Bloggers/journalists friction redux

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It still amazes me how both pride and fear can contaminate what might otherwise prove to be a rational debate. On Feb. 22, I came across a LinkedIn discussion thread for the group Online reporters and editors, in which a blogger was trying to drum up support for a petition to have bloggers declared journalists en masse.

Fending off the black dogs

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The park’s name escapes me now — I could not even find its name on Google Maps  —  but its eastern edge butted up against Deerfield Drive, just south of Clearview Avenue on the West Side of Fort Collins, Colo. Our apartment building was several blocks further east, and I often would walk to the park with my oldest son, who was about 4 or 5 years old on this particular occasion.

Is journalism hung up on tradition?

Core should remain; tools change

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Although the discussion has been ongoing for two months now, it was only within the past week or so that I had stumbled upon the thread, which was hosted by the LinkedIn Online reporters and editors group. I am not sure why I had not come across it before, because the question at the center of the thread has been a common discussion within the profession for years.

Flu fight and fleeting sight

There were two incidents of laughter on Monday evening, after the flu had laid me out flat on my back most of Saturday and on Sunday, a day that turned into an emotional  rollercoaster as I realized I had experienced some vision loss in my right eye.

So comic relief was in short supply and in high demand on Monday afternoon.

Industry’s past mistakes still live

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News always has been a tough business. There was a time when it was not unheard of for the hawkers at one publication to sabotage — whether by theft or by force — the sales of another.

Fistfights among newsboys were not unheard of, and scoop-hungry reporters once were known to bribe police and other officials for news tips, sometimes even for access to crime scenes.

Looking back, moving ahead

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They were the dog days of summer, when the Midwest heat and humidity wring the sweat out of you with nary a move.

We lived several miles west of Elgin at the time in a small subdivision called Wildwood Valley. It was the early 1970s, and this little tract just off Coombs Road and a little north of Highland Avenue still was considered “the country.”

Settling in after you’ve been axed

Some of the first steps you need to take

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I have been told there are some people who have greeted the news that that were being laid off with great joy. I was not one of them, although in time I would come to realize it is both a blessing and a curse.

My layoff came on a Thursday — I worked Tuesdays through Saturdays, so it was my “hump day,” meaning I was over the week’s hump and it was downhill from there. Of course, that was more profoundly true that week.

Without getting maudlin, that day just 23 days before Christmas 2010 was a roller coaster ride all of its own, starting with the walk to Human Resources, calling my wife afterward, packing my desk and then saying goodbye.