be passing in view, and we worked very hard for it,” he says. The…
Several times I assigned Brenda Laurel’s Utopian Entrepreneur, which described the rise and heartbreaking fall of her girl-centered, girl-positive gaming company, Purple Moon during the 1990s. My own daughter (who is 13) has enjoyed man more opportunities to be both girly and nerdy — something that seems to have been a lot harder 20 years…
History is complex and baffling and fascinating. Reading this (an explanation that the stiff-arm salute that we now identify with the Nazis was a general gesture that was common in America before WWII) made my head spin almost as much as reading about the myth of 8 unbroken hours of sleep. A group of about…
Wondering how to write a personal essay? Is your personal essay due tomorrow morning? If so, here are some quick tips. Good luck! Your instructor is not going to grade you on how much you loved your deceased family member, how wonderfully you played in the big game, or how narrowly you escaped death. Your…