These are a just few of my favourite things…

Blogs like Stuff White People Like have spawned a variety of clones. 10,000 words comes up with an imaginative and startlingly accurate 27-point list of Stuff Journalists Like:

2.  All the President’s Men

5. Seinfeld

6. AP Stylebook

9. Correcting bad grammar/typos

13. Exclusives

16. Debates

21. New York Times

22. Coffee

25. Lists

26. Standing up for the little guy

View the entire list here: Stuff journalists like

The tenth life a cat has is on the ratings chart

There’s never a dull moment when “breaking news” meets a “live” update on Indian television. Gautam Roy of Aajtak is the anchor, as India’s premier Hindi news channel, owned by the respected India Today group, chronicles the travails of a cat caught on a parapet for over six and a half hours.

Link courtesy Anupama

Why blogging is more interesting than reporting

The jury is still out on blogging—and if left to the mainstream media, it will remain out for ever.

Is it good, is it journalism, does it have the “institutional” checks and balances, do bloggers go out and report a story… questions like these have been hurled for very nearly a decade without hurting anybody.

Now, Poynter’s Roy Peter Clark throws light on a Nieman narrative conference where reporter and Nieman fellow Josh Benton threw up an interesting theory on why blogging has come to be so interesting.

“Eyewitness reporting rendered in real time via the blog represents an interesting and worthy kissing cousin to long-form narrative journalism… in contradistinction to the kind of processed news reporting that still vanillas-up the typical newspaper.”

At its most basic, blogging represents natural reporting. It comes right after an event or an experience, when the story is hot. Through the authentic voice of the writer, it helps the reader catch the spark of the subject.

In a sense, blogging is like a conversation between friends: Fresh, unformed, unfiltered, as-is, not entirely accurate always, but fun, something that captures your attention.

Conventional reporting, on the other hand, takes more time, “neuters the point of view, neutralizes the language, and jams facts into standard suitcases.” But as more time passes, an investigative or feature writer recognizes the unrealized narrative potential of the story. Once again, “interestingness” becomes high.

Read the full piece: From blog to narrative

Alltop: aggregation without the aggravation

There are several ways for journalists, journalism students, journalism educators and journalism consumers to stay on top of what they want from the world wide web. You can surf. You can search. You can subscribe. . You can customise, depending on your interests. You can scan, using an aggregator. Etc.

The indefatigable Guy Kawasaki has now unveiled Alltop, a “dashboard,” “table of contents,” or even a “digital magazine rack” that displays the news from the top publications and blogs. Inspired by popurls, Alltop does “single-page aggregation”, without the aggravation, listing the latest five stories from thirty or more sites in over 40 categories.

“Alltop sites are starting points—they are not destinations per se. The bottom line is that we are trying to enhance your online reading by both displaying stories from the sites that you’re already visiting and helping you discover sites that you didn’t know existed. In this way, our goal is the “cessation of Internet stagnation.”

So, if it’s journalism you are looking out for, bookmark http://journalism.alltop.com as your one-stop online newspaper, magazine, blog rack.

For Modi, like Bush, either you’re with us, or…

Sagarika Ghose writes that in the “opposition-free environment” of Gujarat, it is the media that is the only opposition to the alpha-male of Gujarati asmita, Narendra Modi. And like the masses he lords over, he has ensured that there is a sharp polarisation among the messages carrying his word to them.

Those who sing in his praise get first preference for interviews even if they risk being labelled “fascist sympathiser” or “closet saffron”. Those who don’t, like the English media, are “left-inclined upper class Nehru-style firangis who, ever since the neglect of Sardar Patel by the Congress, have failed to give Gujarat its due.”

The idea is to set up a Delhi vs Gandhinagar battle. The reason, writes Ghose, is that Gujarat 2002, was India’s first televised riot:

“Television images branded themselves so powerfully on the national consciousness that normally apolitical people were galvanized into outrage, commissions and courts gasped in horror and took pro-active steps, conscientious folk found themselves becoming activists and secular society at large got the demon that it collectively and subconsciously yearned for.…

“Seeing” has meant doing. Media images of the riots have spurred a courageous activist movement which has systematically followed cases and provided legal aid. A prosecution and investigation that was simply not neutral was challenged. Witnesses who were being paid off or threatened were provided protection. Perhaps because of this media-inspired activist movement, many of the injustices of 2002 have been realized and fought.“

Read the full column: The politics of seeing

All good things come to an end. Kind of.

Sad but true, a very fine blogger has decided to take it easy. Scott Adams, the creator of Dilbert, who blogged almost every day for two years and called blogging “the best creative outlet I’ve ever had“, has announced that he will blog less often henceforth:

“The blog has been a source of tremendous artistic satisfaction. I enjoyed being relatively uncensored, and interacting with the readers on fun topics. That’s why I will continue blogging, albeit less controversially. I’ll just do it less often, especially over the holidays.

“It’s hard to tell the family I can’t spend time with them because I need to create free content on the Internet that will lower our income.”

Read the full blog: Going forward

If you want to blog but don’t know where to start

For journalists still unsure of how to set foot into the deep, wide, welcome but relatively unknown ocean called blogosphere, Adam Tinworth lists the three kinds of openings they could sneak into:

# Expert comment

# Aggregation

# Background

Read the full article: Three types of journalist blogs

Think small—and think different—to think big

To reach its newsroom, you have to wend your way through cutfruit wholesalers. Its staff strength is a grand total of four. At rush hour, the place has the hushed intensity of an air-traffic-control tower. Together, they put out their reports, columns, tips, links and more on a quartet of interconnected websites.

When the editor wanted to go to New Hampshire to cover the 2003 primaries, he passed the hat around. There was $6,000 (Rs 24 lakh) within 24 hours. When a new site was to be launched, readers chipped in with $40,000 (Rs 16 lakh) which brought in the first paid employee. Another site launch fetched $80,000 (Rs 32 lakh).

Welcome to the world of Talking Points Memo—Josh Marshall’s web network that “breaks news, connects the dots, stays small”, and causes more palpitations on Capitol Hill than many of the big players.

Read the full story here: The (Josh) Marshall Plan

‘Gentlemen, thank you for coming out’

He is the one-man army targetting Capitol Hill from his apartment in North West Wasshington, D.C. His technique has been called “odious”, “outrageous” and “over the line”. To some he is a hero, a muckraker; to others, he is a pariah. Some say receiving a call from him is like receiving a call from Satan himself. And a typical phone call from him is simple and straightforward: “Are you gay?”

Mike Rogers is the gay blogger who “outed” Larry Craig’s “wide stance” last week. Nearly three dozen political and congressional staffers have been outed by But he promises the Idaho senator won’t be the last.

“A little volume titled The Book of Questions: Business, Politics and Ethics is tucked under his coffee table. There, on Page 193, is the question: “How much right do we have to know about the private lives of elected officials?”

“Rogers says, “When those private lives are in direct conflict with the public policy that these officials espouse, I think it’s fair game that their private lives be brought into this. And I have to blog to do that with. Here’s the question: What community is expected to protect its own enemies? Don’t beat up the gay community, and then expect us to protect your secrets and your double life. It’s just not right.”

Read the full article here: The most feared man on the Hill?

‘Blogging helps journos understand readers’

Should newspaper websites have blogs? Should newspaper reporters and editors blog? Does it help?

For all three questions, Ray Hartley’s answer is, yes. Hartley, editor of the recently launched South African newspaper, The Times, blogged even while the newspaper was taking shape. Now, in an interview with the African Press Network, he says, blogging helps newspapers become better and helps their staffers understand that a newspaper is not a lecturing platform, but an “engaging platform”.

“You have to ask yourself why critics are weary of blogging. It’s not just about blogging, it’s about a change in the organizational culture of newspapers. If you understand that a newspaper is not a lecturing instrument, but rather an engagement with an opinionated audience, you understand blogging right away.”

Read the full interview here: A newspaper is not a lecturing instrument

Link via Editors’ Weblog